PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE: ANTI-DEPRESSANTS AND THE NATURE OF THE SELF How quickly does an examination of anti-depressants turn into a conversation about the nature of the self? How quickly does the idea of drug induced contentment (or dare I say happiness) turn into a discussion of governmental mind control? How soon after asking the question “what exactly is the difference between using alcohol or using cocaine or marijuana?”, does the conversation become a polemic on why the government spends billions of dollars fighting the war on drugs? Once you get there, you are only a hair away from joining the conspiracy theorists. The problem with letting the little problem become either philosophical or political is that you risk losing credibility. Feel free to talk about how serotonin levels change in a group of subjects taking an SSRI, but ask which is the real you-- “the depressed, angry cynic” of before or the “cheerful, open, calm” person after—and you are in for trouble. In trouble because--it makes people uncomfortable. No one wants to be happy if it is “just” because of a drug. “But it isn’t real” I heard time and time again. Why do you use the modifier “just” I would ask. “How do you define real?” etc. etc. I might as well have been the mad hatter.

TANGENT: This is the same basic mistake Galileo made. If he had stopped with some diagrams and theories about the planets revolving around the sun he might not have raised the hackles of the Church. If he had stopped there he wouldn’t have been very different from Copernicus. Instead he “went political” with it making comments to the effect of “the Bible is written in the language of the common person who is not an expert in astronomy.” And that “Scripture teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” (quotes from “The Galileo Project”). Obviously he was crusin’ for a bruisin’ .

A friend of mind (and I have no way of knowing if this originated with him) defined culture as “An unwritten set of rules, which serve no necessary function, but if not followed, one is ostracized from the culture.” He used as examples “eating left handed in the Middle East” and “having anything other than a 'positive attitude' in the US”. The first resonates because we have a bit of distance from the other culture, the second is abrasive because we have no distance from our own culture. Most of us do take for granted that “having a positive attitude” is a desirable thing and from the perspective of a person from another culture (the French let’s say) this can be seen as just a bit odd.

The question for me is how far can you push the envelope before they either ostracize you, jail you, or just plain kill you???