Here, take this chemical lobotomy
A few weeks ago I went up to see that MAGA friend.🙄 I had written about her in the past, but after an unrelated post brought in some unexpected traffic, I unpublished that post about her since it suddenly felt too personal. Long story short, I have complex feelings about this person that goes a bit deeper than politics. But when I was up in NYC, I went to see her anyway.
Things were a lot worse than I imagined. She told me her doctors put her on Lithium and she's thinking of suing them because the original dosage was too high. She said she's on a lower dosage now, which is crazy because it was so obvious how strong the drug was even on the lower dose. She was aware of this and told me, "The lithium makes your body so stiff, it's hard to speak or move."
On the Uber ride away from her house, I kept asking my husband, "How is this different from a lobotomy?" I understand my friend has mental health issues, but is this seriously the only solution? Just turn people into zombies, sever them from the neurons that make them "act crazy," and then ignore them?
I've been thinking a lot about this after reading Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess by Dr. Caroline Leaf earlier this year. In it, the author describes how she disagrees with the current mental health trend of simply diagnosing and prescribing instead of treating. She explains how this system avoids treating the real issue by simply telling people their brains are "like this" and the only way they can fix it is to take drugs indefinitely. This might be true for some issues, but Dr. Leaf purports that this trend is failing people since a lot of the more common illnesses (like anxiety, depression, PTSD) can be healed in the brain instead of suppressed with drugs.
I'm not an expert on neurological issues, but I do have a lot of mentally unwell people in my life. When I think of a lot of my friends that are prescribed a cocktail of drugs, they're simply "stable." There's next to no improvement outside of that. They still spend all their waking hours on social media, ruminating, obsessing over the thing that traumatized them, and doing all the things that made them mentally ill to begin with. So what exactly is the drug fixing?
Dr. Leaf said our thoughts are like trees, and the more we focus on them they grow roots and spread. If you're someone with anxiety or depression or someone who had a traumatic event happen to them, whatever that issue is will consume you, to the point where you're no longer in control of your brain, your brain now controls you. And instead of telling you this, whatever specialist or psychologist you see will simply prescribe you something and then send you home. Oh, and there's also side effects to that drug, both from being on it and from when you try to wean yourself off of it. Addiction is likely as well. Good luck!
But of course, there's no profit to be had in teaching people to control and heal their minds, so why bother?
Isolation and rumination are two of the biggest mental health issues I'm seeing in almost everyone in my life. These people are on social media from sun-up to sun-down, have no hobbies, read no books, do nothing with their brains but obsess over the thing that ignited their downfall, and when they get professional help, they're prescribed pills but aren't told to change what they're doing. Now, a therapist might, but most can't afford to see one.
Technology also plays a huge part because it exacerbates people's obsessions. It feeds you algorithms that echo your narrative and cocoon you in your victimhood. And when you get hungry, you can DoorDash food to yourself so that you never go outside or get vitamin D or talk to any human being besides family members who are tired of your shit.
Modern psychology says these people can't change; all they can do is manage the illness. But I call bullshit. The current methods are, much like the lobotomy, looking more and more archaic. All I can hope is that the people in my life find the real help they need before it's too late.