Posted by used2b on April 3, 2005, at 13:38:02
In reply to Re: Pfizer link offensive » Larry Hoover, posted by ed_uk on April 2, 2005, at 18:12:25
Happy Pills is the trademarked product name of a nutritional supplement offered by a German firm.
http://www.worldclassnutrition.com/happypills.html
Regardless some people being offended by colloquial understandings of neuropharmacology, serontonin enhancing drugs are largely offered as a remedy for anhedonia, which is a primary symptom of depression. It is the one and only symptom for which friends encourage me to apply for a prescription. I say "I'm unhappy and I have been for a long time," they say "your depressed, take a pill like i do."
I expect that a fair linguistic study would find the term used among groups with widely divergent views on pharmacological approaches, including anti-depressent-drug users, those who prescribe the drugs, the press and those who scorn anti-depressants. While some might not like the term, it is not an "n" word used primarily to disparage a particular group.
Anhedonia is an inability to find pleasure in things that are expected to cause pleasure. A drug that treats the condition can be considered a hedonic remedy. Hedonic refers to hedonism and hedonism is the doctrine that happiness is the chief good in life.
Maybe the pills don't make directly make a person happy, they just facilitate the pursuit of pleasure from secondary sources. But for those of us who feel anhedonia is a proper response to an cold, unrewarding culture, "happy pills" is a perfectly apt description of a drug offered to control our minds and to silence our disquieting persistent protests. For those of us who don't consider happiness to be particularly relevant, much less the chief good in life, those who push pills based on the notion that hedonic status is a measure of mental health are a threat to our creed and to our political liberty to react as we choose in response to circumstances we find unacceptable.
As far as Grohol using the term in a parody, then silencing discussion, well maybe psych pros aren't as god-like as the profession represents itself and his unwelcome expression revealed a ch*nk in the armor of a profession that is not nearly as coherent as it claims to be.
For my part, I remain deeply offended by a medical establishment that suggests the only cause of long-term anhedonia is illness, and that the only causes of the illness to be considered are chemical conditions inside my brain, or my cognitive outlook. For me, anhedonia is a an appropriate response by a caring person in a cruel world. I encourage the anhedonic to maintain their blank expressions toward this hedonic culture until a critical mass chooses to treat the actual causes of social pain that lead so many to present anhedonic symptoms.
Those who don't care to consider social symptomology are more than welcome to take a pill, and to complain when the pill is classified in lay terms that are synonymous with those used to describe its neuropharmacological effect.
(Moreau JL, Jenck F, Martin JR, Mortas P, Haefely WE (1992).Antidepressant treatment prevents chronic unpredictable mildstress-induced anhedonia as assessed by ventral tegmentumself-stimulation behavior in rats. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol)
(Antidepressant reversal of interferon-alpha-induced anhedonia.Sammut S, Bethus I, Goodall G, Muscat R.
Department of Biomedical Sciences, Laboratory of Behavioural Neuroscience, University of Malta, Msida. )
poster:used2b
thread:478484
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050330/msgs/479319.html