Brave New World of Anti-Depressant Drugs.

"Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!

Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?

Skies are blue inside you,

The weather's always fine;

For

There ain't no Bottle in all the world

Like that dear little Bottle of mine."

(Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World", pg.77)

The Savage in Huxley's Brave New World Throwing the bottles of soma from an open window as the epsilons scream and fight to stop him. The People of a Brave New World were unable to cope with the world around them; Huxley's characters were unable to live with out their happy pills to keep them normal. These kinds of people do not necessarily all live in Huxley's fantasy future; these kinds of people also live in our world; people whose mild sadness or horrible dislike for life warrants the use of anti-depressant drugs in the eyes of many health care professionals and supporter of anti-depressants. The manufactures of anti-depressant drugs are selling Americans on quick fix drugs for complicated emotional problems and are helping lay the ground work for a future nation of obedient drug addicts.

The American people are flocking to their doctors in the millions to get prescriptions for quick fixes to their daily emotional hardships. In a brave new world the world government uses sleep teaching to sell their soma, in our world, the pharmaceutical Industry is using television adverts to sell their anti-depressants, and increase the number of customers who are hooked on their addictive drugs. Even though the television averts are legally required to list the side effects of their drugs, Prozac.com claims over 54 million people have been "helped" by their drug since it's inception in 1986. How many of these millions have simply drugged away their unhappiness about how society treats them? Or as the Lenina in Huxley's book puts it "A gramme is better than a damn." How many potential activist and truth Sayers has the pharmaceutical industry robbed from our nation.

Anti-depressant drugs dull people's perceptions of their environment, causing individuals to become more complacent to the negative effects of their day to day life. The drugs remove the natural rebellious spirit from the personalities of the individual users. If anti-depressants had been wide spread during the unionization or civil rights eras in American history, no one would have cared if some people were getting treated badly in society, because they would simply pop a pill and all their negative feelings about their social conditions would go away. What if Ben Franklin or George Washington had been on Prozac? Would they have fought the American Revolution and "freed" the American People from the British. Would Abraham Lincoln, a man many Historians believe suffered from bouts of depression; even bothered with emancipation proclamation, the speech that freed the slaves if he had been on anti-depressants. No, none of them would have bothered because all of their symptoms of unhappiness would have been taken away by the drugs.

Anti-depressants build a dependency within users. For users of anti-depressants this dependency comes in the form of the drugs removing their depressed state and the depressed state returning when the drugs are removed from the users system. This compares well to the character of Linda in Huxley's brave new world when she was unable to get her soma she resorted to alcoholism because she could no longer handle her perception of reality without a means of escape. The pharmaceutical companies are creating a generation of addicts who will continue to pay out, their hard earned money in order to satisfy their addiction to escapism.

Furthermore the use of Anti-depressants can cause people to deny their own reasoning for their depression and make them lose sight of the emotional and psychological causes of their mental state. When a user of psycho-pharmaceutical drugs is removed from their own natural states of discomfort they will no longer be able to locate the causes of their depression. The self-denial will blind the individual from the environmental causes of their depression and hide from both the user and society at large the real causes of the depression with in the user's environment.

In addition, Proponents of anti-depressants would say that the drugs allow severely depressed people whom have a properly diagnosed psychological disorder to live more productive and healthy lives. These same proponents would probably leave out of their arguments that alleged "mental health professionals" are defining what a healthy life style is for all people. Through the use of manuals such as the DSM that define psychological disorders by their symptoms many supporters of anti-depressants run off the theory that all depression is a symptom based medical disorder and treatment does not necessarily mean any change not caused by the drugs needs to take place. In essence they are saying that sadness is only caused by the individuals whom experience it and all external stimuli outside of the individuals own head is irrelevant.

The proponents of anti-depressants might also argue that mentally ill people whom have nothing to lose may be more willing to commit crimes. They might say Depression clouds its victim's judgment and can cause people to care less about what is right and wrong, but by doing so they are using the same argument Mustafa Mond uses to justify the use of soma in Huxley's book

"There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is". (AlduosHuxley, "Brave New World", pg. 238)

These supporters of psycho-pharmaceutical drug use are missing the point. They are they are hoping to fix the symptoms of society problems with out trying to eliminate the true causes of these problems.

If people continue to over use anti-depressants to solve day to day emotional ills they may be giving up their ability to perceive freedom. As Mustapha Mond said to john "the savage" in a Brave New World "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."(Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World", pg.246) By claiming his right to be unhappy, john was arguing: in order for people to perceive happiness they must also be able to understand sadness, they must have the freedom to decide for them selves if they are truly happy.

People need to feel bad from time to time, in order for society to evolve. If every one simply took a pill to take away their emotions when ever they where sad nothing in are society would ever change. There would be no need for people to stop fighting wars or for people to feed the hungry, because no one would feel bad about our society social problems. Put simply, No one would care.

Finally, Individuals whom suffer from depression should not use anti-depressant drugs as a means of gaining happiness, when their lifestyle or environment is at fault for their state of mind; because all the pharmaceutical industry has to sell to these individuals are the values of complacency, consumption and addiction. In the years to come the people of America will need to wake from their Prozac stupors and actually start making the world around them a better place rather then just focus on what is wrong with their own self identities, because real change will never occur if we ignore are greater social ills.