Has anyone ordered from pharmacies out of the U.S. Did it go OK? Has anyone purchased any of the online lists of foriegn pharmacies? Were they up to date? Worth purchasing?

it's only been a few days now, but it appears that prozac's most notable effect is that it makes me giggly. i have been to hell and back in the last 14 days or so. i never called that guy back. i've been too depresed. all i've been doing is sleeping. during spring break last week - aside from SXSW festivities which were a wonderful distraction, a purgatory or sorts - all i did was get up, have breakfast, go to the gym or yoga, come home, have lunch, sleep from 2-6 p.m., get up if i felt like i could, eat some supper, and lay around on my couch watching videos on the tv and vcr that i am borrowing, or reading. i didn't want to do anything because i couldn't go surfing or boogie boarding or snorkelling or camping at the beach or watch the sunset or hang out with Jane and Iain, or Joan and Thomas, i was just too sad. then i had a total meltdown on saturday, basically i was catatonic the whole day, crying, etc. and on sunday i woke up and decided there is no reason for me to be so miserable. so i did three things: 1. promised myself that if i'm not happy by the end of the year, i'm moving back to hawaii in january of 2003. 2. promised myself to make a very concerted effort to get outside and do more things outdoors. i managed to wrestle up the energy to leave the house and go hiking by myself on sunday, and have plans with a girl i met on the internet (but not yet in person) to go for another hike this coming saturday. (her doberman's name is Shaka.) and i'm going to call a lady who advertises in the chronicle about taking a couple private rowing lessons on Town Lake. 3. started taking prozac. 10 mg a day. they say it takes a couple weeks to take effect, but i feel better already. this is the second or third day in a row i've gone without crying or wanting to cry, and i'm sleeping better (without valium), and i'm more focused at work, and generally just feel overall better, smoother, and happier. little things don't get to me like they have been in the last few months. things don't seem as serious. there's less anxiety. and i can't stop giggling. there's no narcotic effect. i don't feel high, in fact, i feel quite lucid and calm. it makes me sleepy when i take it at night, but not like valium does, or ambien or vicodin. it's not a groggy or hazy feeling, just a gentle sleepiness. i only have a 14 day supply and one refill, as prescribed by the gynecologist. i honestly feel like i really need the help right now, because my brain is not getting enough positive stimuli out of this life here on a day to day basis. in less than a year i went from being the happiest and healthiest i've ever been in my life to being the unhappiest, ugliest, and bored i've ever been, all on the path of chasing a stupid dream. better living through chemistry... sad, but true. i'm going to morocco in december.

oh, sarah, where are you? i've missed months, perhaps years of keeping informed via the message boards, or anything else. now i look and find such agita. it will take me days to read back and follow the path. prozac. i am relieved to hear you have it. you will find out why, sooner than you thought possible. can you catch me up? or summarize? i hope you know you can always come to the mountain.

I got the same effects from Zoloft? I think it was. Whatever it is that they put those ads on television with the crying rock. It took a matter of less than an hour and I felt giddier than I had in years. My husband said this was a sign of how depressed I had been. I ended up taking it for less than a month, but that was probably because I was having problems with the loss of my Grandmother and these little pills helped me through the grieving process. Once I had done that I was fine. I am glad to know you are getting help.

"My husband said this was a sign of how depressed I had been" this a sign that your brains chemicals are being tweaked not about how depressed you are. i giggle a lot when i smoke a fatty but its no sign of how depressed i am. mommy's little helper to the rescue!!!!

It's also a sign of the placebo effect--if you want it to work immediatly, it will. Zoloft made me break out in hives and writhe around on the floor screaming about "them," whoever "they" were.

Check out serotonism. Beach is best antidepressant I've found. So why am I going to Ontario Canada???? The "beach" there is Niagara Falls, and I'm on the edge, so... over the falls?

were so duped by drug companies its sick.

i have taken zoloft i would have sworn i would not now all i have to say is that it was great much better than not sleeping or eating for three days much better than not being able to do anything especially for no apparent reason

why didn't you just shoot up? you would have felt ten times better.

and it would have been cheaper in the beginning you know me, never thinking the issue through

dear sheila, there's no use in catching up, but i so much appreciate that you care enough to want to know. here is a brief summary: everything you warned me about kevin's is true. dig? love, sarah

oh, and pot is boring. i got a big juicy bud shipped in from hilo that's been sitting in my refrigerator. whatever. been there, done that.

