Posted by novelagent on June 6, 2012, at 10:20:37
In reply to What's The Purpose?, posted by bleauberry on June 6, 2012, at 9:28:32
While I'm Christian now, there was time until rather recently I would have rolled my eyes at this post... but there was a recent study that found religious people were more likely to be optimists, and that just makes sense-- they have more wholesome perspective, especially when it comes to processing challenging episodes in life.
It's also important to keep in mind docs don't balk at what their predecessors use to do-- which was prescribe, in addition to maybe a barbituate, mostly the combination of a hobby of interest to the patient, along with a wholesome, healthy diet.
We now know that CBT works wonders for depression, in part because it asks people who are depressed to inventory what tasks in their day they genuinely find rewarding and what task they don't. I did this when I was depressed, and it made sense all of a sudden how I became depressed. I had been forcing myself to endure so many tasks that I didn't inherently enjoy, and did too little of what I knew I did enjoy.
As a doctor once told me, "meds go half way-- CBT does the rest." They will repair your brain just enough so you can travel with a tire that has just enough life on it to get you to a repair shop, but if you manage to pass the repair shop on your journey, you can't expect a full recovery.
One needs a wholesome diet, a hobby they genuinely enjoy and look forward to doing every so often, and in short, something to live for. If that's God, that's great. If that's golf, more power to you-- I'm not here to evangelize. It's up to the individual to have meaning.
If anything, it's an insult to the medication's potential to take it without an adjustment in one's life that truly appreciates the fact the med isn't an excuse to go on auto-pilot in life. That's not what the purpose of meds are, and if that's the intent someone has with a med, they will never recover.
> So we keep trying new meds, maybe we make a little progress, maybe we get another failure, maybe we get remission. But for sure we have no choice but to keep trying.
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> So the purpose for meds is obvious.
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> What is not obvious to me is, why JUST meds? Or, why ONLY meds? I think this is one of the great deceptions of our time. People get trapped in the psychiatrist's toolbox and it closes off all the other healing possibilities on the face of the earth. I know it sounds bizarre to people who don't know, but seriously chronic illnnesses of all kinds are improved by a variety of tools ranging from herbs to supplements to yoga to prayer to food choices and more.
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> Rarely do I see people find remission with meds. My rough guess is maybe 10% or so? It's sort of like the Las Vegas table....we see someone else win a jackpot so we think we are next in line to do the same, but we keep losing. Las Vegas is very seductive and so are meds.
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> Examples. Someone has bizarre morning anxiety, mid afternoon sinking spell, but their lexapro or whatever is generally keeping them afloat better than they were before. Ok. Well in this case the simple addition of rhodiola ended all the crap and made the lexapro work better as well. Someone else failed all sorts of combos, but years later we see that person doing pretty good and they are only taking a small dose of a med and a couple herbs and they do Zumba a few times a week. Another person didn't realize their foods were not doing them any favors, and with a slow transition to new food choices they feel enough improvement to not want to go back to the old foods. Ya know, many many stories like these. Or in my case, antibiotics do more antidepressant than antidepressants do.
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> The greater question is, what's the purpose? The purpose of life? The purpose of this suffering? The purpose of joy? The purpose of winning and losing? Pretty simple actually. The purpose is to walk with God and get to know Him. We may think we are here to reproduce and have children, to improve the world, to make a difference, to have a great career, etc....but none of those are correct. The purpose is to walk with God. This is only a short stay on earth. We only get so many opportunities to see and experience His glory and marvel, which is so profound the human brain does not even have the machinery to comprehend or imagine the greatest. If we do not purposely ask for this sort of walk with God, since he is not a forceful God but welcomes volunteers, we have to ask. We are not puppets on a string. He gave us free will for a reason...to either chose Him or to not choose Him.
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> The sooner we do that on an hourly, daily, basis, the sooner we find new wisdom to deal with our situations, the sooner we find relief to go on another day, the sooner we find our place of contentment. Some of God's bible guys never got healed. But in their journeys they came to know and love him deeply, knowing that even though the suffering was still there, it would be much worse and certain death without Him. If pain is the only way we will lift our heads to find Him, then that pain is for a good purpose. On the other hand, miraculous healings do still happen, and unexplained improvements do happen.
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> The most important thing is wisdom. We all individually need a supernaturally given wisdom to figure out what to do. He said to all who ask for wisdom He shall give it. To not choose Him means if you get well it will be by your own hand and your own research. To choose Him means if you get well you had all kinds of wisdom you don't know where it came from, "coincidences" that were in your favor, and what nonbelievers would call "good luck".
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> So maybe in my walk with God through life someone needs prozac or lexapro or zyprexa or whatever. Cool. It's the walk that matters. If the med helps us keep an eye on the importance of that, cool. If it does not, it's a bad med. See, the evil ones want nothing more than to keep you and me distracted from the real purpose of life. And meds make a handy deceptive way to do that. Meds can be jewels of life, and they can be keys to a permanent eternal coffin, depending on how we walk.
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poster:novelagent
thread:1019315
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120522/msgs/1019323.html