Yesterday, though, I found myself thinking: You bastards. The entire pharmaceutical complex exists to CREATE problems which can be addressed through their drugs.
Think this through: we KNOW how to prevent almost all diseases. We know how to prevent, in particular, almost all degenerative diseases, through diet and exercise. Fresh air, good food, regular exercise, social network (church adds ten years to your life or so: do you see anyone talking about that?).
Big Pharma spends HUGE money developing drugs because they can be PATENTED. They are not trying to cure anything. People who want to actually heal disease have almost no voice in this country. Anyone proposing anything simple, which does not require an advanced degree, and which is inexpensive, will always be outspent and outshouted by those whose incomes depend upon complexity, informational superiority, and high costs and high profits.
With regard to ADHD, sales keep climbing steadily. Do you not think this is at least in part because an army of pharmaceutical sales reps–the stereotype, of course, is an attractive woman between 25 and 35, driving a nice company car, although I don’t think this is quite as true as it used to be–are out encouraging doctors to write scrips?
Today, I was watching myself. My work today was alone in a large room. And I was watching unpleasant feelings coming up, and me getting distracted and wanting to shift focus. Because I have, I think, convinced some latent part of myself that I can now handle more of these “bad” emotions, it is giving me more of them. And I am staying in them longer, letting the waves crest a bit more; relaxing a bit more into it, accepting it, accepting Life, in important respects.
And I got to thinking about kids nowadays. I have talked about this before, but I can’t remember exactly how. We assume that because kids CAN distract themselves constantly, that they are simply forming this habit. And this is, I think, part of the truth.
But think of the pervasive lack of authentic, open communication among people, and in this case, among families. Do not many families watch TV during dinner? Do kids early on not leave the common areas and hibernate with their electronics in their rooms? Precisely because they never have to live with silence, I think many kids become alienated from their own inner feelings. But as I have said, they don’t go away. They intrude. They pop up. They let us know they are there.
And I am not even particularly or necessarily referring to unprocessed traumas. Can we not speak, perhaps, of uncompleted connections? Of warmth not given, and not consciously missed?
And would this, too, not cause kids to act out, and particularly boys since boys tend to express emotions through activity?
There are many factors in so-called ADHD. Bad parenting is clearly one of them. At root, we could perhaps call it cultural laziness and apathy.
Few thoughts.