"these little pills helped me through the grieving process." AARGGGGH! Grief is natural! You're supposed to feel bad! It means you're alive! Those pills are for when you hurt that bad and no one's died. They're not to be taken any time one feels less than happy.

prozac is scary.

considering suicide is scarier.

how many people here have been prescribed some sort of mood correcting pill like prozac, paxil, zoloft, xanax? i recall the following....heather, sarah, spider, hal, tbone, eri, others? Doesnt this seem like a terribly high number?

Paxil is scarier. Back in the day when I first moved to San Francisco, I had a room mate who was on it. When I moved in, I was told that everyone in the house was happily employed, stable, etc. Within 2 weeks, I found out that the guy who held the lease was not only on a lengthy mental leave from his job, but had basically become unemployable as his mental situation became more or less unraveled. He was on Paxil when I moved in, but dicontinued it after about my 1st month there. thats when the real fun began. he entered into a manic phase, bought a beagle puppy without consulting the other roomies, and began the short trek to complete mania. He wouldn't take the dog out of the house, so it shit and peed everywhere. One day, I came home and found a letter taped to my door. It was written on yellow legal pad size paper. Both sides. Very, very small block print. It was a rant about my having left the lid on the washing machine open. I folded it up after reading about two paragraphs, and put it away to be enjoyed later. Around this time, things took a drastic turn for the worst. We were living in a beautiful 1910 victorian with all its original woodwork unpainted and intact. One day I came home, and found him painting the banister of the staircase institutional green. Walking further into the house, I found that he had also started painting the kitchen school bus orange. The paint strokes weren't orderly, but rather slapped on, with long runners of paint pooling onto the hardwood floors. I asked him if he had gotten the landlords approval to do this, and he started to speak quietly, but quicklly increased in volume until he was screaming at me that this was HIS HOUSE. I locked myself in my bedroom. Within days, he had completely deteriorated, and one morning I woke up and found him standing in my bathroom in his underwear growling at me that I had FORCED his dog to pee on the rug. I went upstairs to speak with the other two room mates, and found one of them packing up her belongings. She told me that she couldn't bear it anymore, and that she was moving into a hotel until she found another place. The other roomie was no where to be found. I contacted the landlord and let him know of the renovations, and went to work. When I came back home that night, I found a message from the landlord telling me that he was going to have to take the house off the market, and was in effect kicking us all out. My loony roomie confronted me in the hallway, demanding to know who I had let into the house while he was out. The corker was when he threw a coke bottle at me. I grabbed him by his shirt front, and held hom over the stairway railing. I told him that I would toss him over if he came near me again. I moved in with my boyfriend after that. The errant room mate who I couldn't find found the number where I was staying and toldme that this happened from time to time. He would be fine on the paxil, and eventually would think he didnt need it anymore. When he stopped, he would spiral into this state. This never happened when he was on other drug regimens, only paxil. With the others, he would just get blue and reclusive when he stopped. I remain wary of long term use of "social anxiety" drugs to this day.

oh yeah, paxil was the problem, not his obviously severe insanity.

No, my point was that it seemed to exacerbate his condition when he STOPPED taking it. Under other regimens, he would simply just get depressed, and not display the manic symptoms. I myself will pop a valium, or Xanax on occasion, but I have never been on any long term therapies. I have a very close friend who's family is riddled with schizophrenia, and he has been on various drug regimens for almost 20 years. He had a similar experience with paxil, and I know of others. They are OK wjile they take it, but if they stop, they go off the deep end, displaying manic symptoms which they hadn't previously. Of course, there are folks who are on this drug, and they have none of these symptoms, but my personal experience with this particular class of drugs (social anxiety), leads me to think that there are risks that can be much worse than the condition it is meant to be treating.

The only psychoactive medication I've been prescribed was Elavil, and that was to alleviate a chronic pain condition I have, not for its antidepressant properties. (Elavil in low dosage has an analgesic effect and does not affect your depression or lack of it.) http://www.whatmeds.com/meds/elavil.html

PS. That link says that Elavil can trigger a manic episode in people so inclined to such things, and though Elavil and Paxil are not chemically similar...who knows? No medicine is without its side effects.

i considered suicide for the better part of four years. never did anything to myself though. no meds. once you begin depending on chemicals from an outside source to obliberate the symptoms, you do not treat what's inside. you need to treat you brain naturally otherwise the problems will still be there once you're off the meds. besides, mose psychological medications are overpriced corporate bullshit. they want you to be unhappy so you'll use their medications and make more money off of you. they don't care about your health. they just want your money.

