American culture has become such that we have a pill for all our problems. Whether it's prozac and all its other strange variants for depression, or viagra and cialis for erectile dysfunction, the pills we are given not only alter our brain chemistry--they also alter our way of life. If you're sad and unsatisfied with your job or family life, you can be sure that you can find a doctor that empathizes with you, and you'll get a pill to keep you in line. It's the antithesis of the American dream. Whatever happened to the olden days when you just drank your problems away and died of liver disease?
Depression has become an epidemic because of the way people live their lives in the modern world. Genes and brain chemistry aside, isn't there something a bit unnatural about working 80 hours weeks, most of it probably staring at a computer screen? Look, I don't have a problem with drug use. What people do in the privacy of their own homes is none of my concern. The problem is that people are making their profits off of unhappiness. No one has any incentive to actually solve the problem. Pharmaceutical companies will keep selling it as long as we keep coming back for more, and doctors will keep prescribing it as long as they keep getting kickbacks from the pharmaceutical companies, and our discontent is effectively anesthetized without us ever having to address the problem. Sure, they recommend therapy, but the system is inherently designed to perpetuate depression, not cure it. Depression is demand, and demand is profit. Look, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. This is economy 101 pragmatic material. Money is all these companies care about. To them, we're all just faceless consumers--victims of the new (mis)information age.
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