The funny thing is that the reason Americans know the names of their medications is almost the exact same reason people seem to think the USA are always some sort of outlier; they hear about it more in the media! Branding for drugs is much more emphasized in the US.
While at the same time despite being a controlled substance because they're supposedly so addictive people with ADHD forget to take adderall and with normal use you don't take it every day.
We got this this shit so unbelievably backwards because we haven't shook the puritanical bullshit of "oh no someone might experience euphoria if they go out of their way to abuse it." Like bro, people with real medical issues shouldn't suffer because of this crap. If everyone who is buying cocaine from their dealer switched to medically supervised stimulants we would be unquestionably better off.
This is incorrect: Normal use of stimulant medication is to take it regularly every day.
We also have evidence from studies showing that the brain adapts to consistent dosing in order to counter some of the damaging oxidative effects of amphetamine. Inconsistent dosing could undermine this adaptation and does not mirror the dosing protocol used in studies to determine long term safety. Sporadic dosing is also known to cause sensitization effects in studies, which can sensitize people to the negative side effects of a drug or exaggerate cravings.
Some people do take medication holidays as recommended by doctors, but even those should be done on a pre-determined schedule.
People get themselves into trouble when they start treating Adderall like an ad-hoc drug that they can take more or less of depending on how they feel that day or how much work they need to get done. This not only leaves the brain in a constant and unpredictable state of flux, it creates an association between “I need to do work” and “I need more Adderall”. Patients who go down this path often end up escalating doses, playing games with saving up pills to take more, or trying to talk their prescribers into extra dosages beyond what they need. It ultimately ends with higher tolerance and reduce effectiveness.
> If you don't refill your Rx of antidepressants your doctor will be notified and reach out to you because stopping has such pronounced effects.
This also isn’t true. There are many medications with withdrawal symptoms far worse than antidepressants. Some drugs can be potentially fatal if discontinued abruptly. Pharmacies don’t generally hunt down doctors when a patient doesn’t get a refill.
Antidepressant withdrawal (without taper) can be difficult for some, but so can withdrawing from Adderall. There are entire subreddits acting as support groups for people tapering down Adderall and trying to get back to feeling normal after taking Adderall for years.
Stimulants are definitely habit-forming and have a high abuse potential. Let’s not downplay it.
Yeah, that doesn't really track with the fact that non-extended release lasts about 6 hours and extended release lasts about 8. Every single doctor I have ever been to has told me to take it as needed and try to not take it if possible so I don't form a habit and build a tolerance. Doing this I've managed to stay on the same exact dose for years. I would be willing to chalk it up to doctor doing it wrong but I see people whose job is specifically to oversee ADHD patients' medication and they say the same thing.
It's technically possible to be under it's effects for your entire waking hours and overlap to smooth the comedown in the middle but it's never prescribed this way so you'll always be in a state of flux.
> and does not mirror the dosing protocol used in studies to determine long term safety [...] it creates an association between “I need to do work” and “I need more Adderall”
Both of these are absolutely true which is why the studies are silly since nobody takes stimulants this way. And I absolutely have that association but it leads me to take less not more. If I want to spend the day hyperfixating on a new video game I can and just skip it. I can wait until understimulation and executive dysfunction actually impacts me.
I know it's not what you mean but I still think "this medication is incredibly habit forming so make sure to take it habitually" is really funny.
> Pharmacies don’t generally hunt down doctors when a patient doesn’t get a refill.
It was my insurance company actually. They called my doctor to see if I was supposed to still be taking it, told him to reach out, and then called me and sent a whole informational pamphlet about why it's important to take it regularly.
But I also personally think that adderall has less side effects and better/smoother withdrawals. SSRIs and other antidepressants usually have a heavier impact on the brain too.
Now I don't doubt that Adderall is probably over prescribed, but I think that it is better to look at entire families of drugs to compensate for differences between markets.
[0]: https://www.health.harvard.edu/medications/do-not-get-sold-o...
There hasnt been advertising for them for a long tkmr.
The reason for the US being close to them could be the high prescription culture and the social aggression inherent in everyday US life, masked behind curteous words, customer-oriented interaction and polished looks.
Seasonal Affective Disorder also occurs in the United States. Much of the US population lives in areas with significantly shorter days in the winter.