obtain happiness via: (1) quit job (2) sell your body (3) become a junkie

or....just get yourself a puppy...

pez those four years, they were teen years, right? at a certain point you stop functioning. it doesn't make any sense, but you can't think or meditate or bad habit your way out it. often you're in a situation that you can't or don't want to drop out of. i wouldn't have said these things before having been in the situation. sometimes medication works well. it was worth the money.

what teen doesnt want to kill himself? not to diminish your anguish pez but you know we all dealt with that to one degree or another. the point is, like spider mentioned...we can't start taking pills to alleviate what is natural. im still proud to see your coming along. you seem like a perfectly normal, bright yound adult who is learning to lump everything into the "evil corporate monster" category. In due time you start to question the leafy-green all-natural is best school of thought because it too can be just as full of shit. I deal with a handful of new-age, "all-natural" grocery chains, Whole Foods, Wild Oats and some weird strains of lesbian, new age book shops and you know, they want to keep you happy so they can make money off you too, they just aren't comfortable admitting it.

I take more drugs than I'd like to. They piss me off, and I get more depressed because I feel so dependent. It started with ADD and taking ritalin in middle school, but then they decided that I have an anxiety disorder (though only when I'm on the ritalin) so I should start taking prozac rather than finding a substitute for the ritalin. I was really depressed last year, and so this fall i started seeing a therapist. I also started taking lithium because i have a some bipolar tendancies. Now when I wake up every morning and take all my meds it makes me feel like I cant handle my own problems. I want to be independent, but everyone tells me I shouldn't stop taking the drugs. My mom always tells me not to worry because i wont need them forever, but when i suggest trying a few weeks without them, she says not yet. It makes me so fucking angry, but I cant argue with my mom because if i do i'll hurt her feelings and then emotionally beat myself up for it later. So yeah, Patrick, you can add me to your list.

"but I cant argue with my mom because if i do i'll hurt her feelings and then emotionally beat myself up for it later." the drugs have nothing to do with this, nor will the drugs solve this.

I've seen the same thing with Paxil, Christopher. I did Prozac. Helped me.

I'm quite aware of that, Patrick. That's what I was hinting at, I guess, by including that bit- that I have problems that have nothing to do with the drugs, and that they clearly cant help with. That paxil story frightens me. Sometimes I worry about what would happen if I suddenly stopped taking all my drugs. Nothing that dramatic, probably, but still that's really scary.

It frightens me that happy drugs might make me wonder if I was really happy or just using effective drugs. I want to be able to recognise happiness when it strikes. I think my over-whelming optimism gets me through most things. Even when I'm looking longingly at lengths of rope I still have a little voice telling me that maybe one day I can use that rope to tie someone up rather than using it on my neck.

Thats really true, because I dont really know why I'm cheerful when I am. I suppose the chemicals that make me happy are the same regardless, but just makes me anxious. I am constantly wondering whether my mood is due to the drugs or something else. Often enough I wish I could just be happy without the twinge of doubt, and on rare occasions I am, but I can never really forget. I dont know what parts of my personality are really me. I am wavering between whether i'd rather be unquestioningly happy or remain skeptical. I feel more comfortable with the latter, but then again its just making me more emotionally stressed.

Happiness doesn't come from the verb "to be happy" but rather from "to make happen." Why is happiness is a warm gun then? Being emotionally stressed is being out of bullets. If I quit my job, I couldn't afford bullets. If I sold my body, well, I'd died prematurely of a sex-related disorder. If I became a junkie, I wouldn't know the difference between bliss and emotionally stressed, nor care. It's an adventure kids. A journey. A pilgrimage. Live it all, enjoy it all, be kind to fellow travellers, do things so you can sleep at night, help others anonymously, don't take too much too seriously anyway. Especially yourself.

