The case of those australian aborigines who tried to sub alcohol for kava and still wound up abusing that is interesting.

thanks, Ananke

Like I’ve said before, I really have a love/hate thing going with self-medication. I don’t think people should do that, but I also don’t think anyone should let people/corps corral others to hot new expensive drugs when there are old cheapies (adrafanil compared to modafanil), or suitable herbs (kava compared to paxil). If you have the money and the time, *always* see a professional willing to work with you for your psychological care, though. Do the behavior mod and talk therapy stuff suggested. Doing stuff by yourself is always a workaround.

You hear that, Renee? I’m ANGRY! You write this post about how patriarchy uses words like ANGRY and IRRATIONAL and HYSTERICAL to silence women —

And then you call women who disagree with you, who take offense at something you said, “ridiculous”, you imply they’re oversensitive, you call them twits —

You’re being a hypocrite. We’re all hypocrites now and then, but you’re a hypocrite with a podium, and that’s problematic.

It’s a problem for me, because I read your words, and I can’t help but wonder, “Would she think I’m a twit, because I started Prozac two weeks ago? I wonder if she’d think the discussions I had first with a therapist, then my GP, and then a psychiatrist, rigorous enough? Would she think I was weak-willed for acquiescing to prescription drugs after I broke down and cried in front of my therapist? How would she judge me? How would she assess my self worth? What would she think – what would shah8 think – of my mother, who has been so miserable she tried to erase her existence, who is white and female and upper class – and who drinks to dull the pain? Who drinks until she can barely feel any longer? Oh, yes, I get it – she’s a twit who deserves no sympathy, despite the anguish she’s been in for years and years, anguish I’ve witnessed, anger profound enough that she tried to overdose on PROZAC – that dull twit.”

And I sat here for a good thirty minutes and let recrimination and doubt and self-loathing — symptoms of depression — swirl about in my head because once again someone was judging the way in which the mentally ill are forced to live. It is because of people like YOU that mental illness is so stigmatized. It is because of the things people like YOU say and do that I have spent months hating myself for being weak enough, stupid enough, lazy, broken, flawed, dysfunctional enough, to be depressed, anxious, insomniac —

Angry? Yeah, I’m FUCKING PISSED.

There was so much more in the post topic that could be discussed. All derailed. Over something that’s essentially the equivalent of niggardly == racist!

Sure, it’s not a bad comparison “overmedicated Prozac twits” to “mini-skirted sluts”. However, there is one problem. No matter how you look at it, the essential fact is that the statement is true within the context of her essay. Mini-skirted sluts isn’t actually true, it’s just assertion with not context to back the veracity. Truth is an absolute defense. Not only that, nobody who is familiar with the likes of the psychiatric prisons in the USSR, the book Listening to Prozac (which put a great deal of focus on Prozac as a nootropic drug, rather than as an antidepressant), the traditional encouragement to troublesome people to take something to “settle them down”, and the like is going to confuse the state/people Renee is talking about with the people who take Prozac as an actual medication. In the context of her entire essay, it’s damn near impossible to believe that Renee believes that all prozac takers are twits, given that she is rather explicitly talking about lotus eating, and not people taking prozac for their depressions.

What has been truly sickening about this episode, to me are two things:

1) The reliability to which it is a difficult proposition for a minority, especially minority women to agressively stand up for themselves in mixed company is reinforced, yet again. The “angry woman” strikes again, heh, even in a tribute to the angry woman! So we are reminded of just what our place is…nice little inoffensive topics that everyone can join in on. Any jumping off the reservation, not even just giving a nice hell-raising rant (like some white progressives and abolitionists I could name), but just talking about things that are primarily the concern of minority people/women, like, say, schools with an optional afrocentric curriculum which brings out hordes of white people who say that the suggestion is racist and the person who thought of it is a bad person. It keeps happening over and over and over again, and people here just don’t seem to actually think that perhaps Renee’s stubborness doesn’t have a great deal to do with this fact of life. Standing her ground would be important to her. Showing a lot more good will and quite a bit less nasty snark *might* actually have worked, you know…But then, that’s assuming some of the people commenting actually were persuadable people of good will.

2) I was the one here who was citing facts, figures, links, and books here to back what I’ve said up. I don’t think anyone else was doing much other than complaining how their sense of justice was wronged, and paying not the least bit of attention to maybe making that sense of justice universal by describing that sense of justice, impeaching the moral authority of Renee’s essay, or anything else vaguely reminiscent of acknowlegement that people have different viewpoints. One *does* have to do more than say that my opinion matters most in order to change anyone else’s mind! If one of you thinks I’m so wrong, well, rebutt it! Facts! Logical Chains! Anything!

and oh yeah…As Brother Muzone said, “You know what the most dangerous thing in America is? A N*gger with a library card.”

Mine is worn, smeared, dinged. Take that for what it’s worth.

Clearly anti-depressants do not reduce one’s ability to feel rage, since I feel fury as well as disgust at so many of these comments. In fact it’s medication, and therapy, that’s enabled me to feel appropriate anger rather than simply become unproductively and often suicidally depressed over the state of the world and the heartless stupidity of so many people in it.

Saying that “over medicated Prozac twits” didn’t mean everyone on prozac, just, you know, the ones who don’t really need it is much like guys who defend calling a group of women “mini-skirted sluts” by saying they didn’t mean all women who wore mini skirts were sluts, they were just talking about the slutty ones.

It’s hard to be all *that* simpathetic to people who have used alchohol, laudanum, various barbituates, tricyclics, and pretty much anything else they can get their hands on to “self-medicate”. Rich women have been doing this since there was a patriarchy, and the first apothecary pushed his first miracle syrup. It’s in history, it’s in literature, and you know what? I understand where’s she’s coming from, even if I don’t like “twit” either.

You’re unbelievable shah8. Yes, all those women taking anything they could get their hands on to “self-medicate” are twits. They weren’t, and aren’t, living in a patriarchy that dictates what they may do, what they may think, and how they may feel. It’s because they were, and are, all self-indulgent greedy rich twits who have no purpose in life other than to do drugs. They have no discernible reason to desperately NEED self-medication. Nope. They’re just spoiled rich bitchez.

You are so pompous and condescending it’s laughable. You’re an authority on exactly what, again?

http://www.xkcd.com/435/

Everyone comes from a different place. Everyone has grown up into different circumstances. Everyone has read at least slightly different literature, and believed in slightly different things. Everyone has at least a slightly different worldview and command of language. This inherently means that language and literary allusions are going to create conflicts of meaning in any serious conversations. Well meaning people ask for clarification and or remedial actions, if not satisfied, they ask for an apology, if still not satisfied, then they withdraw from the conversation thinking that the group is a bunch of assholes and talk among themselves. Demanding apologies, using and misusing rhetorical gambits in order to combat and/or shame other people, things of that nature…they don’t benefit anyone, and conversations tends to grow lists of unmentionable topics. That’s bad for everyone, and we shouldn’t tolerate it.