And Seattle is sort of cherry-picked -- it's one of the northern-most cities in the continental US, representing 1.2% of the US population (including the full metro area). LA sees 9.75 hours of daylight on the solstice. Honolulu sees 10.75 hours.
The US population-weighted centroid is approximately Missouri[1], which sees 9.5 hours of daylight on the solstice -- more than 50% more than Stockholm.
[1]: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/news/mar22/center-population.h...
Sunshine is what helps alleviate seasonal affective disorder.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4258674/ [2] https://blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia/stressed-a...
(Funny though that you actually say that everyday life is masked behind courteous words in the US, which is one of the those widespread stereotypes about... Scandinavia and nordic countries in general.)
What was that about Swedes not even sharing meals with visitors, and eating in front of them while the visitor sits at the dinner table looking at them eat? Or Denmark kicking out all of their syrian refugees after they have lived there for years, kids included, to send them back to a warzone? See that explains the antidepressant intake!
I suspect war and bad family environment are a massive source of trauma of US persons; the path to mitigating the former at least facially is a bit more obvious.
I live in a country where it's very hard to get weapons legally, yet almost every drug bust in the news also contains a significant amount of confiscated firearms.
It would also certainly cut down on the numbers of toddlers shooting their siblings.
If not, then banning guns would be, in software terms, a premature optimization.
If we can reduce the level of trauma and fear in society, we can reduce associated behaviors.
How many lives are saved and traumas avoided through people's ability to defend themselves with guns? If that number is higher than the number of toddler accidents, gun ban would effectively cause an increase in PTSD and deaths.
P.S.: just to clarify, by "significant" I mean significant in a statistical sense of not being insignificant (very close to zero, noise-level), not "majority".
> How many lives are saved and traumas avoided through people's ability to defend themselves with guns
Self defence with guns sounds pretty traumatising for all involved to be fair.
Still, we're stepping deep into the speculation area here, so I won't stand behind this argument very strongly.
Realistically, your argument isn't to lessen trauma, but to simply normalize it. Which is exactly what American culture already does.
No, actually, my argument is that killing or injuring a person in self-defense is less traumatic than being helpless while getting assaulted.
Besides, trauma is relative - "normalizing" trauma is another way of saying "being desensitised" - which is exactly the process therapy itself employs to help people relieve the effects of it.
A person unknown to me was holding a submachine gun, and I could literally feel the muscles tensing in my stomach, where the gun was pointed at, anticipating the pain of a bullet. It was one of the most uncomfortable and frightening things I've felt in my life, so much that I still remember the dream quite vividly.
I assume being held at gunpoint in real life would be even more frightening.
Most people gleefully chant "The war on drugs has failed"...yet, "The war on guns" will somehow succeed?
And... really, any other evidence. It is illegal for you to build and detonate a bomb in the city. Not shockingly, we have few incidents of this happening. Far fewer than random gun violence in places you are allowed to carry guns.
Heck, just set realistic goals here. We make it illegal to drive without a seatbelt, and have largely succeeded in getting folks to wear a belt while in a car. Something far far easier to just not do than the active "seek out an illegal gun" idea that you posit would continue to be a thing.
We control fireworks more readily than we do guns. Again, no surprise that we have far fewer counts of incidents with fireworks. And again, also no surprise it isn't zero.
It is illegal to kill someone, even without a gun, under most circumstances. Perhaps we should make it double-illegal?
> Far fewer than random gun violence in places you are allowed to carry guns
This is false. Most gun violence does not occur from legal gun owners, or in places allowing concealed or overt carry.
No, most gun violence occurs with illegal guns by people committing crimes.
There is no realistic way for you or anyone to take away all of the illegal guns in America. Therefore, any proposed gun ban solely impacts legal gun owners - which statistically are not the problem. It sure sounds good though...
And how is it false that we have more random gun violence than bombing? I can list, this week, more than 1 place where a legal gun owner killed someone. It is famously in the news right now. When is the last time we had a random bomb in a city here?
I haven't even proposed taking away all guns. Nobody gives a shit about most hunting weapons. Nor do they care about any properly held weapons with responsible care and protections.
