A report recently released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has revealed that antidepressants are the most frequently prescribed drugs in America. Tripling in use between the periods of 1988-1994 and 1999-2000, such drug use increased 48 percent, and prescriptions last year numbered 118 million.
Antidepressants are classified as psychotropic drugs which affect brain chemistry, sharing that slot with non-prescription legal and illegal drugs such as alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD and other such psychotropic substances. Lump them all together, and I’d bet well over three-quarters of America is “medicated” daily.
The debate as to whether one or another drug should be legal or illegal is not the subject of this column. Rather, I am interested in exploring what it is about contemporary life that makes drugs so attractive, or put into other words, what is it about ordinary life that people don’t like, why are people so unhappy?
America is the wealthiest country in the world, with the highest standard of living. In fact, America consumes fully 45 percent of the world’s resources in its pursuit of happiness, while having only five percent of the world’s population. When it comes to material wealth, no country has it better, yet 25 percent of adult Americans will suffer serious bouts of depression. It certainly appears that material wealth is no guarantee of happiness.
Most Americans consider themselves religious, saying they believe in God, the afterlife, heaven and hell. Attendance at religious services is at an all-time high, and the membership of some denominations is growing at a record-setting pace. Nonetheless, religion itself does not seem to provide a shelter from depression, and with the ready access of well-marketed antidepressants, relief is just a pill away.
Though family values rank high among the aspirations of Americans, over 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. Among the leaders of the Republican Party running for President several are in their second or even third marriage. Marital commitment is in rather short supply; it may be that simple loneliness plays a big part in all this mental medication.
Entertainment comes in more forms and varieties than ever before; TV, radio, Internet, TiVo, iPod, iPhone, movies, DVDs, live music, theater…the list goes on. One must ask: is this avalanche of entertainment just temporary distraction from something under the surface, something to which we are not paying adequate attention? As you can guess, I ask this question in advance of one possible answer.
Our human condition is impermanent, and everything about our existence is impermanent; this hard truth is connected to our widespread unhappiness. The money, the possessions, the entertainment, the family; all these things will change and end, and so will we. Our culture vigorously promotes the fantasy that things can be kept as they are, never change, but inside we know this is not true, and when the truth of impermanence reaches the surface, when we are bored or our egos and entertainment fail to distract us, we get depressed. The drugs cannot change the facts; all that can change is our intellectual and emotional relationship to the experience of life, and how we work with it.
As long as we continue to paper over our recognition of impermanence instead of sincerely grappling with its meaning and reality, unhappiness and depression will inevitably break through.
