Submitted by kore in MentalWellbeing
Hello,
Many people use what is variously called medicine, drugs, substances, etc. in order to remedy (there might be a better word besides remedy) perceived problems with their mental health, whether it is a remedy to a problem identified by an outsider (like a psychiatrist) or self-diagnosis and self-medication.
This can be anything from the more traditional SSRIs for depression, Benzodiazepines for anxiety, anti-psychotics etc. to smoking cigarettes to deal with stress, to using marijuana to relieve anxiety, to using drugs recreationally as a form of escapism, to using what are usually considered recreational drugs to treat depression (ketamine and psilocybin come to mind).
I'm wondering two things:
How do I/you navigate the distinction between beneficial use and dependence?
Do you think it's desirable at a fundamental level to have these sorts of drugs that provide relief or are they just a means of survival in an oppressive world?
If anyone can point me to written resources on these things (specifically theoretical and about the concept of "drugs" as a whole. I have read a few articles that treat the inefficacy of the approaches of modern psychiatry) that would be great.
An_Old_Big_Tree wrote
I have a general (personal) preference for what could be called "feeling my own feelings, and responding to the world from them - though this is probably often not possible for many". What follows should open the door into why:
"Here's a crazy idea: what if all your problems, your manias and phobias and dysfunctions, are actually natural, healthy reactions to a manic, paranoid, dysfunctional world? What if you are not messed up after all, but totally normal, and the hard things you are feeling are exactly what you are supposed to be feeling under these circumstances? Instead of thinking of yourself as a broken thing that needs fixing, consider what a healthy person would do if he or she were feeling this way. Rather than enthroning your problems as permanent fixtures in your life, accepting yourself can actually help you feel more capable of self-determination and transformation."
Crimethinc, Recipes for Disaster
So how do we envision drug use in this context?
There's no single answer that fits everybody. Some people literally need drugs to survive. Some people need drugs to survive as a certain version of themselves.
Here are some other thoughts, said aware that no single answer fits anybody.
I've seen many people become other people on prescription drugs. I know some people who are on prescription drugs who have had terrible things happen to them and have not responded with their own feelings. I have people in my family who have had so many prescription drugs for so long that I don't remember who they were and what they were like before them.
"Let's make our despair into a transformative force."
"what if ‘Staying Emotionally Stable’ is the opposite of what you should do? What if what we should do is let ourselves feel the world, and recognize that responding painfully to a world that hurts us, responding angrily to a world that enrages us, is the way to keep ourselves from ‘going crazy’? What if we recognized that the only way to fight the world is to stop fighting the feelings it builds within us, to recognize them for what they are, to learn to hold on to those that are righteous and to learn to discard those that build a world we do not want?" (source)
"The only consistent and honest fight is one we engage in for our own reasons, oriented immanently around our own idea of happiness. By the latter is meant not an individual psychological state, but rather the affective complicity and feeling of increased power that arises between people who, based on a shared perception of the lines of force surrounding them, act together to polarise situational conflicts in pursuit of ungovernable forms of life, in whatever experimental forms this might take in the present." ("No Selves To Abolish: Afropessimism, Anti-Politics and the End of the World")
Finally, critiquing the normative idea of happiness directly is also an important part of what I think needs to be done.
I think that kind of covers your second question, as for your first,
I don't. It's too complicated for me. I do psychedelics when I can and they are helpful. I wouldn't say I am dependent on them at all, but I'm not actually clear on what is wrong with dependence.