And here's the issue then. What anti-gun advocates argue are weapons not good for hunting is misguided. Additionally, it doesn't matter if a gun was designed to hunt or not - the gun is an inanimate object.
People like to discuss banning AR-15's all day, failing to realize just how many similar-but-not-AR-15's model rifles exist out there, most of which fire the same cartridge too. No, but that one particular model is the problem because it says "AR-15" on the side (most don't even say that btw).
California already tried this and failed. California banned certain model rifles by name. Famously it banned "Colt AR-15" rifles... well guess what, people just bought S&W AR-15's instead. Ban the word "AR-15" and people will just buy "AR-16"s, or "NOT-15"s, or whatever. It's an impossible thing to ban.
It apparently doesn't matter than handguns kill the most people... those scary black AR-15's we see on movies are clearly the problem. After all, the bullet explodes and ruins the meat!
The anti-gun debate is not grounded in facts or reality - which is why anti-gun proponents make no headway (thankfully).
> And how is it false that we have more random gun violence than bombing?
People rarely seek to indiscriminately kill or maim large numbers of people - which is what a bomb does. Your mass shootings are super rare events.
Not long ago, bombs were going off with a near cadence all across the US, mostly from political extremists. Why did the bombing stop? Was it because we made bombs illegal? Of course not, blowing people and buildings up was already illegal.
You should research Weather Underground[1]...
So, I reiterate. Nobody gives a shit about those. They are instead trotted out as a straw man to silence regulation of weapons.
I'm a little confused by your angle at this point, honest. Gun regulation should go after high capacity items and hand guns. After that, reckless regard to care and storage of munitions. Could probably move to control of the ammunition, as I can think of frightening few reasons for folks to have hollow point or incendiary rounds? Unsure that would make any real impact. Controlling handguns, though, is clearly something that should be done. It sounds like you agree there? Why sideline it with talking about how people are talking about AR-15s inaccurately? You literally brought that into this conversation.
If you want to know why bombing has gotten less, btw. It almost certainly went with more regulation of the ingredients that go into bombs. If you buy a lot of the ingredients that go into TNT, expect you will be rightfully checked up on.
And you'd be wrong with this assertion again, because the definition of "high powered" and "high capacity" are vastly different for your anti-gun advocates versus reality.
A .223 Remington cartridge is not "high powered". A 20 round magazine was what the gun was designed for, making that the standard capacity magazine, not 10 rounds like some advocate for.
A .50 BMG could be considered "high powered" - and it's banned in California. However, in California you can purchase .416 Barret, which is even more effective at range than .50 BMG - and it's perfectly legal. Make sense out of that one...
> frightening few reasons for folks to have hollow point or incendiary rounds
This is a statement made out of ignorance. It's all about the energy transferred into the target. A HP bullet is designed to transfer as much energy into the target as possible to prevent over-penetration (where you shoot someone through a wall accidentally, for instance) and can be considered a safety-feature for defense. You really do not want a reality where people are forced to use FMJ for self defense...
> If you buy a lot of the ingredients that go into TNT, expect you will be rightfully checked up on.
Look up how to make Anfo. It's not difficult, and the components are not regulated. The use, however, is regulated, ie. it's illegal to make a bomb and blow people up.
> Back when I did bird hunt, the entire community would jump on any fool that fired more than the allowed shells in a gun in rapid fire
Sport hunting is akin to golf. There are rules for etiquette and "fairness" reasons, even if that seems silly to an outsider. Additionally, at an established gun range, few allow rapid fire unless you are a member. This is for safety reasons, nothing else. Joe walking in off the street with zero firearms training should not be mag-dumping for obvious reasons.
> Nobody is hunting with handguns
There's an entire community of folks who do just that.
We cannot have productive conversations about gun control until anti-gun advocates educate themselves and refrain from abusing and redefining established words.
The statement on hollow and incendiary isn't ignorance, it is somewhat flat disbelief that it is typically successful at the things you put forth. I'm well aware of the reasons to try and use them. That said, I'm also well aware that that is never what is accomplished with them. Though, again, I had a question mark on that sentence as I really don't care too much about those. They are, for all practical purposes a side show.
