middle class anomie and prozac

Religion often seems to alleviate people's serious pain; plus it has the really wonderful side effect of making people feel superior to everyone else, including those who find relief in other religions. Some people I know have resorted to alcohol to their own blurred satisfaction. I tried it; it didn't work for me. It does,however, have the wonderful side effect that it is a form of suicide at exactly the same time that it makes you not so anxious to die. The therapists I've talked to have mistaken a genetic tendency to night terrors for anger or fear, both of which I still had in abundance when the therapist wandered off into the sunset. One woman interrupted my meditation on the horrors of my mother's mental illness to ask me whether I thought I might have forgotten that my father raped me. I still had the night terrors, too.

Psychiatrists tend to make me wonder how hard it can be to get through medical school, but they do have the pads, the pens, and the right to give you pretty much exactly the same drugs the last psychiatrist gave you with pretty good effect. Of course, despite their passion for diagnosis, none of them has much interest in, or knowledge of, what your actual condition might be. I had one who asked me after my severe depressive breakdown how my family was. I kept telling him fine. Of course, he had to know they were nothing of the sort, but he did not feel the need to mention that fact to me. He did and would, if I had a psychiatrist who was not more deeply involved in his fantasy life than I am in mine, have access to the drugs that make my life livable and was very willing to give them to me as long as I did not take too much of his time. Drugs are only as dumb as they are, and the human capacity for stupidity and arrogance seems to be infinite. Like everyone who suffers from the horrors of serious depression, I wish someone had some interest in who I am, but at least whatever self absorbed middle class sad people there are out there buying Prozac make it profitable for the drug companies to figure out how to relieve my agony. By the way, I find it difficult to believe that anyone who wasn't in pretty serious pain would tolerate the nausea, diarrhea, vomiting at meals, dizziness, difficulty swallowing , and obesity involved in starting the medications I take, and have taken, to be able to function. One more thing. Just now, one can admit to depression without social stigma because it is stylish. Bipolar disorder seems to be having its day, too. I very much doubt people will ever stand around at parties talking about the agonies of their schizophrenia. Hence, next to no research on how to effectively treat it. Thank god I don't have Alzheimer's yet.