Oh Boo Hoo

I don’t watch as much television as most, don’t have cable, and only have two shows I plan to watch each week. Yet even limiting my television viewing I see countless advertisements for antidepressant medications. The ads are obviously flowery and beautiful, with smiling people and sunny days—but that isn’t where my train of thought took me after seeing them. I began to wonder why it is that now in our history, when we, for all intents and purposes have everything we NEED, now have the want (contorted into a need) for constant smiles and medication to help us to it.

Are we more unhappy now than ever? If that is the case, I am not surprised at all. Humanity needs to realize that there is more to life than the necessities. When people work jobs indoors with no windows and never spend more than five minutes outside, it is bound to result in a listless existence. We are animals no less than deer are, and when we are penned up we react like an animal in a zoo. We find ourselves pacing, whether literally or figuratively, dreaming of days filled with sunshine, and yes, flowers.

I cannot help but to think of the Victory Gin in 1984, and the Soma in Brave New World. Perhaps we should dwell on the fact that these were meant (at least by most interpretations) to be avoided in the actual world. In a society that necessitates drugs in order to maintain sanity and order—perhaps there is no society at all—but an artificial existence only.

Western society tends to pretend that death does not exist, any mention of it being ignored and covered over before true emotion can be expressed. The concept of suicide cannot be grasped by most people, and so to avoid the chance of it drugs are ingested at a startling rate. Those considering death in a society wrought with destruction are labeled as “crazy” and those ordering war are “heroes”.

I am not telling you all to go out and stop taking your mind altering medications, but I am telling you to evaluate what is making you unhappy in your life. Are you frustrated with your cubicle job? Are you wishing you could be outside more? Is it too cold for you here? Well I have a crazy idea! Think of what makes you unhappy, but in the same breath consider what it is that makes you happy as well. List the things you love and that make you smile. Then, GASP, go do them, live them, be them. Our society of psychologists and prescription writing fools seem to fail in this one simple conclusion—this society is created to cut out your mind and let your soul float away, leaving a drone that works 40 hours a week and cooks out on weekends with other drones.

Refuse to be another Soma addict, toss away the Victory Gin, and find happiness beyond the pill bottle.