I used to be on paxil...much like the pill, there wasn't a noticable effect. I just felt...er...happier. Or something. I think that these things do help--it made me get out of bed in the morning until I got to the point where I could do it myself.

my doctor gave me paxil, once. i went in saying i was tired all the time and he went over to a cabinet and gave me a bunch of boxes of paxil. i took them for about a week, and then i started to get dizzy and feel like i was on my 8th espresso. so i stopped. happiness is a warm gun because, when i hold it in my arms, i know nobody can do me no harm. i didn't get that feeling with paxil. guns, the anti-paxil. bang, bang, shoot, shoot.

droop, that's exactly how dave described paxil. my thoughts on these drugs and the prescribing of them fall somewhere in between pez and sarah's gynecologist. i think they are neccessary sometimes, but it scares me how so many doctors today pass the scrips out like candy.

considering suicide is not as scary as being sure that the only reason that everyone doesn't just kill him or herself is because they are scared to do it what i took did not make me happy. i had happy moments that would flip very quickly into freaking out, and for no good reason. what i took stopped the spiraling vibration that kept me lying in bed for hours but never sleeping, and the buzzing in my head that prevented me from finishing a thought.

let me put it to you this way. i went to see a counselor yesterday afternoon. if i had been in her office one week before starting prozac, i would have been a sniveling, panicked, freaked-out basket case. this is assuming i even would have had the ability to a) get out of bed, b) think clearly enough through a thick fog of anxiety to figure out the phone number to call for my health insurance to get a referral for a therapist and then c) call the therapist to make an appointment and d) drive myself to the appointment. instead yesterday i was able to fairly concisely and with some amount of clarity give her a brief history of my recent past, spell out all the areas in which i seem to be having major problems, what things i need and want to work on, and told her what i hoped to get from therapy - i.e., wanting to learn a variety of different life skills, coping skills, and willingness to utilize them and take concrete steps to affect change that hopefully will make me a happier, healthier person who won't need to take prozac just to stop crying and get out of bed in the morning. you know, like i used to be.

droop your run with paxil sounds like my experience with that....buspars and zoloft. i admit though to taking these drugs in an attempt to experience a high. if my pill book mentioned possible side effects as "dizziness, slurred speech, euphoria" and instructed you not to mix with alcohol....BANG it was in the que for experimentation. These drugs MADE me feel like most of you feel like with out your brain candy. I was jittery, couldnt sleep, chills, heard and saw things out of the corners of my eyes, sweaty palms, indecisive, "whisky dick" and so on. none of the "euphoria" i was promised by my pill book. which tells me one thing. my body didnt need them for getting high, muchless their normally prescribed intent. just like ritalin is speed to those who don't "need" it, these pills seemed to have the opposite effect. weird. where do you make the determination between self pity and chemical deficiency? Have we become conditioned to almost snowball a low period in our lives and convince ourselves we NEED these pills otherwise we'd be, like sarah describes. She implies a sense of impotency that she couldnt get over. How much of that (not in her specific case, but in general) is chemical and how much is self derived, and does it matter?

i submit that there are few humans who do not use some substance or vice to mediate an inevitable (temporary or permanent) sense of impotency. every little vice is a sort of filter, something that comes between you and the world. or a system of vices. or just plain bad habits. all are a way of maintaining stasis - biochemically, emotionally, however you want to look at it. life is always mediated by *something*. before it was hiking and surfing and playing in a chick band and losing 125 lbs. but a life of smoking and drinking and engaging in various other "deviant" (in the least interesting sense) practices creates a modality, a framework within which your life is interpreted. certain things are perceived, certain things are experienced, certain things are felt deeply. but others... are not. all of this is arranged for you (and simultaneously by you) based on your biology, sociology, and behavior. maybe it's nicotine and forgetting to eat and drinking cheap beer. maybe it's sugar and fatty foods and making yourself vomit. maybe it's rock-climbing and shoplifting and sleeping with strangers. or colonic irrigation and raw foods and yoga. take your pick. the modality is an empty space that are filled, as a result of biology and sociology and behaviors, with certain thoughts, feelings, etc., but not others. based on the intensity of what we are allowed to feel within a given modality (which can be quite a lot) we decide that we are experiencing "everything" and we romanticize this, which further entrenches us in our modality. our lives, attenuated as they may be, can seem so dramatic, can make us feel impotent. living in a cheap hotel on the lower east side, learning to play classical piano, flirtations with adultery, "adventure trips" down whitewater rivers, moving to austin for "love". whatever.

i took valium and drank wine last night. tonight im going to a professional hockey game...the opposing team has one of the greatest goal tenders ever named Patrick Roy (pronounces Wah). The home team fans most likely at some point will do a well known chant of "Paaaaatrick Paaaaaaatrick Paaaaatrick" meant to get him off balance. Im sure at some point during that chant, i'll squint my eyes tight, gulp my beer and pretened they mean me.

Sarah, I hope you do what works best for you. Don't allow yourself to be influenced by some of the misguided folks here.