And I want you to reread the "that is for safety reasons, nothing else." What the flying fuck do you think we are talking about? Gun safety regulation. Fucking period.
Your comments about HP bullets, and particularly incendiary munitions (lol) are absurd and uninformed. But it doesn't matter, you will not educate yourself on the topic no matter how wrong you may be, and therefore we cannot have a productive conversation regarding gun control.
The "I fired a gun once, and now I'm an expert" crowd is exhausting. You've spent hundreds of words here, in public, clearly demonstrating your staggeringly poor command of this topic.
And gun control advocates always ask, why has no progress been made? Because the conversation is not being held from a rational position.
And I have the exact opposite point of view with regard to HP rounds. If we're talking handguns, we're talking self defense, and in self defense situations, the only rounds you want are hollow point. Because they're designed to flatten out on impact, they go through a lot fewer walls, ceilings, and home invaders, making the shooter far less likely to accidentally over-penetrate into their family or neighbors. Using full metal jacket for home defense is putting everybody else at excessive risk.
Incendiary rounds are for fun, and little else. They look scary, but they don't really have any real effect.
This kind of illustrates one of the big issues with firearms discourse in the US: people who like having guns tend to know a lot about them, and take for granted that people have that same knowledge, neglecting the fact that there's a whole other group of people who know next to nothing about them. Then the people who know next to nothing about firearms propose gun legislation which is just baffling to anyone who knows anything about guns, like banning specific models of firearm, or certain ergonomic features, or banning silencers/suppressors (this isn't Goldeneye, they just make it less hearing damagingly loud to shoot).
Guns are largely fun for most that have them. Little else. Such that I don't think that changes things.
I should note that I've probably owned more guns than makes sense. Had friends with desert eagles. There is basically no reason for any high school age kid to have access to the kind of crap I had access to. It isn't so much ignorance as flat disregard for the bullshit reasons so many pro gun folks put forth. Including here. Your "need this for self defense" is a large part of the reason folks "need them for self defense." It is circular at best, and you can only make it work by poisoning the conversation with pulling in hunting.
What's the plan for taking away all the illegal guns? What's the plan to protect citizens that are now disarmed?
Why don't we just focus on taking away all the illegal guns? Oh, right... we have been... for 89 years - yet there's more illegal guns on the streets today than in 1934. What a shock...
Kind of like how there's more drugs readily available to average citizens than before the "war on drugs" started. It's literally an impossible task... have you seen the homemade guns in countries with outright bans? Or worse, illegally imported automatic firearms. Regular Joe - no gun. Criminal Joe, full auto!
People like to point at Prohibition as evidence an outright ban of Drugs can never work. Yet, it's different with guns somehow?
You're looking at an infected wound and deciding the appropriate treatment is duct tape.
Why duct tape? Because you haven't bothered to even learn rudimentary medical knowledge but are a self-proclaimed expert. Duct tape holds things together, so why not? Banning guns means no gun violence, right? Why don't we just make it illegal to hurt or kill people? It's already illegal? Ok, make it double-illegal, that'll show them!
I have put forth regulating all guns. But, it doesn't take an active imagination to see that regulation is not a total banning/taking away. We still have cats, after all.
Edit: leaving cats, for obvious reasons. I meant cars.
So all those 18 and 19 year old “children” gang bangers are included in the statistic.
You say that drugs busts etc. outside the US will often have guns involved. Yes, criminals can still find ways to get them but ordinary people won't be bothered with this.
The Netherlands for example has Europe's biggest port in Rotterdam and sees an incredible amount of drug-related smuggling. It has 3.9 guns per 100,000 people (107th in the world) while the US has 88.8 (1st in the world).
The rate of murder is 73 times more than the Netherlands.
Sources here: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Netherland...
Look at the murder rate: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Violen...
See how high the US then see how far you have to scroll down before you start seeing European countries appearing there.
Sources for more control leading to reduced homicides and guns on crime scenes:
1. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an...
No the absolute number is 73x, the rate is like 8x.
Since you've cherry picked a European state, I will now cherry pick the state New Hampshire.
Murder rate New Hampshire: 0.9 / 100k [0] Murder rate Netherlands: ~0.6 / 100k [1]
Also bear in mind the expected murder chance of the average person from the Netherlands dropped into the US is not expected to be anything like the US average murder rate. The US is not nearly as demographically homogenous as the Netherlands and someone with Dutch heritage experiences much closer to Dutch murder rates in the US.
