If it Ain't Normal, Drug It!

The range of behaviors society is willing to call "normal" seems to be narrowing at a rather alarming rate. Behaviors that only twenty years ago were considered part of the incredible diversity of human expression are now considered pathological, and we are encouraged (every night during numerous television commercials sponsored by Big Pharma) to seek help and take powerful medications (whose actions on the brain and long-term effects are only vaguely understood) to control our symptoms.

When I look at the sweeping changes the Age of Technology has wrought in our society just in the past twenty years or so, I have to ask myself, is it any wonder that some of us just can't deal with our environment? Our genetic heritage has us hard-wired to be running around outside in the sunlight, foraging and hunting in order to feed ourselves, not slumped in front of a computer or a television screen under artificial lights eating processed chemical cocktails marketed as food day after day. But instead of asking what we can do to make the environment more healthy?, we ask what is wrong with these people? and medicate them so that they might better fit society's ever-tightening definition of "normal".

I'm thinking about something Furious Seasons reported on a while back about workplaces offering ADHD screening for their employees. And I'm thinking about antipsychotics being used for "social phobias" including fear of public speaking. And I'm thinking about the questionnaire I got on depression the last time I went to my GP's office for a thyroid check.

This trend to medicalize and pathologize every emotional condition that deviates even slightly from the norm worries me. I foresee a grim future in which all that is unique and brilliant and different in a person, all that sets us apart from each other, will be drugged out of us so that we better fit in the nice little boxes society uses to classify and control us.

Brave New World, anyone?

Writing Prompt: When I was about fourteen, I refused to grow up to be anything like my parents. I thought they were dull and boring, and I told them so (my mother has never let me forget this!). I wanted lights and music and excitement, and I couldn't figure out what was so great about a weekend spent sewing and reading and gardening. The Box People, I called them, all fitting so nicely into their middle-class suburban boxes. It's easy to label people when you're looking at them from the outside in. What labels have you carried? Do they tell the whole story? Why or why not? What labels would you give yourself?