Medicating to a new normal

Anxiety? Depression? Don't worry we have a drug for that.

In the USA Valium was the cure all medication for anxiety as this article in the New York Times shows.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/sunday-review/valium-and-the-new-normal.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0

Closer to home in the UK, we have our own pill popping problems as an article in today's Daily Mail shows:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2211523/Millions-patients-hooked-tranquillisers-using-pills-20-years.html

It begs the question what is normal? What level of anxiety is usual and what is unusual and requires medication? Once we considered it normal for a woman's brow to furrow when in thought, now we have botox for that slightly dead look.

Like the characters in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World novel, are we all guilty now of wanting to be medicated with Soma so that we never worry about anything again. Because the flip side of that argument is that we'll never experience true joy again either.

The doctors don't have all the answers of course, lots of people self medicate with alcohol or cannabis to deal with the cards that life has dealt us.

Talking therapies work and are worth engaging in to find a new path in life but the fact is that for most people the simple act of living is stressful. Once, it would have been the sheer effort of physical toil, for meagre wages that caused this. Now we have a massively complex society, filled unrealistic images, about what we should expect from life.

Is it time for us to reassess what is important to us? To be once more, true individuals, rather than being held to the local cultural norm? I think so.

But if you don't, then the latest fashion pages are your guide to conforming to the new standard (down with the old standard); you'll discover that Vintage inspired jewellery is now in and that SSRIs can keep you functioning in a chemical marriage where both partners are on prescription.

Welcome to The Brave New World.