[0] https://247wallst.com/state/how-the-murder-rate-in-new-hamps...
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location...
I cherry picked the Netherlands because of the large amount of drug trade there. Every other country in Europe compared favorably to the United States.
From what I can see there is a similar level of diversity in the Netherlands and the US. In both countries around 30% of people are born abroad. In the US around 72% are white and in the NL around 76% are ethnically Dutch. In Rotterdam in particular around half of the population was born to Non-Dutch parents.
1. https://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/demographics_profil...
2. https://www.indexmundi.com/netherlands/demographics_profile....
Even being gun regulation advocate, I cannot accept the premise that banning guns will do much to reduce murder rates.
Vermont has allowed people to carry a concealed weapons without a license - literally buy a handgun, stick it in your pants - and has had a consistently lower murder rate than Washington DC which banned handguns until recently.
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/state-gun-laws-ma...
My high-school friend was killed on holiday shortly after takeoff when a Buk 9M38 surface-to-air missile shot the plane down, killing 196 Dutch civilians.
A famous crime reporter got shot in the street for covering a story about a high ranking drug lord.
A news outlet got shot with a bazooka.
So lets do some statistics:
How many American civilians in the past 10 years have been killed with a surface-to-air-missle, adjusted for population? Zero. 196 for The Netherlands.
How many crime reporters got killed in that period? Five for the US, two for The Netherlands.
How many news outlets got shot with a bazooka? I can't find any, but please correct me. One in The Netherlands.
The thing with statistics is. You can make up anything you want to frame a certain view.
Want to say as an aside from the discussion that I'm sorry to hear about your friend and I hope that you got all the support you deserved during that time and since.
The typical American argument is that the US is exceptional and that the views of “these damn foreigners” don’t matter.
I on the other hand seldom hear Americans actively argue that US gun policy is looked upon favourably by the worldwide community. This is exactly what you’re doing by implying that a non-US resident speaking against US gun policy holds a certain political persuasion which means that they should be dismissed. The more likely reality: they have a very typical perspective that transcends the US.
Imagine if we got week-long, wall-to-wall coverage of nearly every stabbing that took place in the EU... Americans would start to believe you Europeans really need to get that knife situation under control.
The reality is, by the numbers, legal gun owners are rarely involved in illegal violence while using their firearms... and there isn't a darn thing anyone can do to remove guns from illegal gun owners.
Therefore, the issue, as perceived by a foreigner, is usually reduced to irrelevant talking points. It's just unproductive.
Why have the gun laws not changed significantly in the past few decades? Because most Americans do not agree with the sensationalized views pushed by the click/eyeball driven media. It's that simple. So then, as a foreigner, you should consider why that may be... perhaps there is another viewpoint after all?
A lot of Americans unironically do believe that.
Obviously this view of the US is deeply misguided - but this is the problem our sensational media creates. It makes rare events seems commonplace and irrationally freaks people out.
So, I do understand why we turn to medication.
Yes, taking guns away would reduce shootings, but so would helping people who are so fearful they feel the need to shoot someone who isn’t threatening them.
Just throwing medication at a problem and calling it a day will never be useful, but seeing a lot of people find success with a mix of medications (amphetamines, ketamine, mushrooms, etc.) with therapy has been kind of eye opening.
A lot of this stems from blanket stigmatization of some drugs versus others.
Fixing society is a much larger (and ultimately fluid, unsolvable) problem so I feel like whatever people can do to find contentment should be on the table.
But why is it unsolvable? As the parent comment noted, these issues aren't as prevalent in other cultures. So why here? Why is these so much pain that needs to be medicated?
I'm not anti-meds. I think the re-introduction of MDMA and other formerly alternative meds is a good thing as they are more effective. And there will always going to be some people who need such assistance. However, we can still ask why? Why are so many suffering so much that they need meds?
Because as we solve societal problems new ones will arise. There's no utopian ideal.
> As the parent comment noted, these issue dont
They don't what?
Why can't we be content but not "complicit" and still address issues? I'd argue having a growing population with mental health issues is less prepared to functionally address larger problems.
