more crazy than evah

according to reuters today prescriptions written for americans for anti-depressants doubled between 1996 and 2005. 27 million people were on anti-blues pills. although there was little change in total promotional spending for antidepressants between 1999 ($0.98 billion) and 2005 ($1.02 billion), direct-to consumer marketing jumped from 3.3 percent ($32 million) to 12 percent ($122.00 million). those frowny people schlubbing about in bathrobes and dirty hair on tv hit home, eh?

in 2008, 164 MILLION scripts were written for these pills.

good god, people, have a cocktail ffs. or sex, or something.

many people with whom i have worked are on something, and many of them are on more than one thing. i'm surprised the figure is as low as 10% of the population, but this number does not include anti-anxiety, anti-nightmare or sleeping drugs. recently i watched a woman empty her purse, looking for *that one pill* out of a staggering assort of brown bottles -- at least 10. a deep breath would not have calmed your nerves, after something that stressed you out was already over? something anyway you dreamed up? white, middle-aged, upper-middle-class lady -- yup. the study also notes the numbers among blacks did not rise. hello, health care divide writ large? not to say minorities might be less sad, but to show they ain't going to the doctor to boo-hoo cuz they can't.

hmo's give very small allowances for talk therapy, which many studies have shown to be far more effective than drugs for curing depression, but a $10 co-pay for a mother's little helper is ok by them.

i'm not trying to make light of something that can be debilitating, but really? 164 million lil bottles flying off the shelves last year?

that's messed in the head.

how will you ever learn to cope with life's true curveballs if every time you have to swallow the solution?

years ago, i had a mountain of stressors and was having panic attacks, paired up with insomnia that lasted for days. the lack of sleep was making me truly nutty and delusional. the anxiety popped up at the worst times and i was heavily self-medicating. full bottles of vodka would not knock me out. finally at the doctor, i had a full-blown panic attack right in front of her, just trying to describe all the crazy that was in my life. she gave me two prescriptions, described what each would do, how they would work in tandem and what to expect. she was ADAMANT this was a temporary solution, because one of the pills was addictive. she gave me 6 months' worth.

finally able to sleep and think rationally, i sorted out many of the knots and got off both pills in less than 3 months. the lack of night-time rem's, i think, had been the bigger culprit, because my mind never rested and it just got more and more confused and less able. fascinating the mind-body connection when it's so badly running amok.

still sometimes, sleep doesn't always favor me the way i'd like and after a few days i can feel my inner agitation ratcheting up. but i trained myself to not get anxious about being anxious and that seems to work. free-floating anxiety is all self-induced -- i KNOW that -- but don't know that i'll ever conquer that pesky little demon. i do know i want to look him in the face with a clear gimlet eye, not through a meds haze. suck it up, all that. works.