I need mood elevators like I need a Hole in the head

i was trying to remember what that was called recently. thanks, christopher. sarah, as i see it, you're just taking care of business. i've always admired how honest you are with your feelings, and how in tune you are with what you need to feel balanced in your life. i have faith that you'll overcome whatever struggles you encounter from now to forever. to quote someone on mtv: you go, girl!!!!!!!!

when i was a kid, i had a book with a picture of a trepanned skull in it. when i was having a bad brain day, i'd imagine i had a hole in my head and i'd ladle out my brain either into a bowl or onto a griddle to make brain pancakes. go sarah! go sarah! go sarah! go sarah!

speaking of MTV though i would never advocate MTV in any way shape or form.... I saw a portion of "The Osborne's" the other night. a reality tv show dedicated to the life and times of Ozzy and his family. my god what a riot.

I guess I'm okay. I was feeling really incompetent yesterday, and I kind of went beserk last night, screaming and crying and freaking out for no apparent reason, probably just self-pity and general frustration with decisions I made in life. Actually, it was probably just me trying to make myself feel incompetent or something like that, but I did manage to scare myself. I am not really too worried because I was alone when this was happening and when my family got home I had enough sense of what was acceptable behavior to stop screaming (at least out loud). I dont really know how to link that with the drugs, but apparently they 1)weren't stopping it and 2)weren't helping my self-image any. I know I should be able to determine for myself whether I'm competent or not, but when my parents and doctors say I need these drugs, it doesn't help any. I dont even know why I'm posting all this except that I probably just needed to tell someone. I also had a long talk with a friend, but that was before the screaming, when I was just feeling really depressed.

"the osbournes" is my new favorite show. i can't possibly express how much i love it. they'll probably cancel it very soon, as it's too good for mtv.

agatha email me. i have a question for you unrelated to the osbornes

Pattard wants to know how Dave kisses. hehehhehehehehhehehehehhehehehehehheheheheh

shaaaaaaaaaaaaaddddddddddddddyyyyyyyyyuuuupppppp

or what? you'll kiss me? hehehhehehehehehhehehehheheh I am so giggly today.

"maybe it's rock-climbing and shoplifting and sleeping with strangers" ..........two out of three's not bad...... some days you feel like a nut, some days you don't.

Sometimes,there's nothing "natural" that will help a depressed state.One can't always will themselves out of depression. Its a real,physiological illness.Chemicals in the brain,get out of wack. Dopamine and seratonin.Thats why sometimes the meds ARE nescessary. They are there to benefit the recipient.They are much better than living in a constant state of depression. They are not for everyone,but are invaluable to those whom they help. They usually take a few weeks to get a good level,and adjust to them. Seeking help is the right thing to do,when one is so despondent,that they can't enjoy life,or perform daily functions. There is no narcotic effect,or "high" from them.They just help the chemicals in the brain get back to their right porportions. Hang in there,Sarah. I'm not too far away if things get too tough.

Yeah, I have the red door you wanted too. But it is deep maroon. Ah, CZ, where you been?

Hey Sarah, I'm not in such a different place than you. Email me and we can share snot.

whoops. that was supposed to be my email addy. which I guess gives some idea as to my state at present.

I threw up on 9/11 and now I'm throwing up again. My heart must be in my stomach. At least I can say he makes me barf.

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Here's an interesting tidbit. Heroine is excreted from the body in the urine as morphine. Now how can one extract the morphine from their urine?

why extract it? just shoot it back in, that's what i do

ok, sorry for all my whining. I'm okay now, if anyone cares.

I asked my doctor about Paxil yesterday. He suggested that the problems experiensed by your friends were probably caused by them stopping it suddenly. Paxil it seems is very much like Prednizone. It's one of those medicines you should be weened from gradually.

It seems to me that there should be some sort of rationality test before handing out the scrips for this. My ex-roomie was a fuck up. He didn't take his pills as prescribed, and went off the deep end. Seems to me that with a drug that can cause this particular side effect, that the prescriber should be following up with the patient regularly to check that they are taking their meds. I don't recall this guy EVER going to a doctor. He just had pills, and the doctors unbound optimism that he would take his meds as prescribed. If someone was checking in with him, even once a month, they would have realized what was happening. This was years and years ago, and about 8 or 9 months ago, I saw my old roomie standing on Market street, looking 20 years older, with a long beard, standing in the bus lane having a conversation with himself. Maybe some people are beyond saving, or maybe they will fail without having someone try to add some structure to their lives. Regardless, I think that getting a scrip for a drug like this should also involve regular therapy with a psychiatrist. I hear about people getting it from their family doctor,with no therapy involved, and cringe.

