Gore Vidal, upon arriving back in America from his Italian mansion overlooking the Atlantic Ocean—this was, perhaps, the early 2010s—was asked what had changed most concerning American society since the last time he was in the states. Watching American television, he was most amused at how sick we had all become. Endless (and endlessly long) advertisements for new medications were, even then, everywhere. The drugs seemed more and more to accommodate concocted diseases and syndromes—that is to say, the diagnoses had themselves become the result of neurotic needs we didn’t even know about. Looking at today’s world, I have to concur with Vidal. There has never been a time in my life where sickness, particularly mental illness, has been so prevalently on everybody’s lips. It’s become a sickness in itself: being perpetually sick.
COVID-19, of course, did not help. Now most people I know are bodily sick throughout the year. This is something largely out of our control. But mental illness increasingly affects people my age and younger. There could be several variables that could contribute to this. For example, it could be the speed of our society—its incessant, 24-hour “news” cycle having turned us all psychoneurotic. It could be that we’ve always been this sick and now we just have diagnoses for the problems we have. It could be due to newer food additives. To be ever the contrarian, it is also perhaps social media that has contributed to a society that wants, even desires, to be sick—a form of peer pressure or a reason (finally!) for why we’re not like other folks. When a vulnerable young person hears of an illness that matches their hypochondriac need, they have an answer.
The illness that Vidal mentioned specifically, with his trademark snarl, was Generalized Anxiety Disorder. One must admit, when looking at the term itself, it sounds like a pseudo-diagnosis for people who are generally nervous, a rather common condition which is not a condition at all, but part of the human condition. Perhaps, in the past, these nervous types lived their lives better without a diagnosis, but maybe this seems cruel. Yet, increasingly, I find myself surrounded more and more by those who suffer from anxiety (again, a rather typical aspect of human life) and, I believe, many hide behind it in order to not only not live, but to belong—to belong with others who share something. We are so fundamentally bored down here that we crave entry into cliques who share something in common. It’s part of what makes us such a divided country. We concentrate so much on what is different about us rather than what binds us: our common humanity. To belong to any of these new “communities” (really a faddish word) gives one a commonality with a minority group, a place to belong.
Anxiety has become a pandemic in itself, particularly among my miserable generation, the Millennials, and the terror before us now, Gen Z. Overly medicated already (and, therefore, taking hordes of medicine that should go to people who actually need such drugs), these groups also crave more and more CBD, Delta 8 or 9 (or, probably 20 now, I don’t know) and of course the old warhorse—alcohol—none of which actually help anxiety, but exacerbate it.
How on Earth did we become so anxious?
It is easy to look at the world of your childhood and see it as a better time—a simpler time. Yet, there’s also a nugget of truth in such an idea. In a world with multitudinous “communities” prattling on about one grievance or another, no one I meet seems happier now that they’ve found their group, happier now that they’ve found their cause, happier now that we even have these “communities” which further divide rather than unite us.
One could see this as a blinkered, even uncaring view, but it isn’t. When you have a pill, there’s no reason to objectively step back and look at the long view, which is what I always try to do in my writing. So, if it offends some people, so what? “That offends me” is one of those statements that’s like a Zen riddle. You stop and puzzle over its meaning, but it ultimately only has the meaning you assign to it. Perhaps we are not all sick. Perhaps we are unhappy and crave something to numb us out of our misery.
If I had been born even a few years later, and had gone to a public school, I probably would have been diagnosed with ADHD. After all, I developed no reading comprehension skills until well into high school. I’m thankful that I wasn’t part of a drugged generation from an early age. One used to look at the over-prescriptions of ADHD medications and shake one’s head in disgust. Now, parents who should not be parents take at face value anything a schoolteacher might say. Perhaps there is an inner desire to see their children knocked out—it would sure makes parenting (and teaching) a hell of a lot easier. It eases the anxiety of a real commitment. Then, the medicated parent/teacher can have some version of life while the medicated child misses out on childhood.