This feels like it's piggy backing off of a caricature of a zoned out druggie who doesn't care what's happening around them.
Never said it was impossible to improve. I said it was impossible to "fix" society.
Your absolute take on this is a deflection to avoid any change
I have never said we shouldn't improve things. That's very much a strawman.
I've seen an increase in the pursuite of hedonism over the past decade, and what it would take to steer society away from hedonism would be some huge event like 9/11 or ww3 to get people's eyes off the inordinate consumerism and chasing money. Or maybe just fix the economy, but the oligarchs would rather hoard money than ensure a healthy society.
They said it without citing a source. There is evidence that there is higher treatment seeking for PTSD in high-income countries, including the US, but that doesn't mean it's exclusive to the US or that it isn't prevalent in lower-income countries with less access to mental healthcare.
They aren't "less prevalent". They're underdiagnosed and untreated.
Remember anti-vaxxers that yell about how vaccines caused autism? Except that western medicine started to correctly diagnose a lot of neurodivergent conditions better, that's why we realised that a lot of kids that can't stay still have a form of ADHD.
Totally sympathize with that viewpoint, but I'm not sure if this commenter knows that MDMA will not be a prescription medication — no one is prescribed or goes home with MDMA. The treatment in the trials is only 3 medication-assisted therapy sessions with normal preparation and integration therapy sessions before and after. After those 3 MDMA sessions, the patient doesn't take MDMA again.
It's been clear since the beginning that it's psychedelic-assisted therapy — not just psychedelics — that makes the treatment effective.
People already buy it illegally. I don't see how this will meaningfully change the supply or demand.
You should read up on harm reduction.
MDMA very realistically shouldn’t be lumped in with cocaine, heroin, etc. Hell, opiates as a whole! Just based on the effect profile and typical usage patterns, I baselessly posit that one is more likely to be a daily marijuana user than a daily MDMA user, even taking into account the number of people that use each drug in the first place.
Nobody is holding you up with a knife or gun, or stealing the coins out of your car, to get their next fix of MDMA.
Nobody is acting aggressively on the street or in a nightclub because they’ve had MDMA, or not gotten enough of it.
MDMA is certainly not without its risks / dangers. Someone can easily irresponsibly take too much and end up in hospital or dead. Someone can easily take the right amount of the right stuff and end up in hospital or dead just because they had an adverse reaction. You could ruin your relationships, throw your brain off-balance such that you never really enjoy anything again. There’s the whole ‘gateway drug’ argument. Blah blah blah.
Let’s really stop and think very carefully about whether these risks (which unlike say…meth, heroin, etc, have an absolutely negligible societal impact per capita compared to alcohol, tobacco, etc) should even show up on the radar when weighed up against the increasingly proven positive effects of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.
Thank you for pointing this out. This is the key point that so many people miss by skimming the headlines.
These medication-assisted therapy trials are about the therapy first and foremost. Some of the trials have several dozen therapy sessions in their protocols and only a single or couple medication-assisted sessions.
People taking these drugs on their own at home are not doing anything resembling the therapy discussed in these trials. There are numerous stories of people taking psychedelics ad-hoc and ending up with worsened anxiety, derealization, persistent fears, delusional thoughts, and so on. The common wisdom in psychedelic circles was that set and setting is everything - Taking psychedelics while in a state of depression, anxiety, PTSD, or other conditions outside of the setting of closely monitored professional therapy is potentially quite negative.
In US mental conditions are undertreated, while outside of US they are underdiagnosed and self medicated. I'm from Lithuania, one of the "leaders" in suicide... which are easily preventable by normalizing mental healthcare.
The stigmatization of mental conditions in Europe is sky high, to the point that it's barely possible to be seen as sane if you're just seeing a therapist. However, comments like your, are widespread amongst many in Europe and farther stigmatize accessible mental healthcare.
A lot of cases prescription medication is what people need to live with their mental issues, and should not be seen as "obsession". It's no more an obsession, than chemotherapy is an obsession to a person with cacner.
I think this is just not true. I've never seen so many people talk openly about seeing a therapist as in the last few years. I'm almost surprised by how mainstream it has become.