I just want to know if there are any side effects with discontinuing ritalin, an ADD medication.

Why don't you ask your fucking doctor? God almighty, why do people ask for medical advice on a message board instead of talking to their doctors? Idiots.

Because they don't trust "the man"? There's this whole conspiracy theory hulabaloo around ritalin.

Actually, I think it is basically that teachers are affraid to disaplin misbehaving children in their classes. Who can blame them is this day of lawsuititis. They then have the kids evaluated by a psychologist who say's the reason the kid is misbehaving is ADD or HADD. Then they force the parents to medicate the kid into a near stupor. Ritalin must be stopped in children at a certain age because at some point it has the opposit effect on them.

Not true in all cases. My brother will be 27 this month and still needs to take ritalin, although he currently is off it because his insurance won't pay for it.

Tell him to try suger free red bull. Works for me. :)

maybe kids misbehave because school is fucking boring and ...ah, nevermind

well, it was designed to create a class of factory workers, who can do the same repetitive task for the whole day and not ask questions as to why they have to do it...

Boy, they dun fucked up wit me!

Much to their regret, you can be sure!

Hey, man, what's up with that sniper in your area, yo?

Don't know. Good thing I never have to travel down that way, though. I doubt they'll catch whoever's doing it though. The po-po's (thanks skooter) aren't that competent around here, although they sure look sharp.

I don't know, I went off Ritalin while I was going through puberty so I don't know which was which. Getting off the Ritalin is good for your personality. I'll never understand why people would rather medicate than fix their shit.

sometimes fixing one's shit requires medication. among other things.

True, but when people don't even try to fix shit without it; what little effort that is spent is nearly worthless. Most of the time fixing one's shit can be done without the aid of pharmaceuticals; just with a healthier lifestyle things can get better.

I ranted, but changed my mind. I guess I don't know if "most people" can be fixed with lifestyle changes, though I'm certain it would help. . My inability to concentrate and the consequences of that dragged me into depression. . The medication has been showing me what it's like to be able to hold my attention on something when I need to. I only take half as much as I used to.

Not to mention that lifestyle changes require more time and energy than many people have, especially if they are starting from the skewed perspective that comes with depression and anxiety. Sometimes it takes a little medication just to get to a point where you can think rationally enough to make such decisions.

The ritalin definitely was the best thing for my brother. He went from crazy fits of fury and destructive behavior coupled with zoning out and crashing, to being able to become an accomplished jazz saxophonist and a music teacher. He wouldn't have been able to get his shit together without it. Getting off ritalin has definitely NOT been good for him. He's gained weight, been subjected to fits of depression and has started to lose the ability to keep track of all the mundane shit that life requires you to handle. So hooray for ritalin.

Alright, sometimes the medication is a good thing. For some people. My personal experience was negative and I was lucky to realize this at a young age and put a stop to it. Sometimes people don't need medication but they see the commercials and the doctors tell them they need drug x to live better. With the amount of money poured into the pharmeceutical industry I'm going to say bullshit. Most people out there are unwilling to take the time and make neccessary lifestyle changes so they will go into a cycle of medicating and going through the side effects. I think it's more of a cultural problem, that modern way of life isn't terribly healthy for anyone, but I haven't got it all figured out yet. I just live my own the best I can.

"Most people out there are unwilling to take the time and make neccessary lifestyle changes so they will go into a cycle of medicating and going through the side effects." And, is that the medicine's fault? "I think it's more of a cultural problem, that modern way of life isn't terribly healthy for anyone" I think blanket generalizations aren't terribly healthy for you. You specifically. I'm just dandy with the modern way of life. Without the modern way of life we'd have all sorts of health problems that aren't around anymore. And without the modern way of life I wouldn't have my vitamins and suger free red bull. That'd be fucked up.

sugar free red bull? oh god, that shit tastes like ass. ass flavored used anti-freeze

I've had sugar-full Red Bull, and my spleen churns at the thought of that *gaaaaaaaaack* plus the aftertaste of artificial sweetener. Oh, wretch. "And, is that the medicine's fault?" She's not blaming the medicine, but the drug companies/doctors/lazy patients. I think medicine can do immeasurable good, and there are many, many people (like schizophrenics) who are able to live productive lives because of their medicine and who would be ruins without it. Sure, medicines like Ritalin may be overprescribed, but that doesn't detract from the value it provides people who truly need it.

i {heart} pharmeceuticals!