These same new crops of kiddos who began with ADHD have progressively, it seems to me, moved into depression, anxiety, and extraordinary narcissism. I’m not blaming the drugs themselves. Personally, I wish I had never even taken an Aspirin. I wonder what my life would have been like without anything to blur the edges or dull the pain. But pain, sadness, and anxiety are essential, teachable parts of living. Older generations learned how to deal with these issues. We now have succumbed to them and would prefer medication. Taking a pill, again, is easier than facing the truth.
If you have read this so far and ignored my earlier comment, I reiterate: there are people who legitimately need these drugs, from ADHD to depression and beyond. After all, depressed people can commit suicide. The fact that the drugs used to help depression tend to cause more depression and suicide proves one thing: our minds, like the oceans, are still 80% unexplored.
When taking my dad to various doctors during his last years with cancer, I realized what doctors don’t know could fill one of those above-mentioned oceans. Psychiatrists in particular pose a great threat in the sense that they can only diagnose and prescribe based on what one tells them. And people, for all the good they are capable of doing, tend to lie. Or, if not lie, obscure the truth. How on Earth can a doctor help people prone to lying (or prone to concealing information) about what’s actually going on.
Getting back to anxiety. Having suffered panic attacks myself, I know the dangers of it. So, there is no part of my heart that doesn’t go out to folks who legitimately suffer from anxiety. It is the number of people telling me that now that is discouraging and makes me cock my head to the side with a wry eye. How is it possible I have found myself working in offices where 75% of the staff have been diagnosed with this illness? They have nothing in common. They come from different parts of the country, are different ages, are different everything and yet—all suffering from anxiety. Generally. Not specifically. Specific Anxiety Disorder would, of course, limit the number of patients who could get access to the drugs (at least, in the legal way).
How in hell did we get so anxious?
Anxiety comes from dread and unease. Of course there are physiological aspects as well, but it is, for the most part, a mental malady. And mental would be a kind word to describe our society at present. I’ve never seen more angry people, more sociopaths, more depressives, more sick people in my life. Part of this is the population. When you have more people, you are bound to have more murderers, more rapists, more madness.
Recently, Larry David strangled Elmo on The Today Show because it has become the prerogative of those who educate our young to raise awareness of mental illness. Elmo was raising awareness and David finally got sick of it. I share the same feeling (and have wanted to strangle Elmo since he somehow became the most-talked-about Sesame Street character). It seems amazing to me that people who consistently raise awareness over one illness or cause, etc. don’t realize that when people are so aware, so “educated,” so “with it,” they don’t realize raising awareness in itself contributes to the neuroses of the populous. If everybody were truly aware of every social or medical ill, we would be walking around with nooses ‘round our necks. The world would seem not worth it. Hence, the need for doping in order for some coping.
A child, or any adult with a regressive brain, will hear about a new disorder and, I think, crave it. Maybe it’s not even about belonging. Perhaps it’s just everyone suspects something about them is interesting, strange, or unique. These include the generations of folks who were told the world was wonderful, they were special, and they could be anything they wanted to be. I was one of those. No wonder I’ve experienced anxiety. Once you go out in the world, you realize these things are not true and so you turn to medication to shield yourself from truth.
Of course, today, we live in a meta—postmodern-world where there is no absolute truth. I don’t think people who espouse this ideology realize how truly dangerous it is. It is okay to say that there is not a single truth for everybody. It is damaging to society to say that everyone has their own individual truth. That is pure, unadulterated narcissism. And the narcissist, deep down, knows that it is more important how loud their voice is (and how true their truth is) than the actual truth of what they are saying.
Gee, I seem pessimistic, if not nihilistic. Perhaps I am, at least when it comes to this subject. If the medications did help, one would think (again) people would be better off. I don’t see that. I see a society bent on division not diversity, a society where it is better to medicated than see with 20/20 vision, a society on the brink of its own nervous breakdown. We are all those who will suffer from this inevitable breaking point.
If there’s a throughline to any of this, it is always to question, always to doubt. Assume you are like everybody else and share everybody else’s pain (though in different guises) If one did this, I wonder how much anxiety we would feel. Wouldn’t we feel, I don’t know, comfort in knowing we’re all a little bit mad and that madness is something divinely creative in us. This would be different from finding our own support group and not feeling strange. We are all of us strange. It doesn’t mean we necessarily need a pill for it.
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