Everything's a 'disorder' now.
I always thought that my mood this time of year resulted from long hours at work without getting into sunlight much, a healthy dread of the Xmas Retail Crunch, the knowledge that it's going to be damn cold for the next couple of months, and having to deal with well-meaning friends saying "Oh, gosh, it must be horrible to be alone for the holidays!" (No, darling, the holidays are one of the few times I really get to be alone. Now get your hand off my shoulder and go write Xmas cards or something.)
Now I find out it's "Seasonal Affective Disorder".
Also, it appears that my compulsive posting in search of laurels and back-patting is actually "Internet Addiction" and not "Keyboard Diarrhea", and my reluctance to deal with large groups of knuckle-walking morons is not caused by a smug sense of superiority over lower primates, but rather by something called "Social Anxiety Disorder".
What I want to know is this: When did a normal change in mood suddenly require a DSM IV entry to describe it and a pill to fix it? How in Vishnu's name did H. Sap. make it for fifty millennia without drugs to fix these oh-so-debilitating problems? When did the social maladepts that so thickly populate college psych departments grab hold of the reins of definition? (And what thimble-headed gherkin decided that spamming is the way to market these modern Soma variants? I think I'd rather wade through a hundred 419 Scam and Breast Enlargement emails than another one of these...)
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6 comments:
Geez. I had a nice post griping about people covering up character flaws with "social disorders" etc, but Blogger ate it.
Darn you, Blogger. Darn you to heck.
This post shows a true ignorance to neurochemistry and 100 years of scientific research. Why don't you give Tom Cruise a call. I think he'd like to talk to you about how post-partum depression is just weakness of character. And, oh yeah, the thousands of people who kill themselves each year are just crybabies.
There's a world of difference between recognizing the existence of post-partum depression, and labeling every negative feeling or mood as its own disorder...complete with DSM-IV entry and prescription medication to make the feeling go away.
"Generalized Anxiety Disorder"...that's called *life*.
But what do I know? I'm not a Ph.D., nor do I play one on TV.
"unpublished author" obviously has "Degree Defense Syndrome". I prescribe 25 mg of Relaxium, dissolved in a shot glass of C2H6O and natural flavors.
It amuses me the way that people take areas of conjecture, guesswork, and mythos, add an "-ology" to the end, and pretend it's hard science: astrology, phrenology, psychology...
OK, OK, OK. I'm gonna type this in Notepad and paste it in so Blogger doesn't attack again. *furrows eyebrows furiously at Blogger*
(http://www.tomcruiseisnuts.com ...No further comment on THAT needed...)
I'm gonna have to go ahead and say that while there are some cases of genuine mental illness in which a person who is no longer rational kills themselves, the vast majority of suicides are selfish and stupid. There. Said it.
Everyone has had times that made them wonder if all this was really worth living for. I certainly have. Funny how we are so short-sighted that we can't see a useful purpose for ourselves just a couple of years down the road.
I figure that I'm going to live my life the best I can, even if things suck, until the good Lord decides that it's my time to go. I'm personally hoping for something high-profile and memorable, like spontaneously combusting while shaking hands with the secretary of state or being sucked into a jet engine on live television. I wonder if 'Real TV' would pay my wife for the video?
Hey! I've got it Tam! I feel better after I go to the range. I get irritable when I abstain for more than a month or two from shooting. Maybe I can attach a name to it, show some TV commercials, get some press, and... get this... have my insurance company pay for my range ammunition!
Oh yeah, gonna need an M4 soon too. You know, long-term therapy.
I thinks it's notable that, even with all the negative connotations of the word, someone would actually market a pill called soma:
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/carisop.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_%28drug_brandname%29
The negative connotations, only included here for the clueless:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_%28Brave_New_World%29
Oh, and your objection to the pill popping panacea for all ailments? It has a name: a movement called anti-psychiatry. Who knew?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry
Me? I'm a wikipedia-junkie. Or in more polite terms: Wikipedia Induced Short Attention Span Syndrome [WISeASS]
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