Popular psych meds are a band-aid
Even the NYT is waking up
I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, depression and anxiety at different points in my life. I’ve been given medication for these things. And some of them do work, for varying extents of time. But if we’re being honest, even when they work, you now also have a chemical dependency. And you have learned nothing other than to take a solution in a pill. Fixing my diet, sleeping normally, limiting cell usage and daily exercise have removed all my symptoms enough to function just fine without any substances. In fact, I reached a point any of the problems and discomfort I had in life were due to the medicines themselves, not any supposed underlying conditions.
Regarding the ADHD discussion, I do think adults should be free to do as they wish. But I think it’s profoundly evil we give kids speed, which absolutely affects their growth, brain development and is a very serious drug class we treat in a cavalier fashion. The NYT had a great recent story on this if you’d like to see the numbers, and I appreciate the honest accounting in a mainstream publication. It’s important we have this discussion. This view being mainstreamed, that we’re treating ADHD wrong, was inevitable. With nearly a quarter of 17 year old boys in US having an ADHD diagnosis and many of them being treated with amphetamines, this all feels markedly similar to the opiate crisis. I think we’ll look back at both situations similarly.
For anxiety, many are doled out benzodiazepines, but again what no one tells these patients is these are very serious substances with withdrawals that ratchet up background anxiety no matter your mental state 24/7 if prescribed long enough. The same problem with ADHD medicine: these are temporary solutions that eventually leave you at a point you need them just to feel normal. Our bodies normalize against them. Tolerance is real. The brain becomes used to certain inputs. We’re mucking with pathways and processes we barely understand, while people claim a “chemical imbalance” in the brain, but this is an altogether made up thing, no one is being scanned. For very acute use after intense trauma or surgery, or perhaps for the elderly if it helps them at the end would be where benzos have utility.
For depression, at least for me, that stemmed from mostly lifestyle choices, inability to cope with reality, and trauma. My father died when I was very young. A best friend was killed in college. Other things happened I’ll maybe put in a book one day if ever appropriately motivated to do that. I had real reasons in my personal life to be depressed, not the macro situation of the world or climate change or whatnot. Eventually I worked through them. In hindsight none of the psych meds were even a little helpful, if anything they allowed me to stay stuck in a bad state, but now with pharmaceutical side effects. When I stopped them I was actually forced to confront my emotions and work past them in a healthy fashion. It’s all just punting on problems, papering over them by flooding the brain with certain neurochemicals or blocking others.
The skyrocketing rates of unhappiness in our culture shows these meds just aren’t working. Some might help temporarily, of course stimulates focus and depressants dull the senses. But ultimately you either figure out how to live better (probably by fixing your actual lifestyle and coming to terms with reality) or you will forever require a daily dose of something that alters your natural state, ruins sleep quality, and changes your personality. Everything has tradeoffs. If you’re fine with them, and reliance on substances, carry on. You personally make those choices, after all. But kids don’t get to choose, and making them consume wartime-grade amphetamines to sit still in class for rote memorization feels morally reprehensible (as someone pointed out, it’s perhaps for the parents not the kids). It’s clear they are simply not getting enough physical play as we continue to pretend it’s natural to sit latent for hours on end. No one evolved for that, normal boyhood is ADHD. We need to fix schools if millions require being drugged to survive them.
I don’t really have a solution here, or a point with today’s post other than sharing my experience and how I felt at the end. I think sharing our personal experiences is important because we do not always get an honest accounting of what it’s like from the industry. I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. It’s all just incentives. If we have kids, I personally would not let them become addicts or nudge their behavior with stimulants. I’ve gotten to a point I respect our natural biological state more than any short term fixes. Again, I do think adults should be free to make choices and decide if the tradeoffs are worth it for them. If so, that’s great, I am libertarian about drug legality from a law perspective even if I view them differently for my own life here. I also think if you are using them, even if they help today, it’s a worthwhile goal to aspire to a life without them. It’s better.
But I never won’t think it’s evil we put so many kids on speed, and allowed that class of drug to be widely distributed to peers in high schools and colleges (this is exactly what happened). I saw exactly where that led when in university. Dorms full of strung out kids cramming for finals, torching their mental health to pass an exam, letting relationships, physical health and natural cycles atrophy during a time they should be building good habits. It’s not even like they were making art or something valuable with their time using neurochemical leverage. It’s profoundly dark, and was all unnecessary.
Great stuff. I think part of the issue is that these disorders are over-diagnosed, in kids at least. Some people do have very real problems -- having been around people with truly severe ADHD, anxiety, and depression, medication really can help in the right cases. But as you state, just having trouble in school or feeling melancholy for a time doesn't warrant a diagnosis, and certainly doesn't warrant medication. We're treating the symptoms, not the cause.
I'm glad you found a better solution for you!
Mental health is a tough subject. It is likely that we over prescribe drugs for mental health, but it's also true there are mental health issues that require drugs. I have friends with bipolar disorder who absolutely need drugs to stay stable, but they were originally mis-diagnosed with depression. Mental health diagnosis is imprecise compared to other forms of medicine.
Making the problem worse is the shortage of mental health professionals. Many people might benefit more from therapy than drugs, but good luck finding a good therapist! Drugs, unfortunately, scale better than people. AI might help a lot here, and the results from AI therapy are promising.
But I do worry about people self-diagnosing and self-treating their own mental health. Suicide rates are too high and while drugs can be bad, they are vastly better than that. We need some better, more scalable way to help people in this area!