You can have someone with cancer openly talk about it, but any psychological issue is treated like it's your own personal fault.
There are huge differences in this giant country, and foreigners too easily think it's just Manhattan and LA, from watching TV.
But I would say the ~50 countries of Europe is an order of magnitude more diverse than the 50 US states.
Some Americans throw around "in Europe they do X" statements, which usually just mean they observed that in the 1-3 cities they visited.
The other great thing about psychedelics is that they're typically only used temporarily as opposed to many other kinds of prescription antidepressants, which often need to be taken for extended periods or for life. The pharma industry has tended to favor solutions that incentivize the latter and I think we desperately need alternatives that don't require long-term intervention.
A politician that bans or regulates sugar is not going to be popular. People want their sweets, or at least the option to have sweets. So what is the medical system to do if it can’t modify the food environment? It generates drugs that treat the diseases caused by the food environment. Similar with mental health.
There are society-wide environmental factors likely contributing to huge rates of depression and anxiety, but how is any one person or organization supposed to change that? So what does the medical system do? It generates drugs to treat the mental health conditions caused by environmental factors.
It’s a bad equilibrium but it’s hard to see a path out. Otherwise if you decide drugs are bad you have still have the environmental causes there and a bunch of untreated diabetes and suicidal people.
This is not about "correcting" imbalances in the brain or brushing issues under the rug, it's about dealing with them directly.
It's just your social acceptance of a certain substance is deemed "acceptable"(alcohol), while others are deemed "bad"(THC).
I'm guessing it has a bit to do with pharmaceutical advertising targeted directly at consumers too.
Yes but don't confuse short term use of medication to help with therapy with long-term to help sell pills.
The first can be beneficial, the latter is very profitable. And because of the profit motive, millions of poor people with serious conditions go untreated.
What is really bad is the complete absence of any public debate about prevention. Individuals are completely blamed for mental health issues and society gets a pass.
> and are constantly challenged about their self-identification.
Huh? What are you talking about??
The article gives away perhaps the big underlying motivation to get these to market: its a potential billion dollar industry.
And that is fine. It's a good motivator to provide a great product.
I will never see anyone here complaining about the video game industry... The whole video games industry is pretty much a drug for a lot of mental issues. In fact all of the recreational activities have similar mental condition boosting effects.
I'm glad you brought that up. I always found it amusing that the best medicine for depression is to go out, meet people, engage with the world around you, but depression keeps you from doing that. American culture is very individualistic and there's very little pushing communities together, which would seem to exacerbate depression once it takes its hold..
2. Similarly, unbroken families aren't profitable, but split up ones are: divorce proceedings, 2x apartments/houses/taxes, higher dependency on the state for assistance, no family to help through issues which may beget drugs (see #1).
The list of countries with high antidepressant consumption is topped by Iceland, Australia, Portugal, UK, Canada and Sweden. All countries with a high quality of life, good safety nets, universal healthcare. Australia, Sweden and Iceland are exemplary progressive countries that are in the top 10 of the Human Development Index.
Except they are but they are just ignored because of lack of knowledge and money. Many countries don't even recognize ADHD so the kid never goes to college and doesn't reach their full potential.
I was surprised at how many HN users happily talk about which SSRIs they are on.
Humans are innately horrible.
Freedom also means freedom to be horrible.
Unfortunately.
You're even more pessimistic than me ;-). I think that most humans are good or at least neutral, but the horrible ones are a lot more visible. And a lot of what we call horrible is just rhetoric -- when the shit hits the fan, people pull together, even when they're ideologically opposed. At least in my experience. There are outliers, of course.
And, sure, argue that ADHD’s mere categorisation as a ‘bad thing’ is a reflection of society’s expectations of a person. But…so what? I’d love a socialist utopia. This is a big part of the reason I’d never ever move to the US in the first place. But I damn well still take my Vyvanse and don’t look down on anyone else that does so because we are all still cogs, even me as a fairly privileged tech worker.
Stroking your chin and saying “yeah, but we live in a society!” belongs right at the top of the metaphorical food pyramid. If you do it any more than rarely, you’re going to quite rightfully come across as a privileged dick.
This is notwithstanding the wider point that this whole thing is about using MDMA as a short-term therapy aid.