Misconceptions

I just stopped by one of the blogs, I only visit once in a while - only once in a while, because it's quite bio-oriented, and whenever I need the bio-bs, I prefer to go to "professional" sites, where I can get the real McCoy. Nevertheless, this blog is "alternatively bio-oriented", so, I stop by, once in a while.

And today, on one of my occasional visits, I read the - sad - news, that a family member of the blogger - It's hereditary, right? Yep. Non-genetic, familial inheritance. - got incarcerated and put on a neuroleptic. The blogger reports the family member to be "getting better".

That means, a week or maybe two or so more on the neuroleptic, and the family member should be able to do without it, improved as s/he then would be, thanks to the "medication", right? Nope.

People do not "get better" on these drugs. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of drugs: the ones that help a diseased/injured organism to heal itself by strengthening the organism's own immune system, and the ones that simply mask symptoms, unfortunately often with the result, that the organism is prevented from healing itself, since symptoms usually are the incentive for a healing process to occur.

Psychotropic drugs belong to the latter category. Although some of them, LSD in particular, once were - and by some people still are - believed to belong to the former. I don't think so.

Psychotropic drugs mask and suppress symptoms. It looks as if the drugged individual is getting better. Both to the environment, and often also to the drugged individual him-/herself. While the drugs see to, that the underlying problem, that gave rise to a healing reaction, i.e. to symptoms, thrives and flourishes. Undisturbed. The individual isn't getting better, s/he is actually often getting worse. Underneath the lid, or: behind the mask.

Give someone who's confused, scared, angry, agitated, etc., a neuroleptic, i.e. a major tranquillizer, and, yes, sure, since the major tranquillizer, as the term suggests, reduces their overall vitality, they won't be able to react to their underlying problem with the same amount of confusion, anxiety, anger, agitation, etc, as before. Probably they won't even have the energy left to realize the fact, that the problem still is there, unresolved. This then is called "improvement". How about giving someone who has broken a leg some strong pain killers, that enable them to get on and move about, and call it "improvement"?

"You give someone a tablet, and it shuts them up. It makes them dumb and stupid. People then have the ignorance to think, the medication is making someone better. You're not making someone better. You're making them stupid." -Rufus May in The Doctor Who Hears Voices.

Nothing is more essential to someone going through an existential crisis, and trying to resolve it, and truly "get better", than their ability to work it all out, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, etc. Someone who broke a leg, and did nothing but pop strong pain killers, while they kept on moving about as if nothing ever happened, would eventually drop dead, from gangrene (make that an intellectual, emotional, spiritual, etc., death in regard to crisis). Or from the pain killers' side effects.