Anti-depressants and other prescription mood controllers were introduced to the general populace in the mid-80s and gained prominence in the 90s. Never a particularly reflective culture, we took advantage of these high grade stimulants to bury the dark stuff for good and STAY PRODUCTIVE!
In retail it is always great to have a supply of umbrellas handy when it rains. It is even better to have a supply of umbrellas and be able to make it rain. In the 80's we did coke and crack and Wall Street was able to sell us, fittingly enough, Junk Bonds. Like any good crack high however, the thrill of junk bonds rapidly wore off and we crashed. In the 90's as anti-depressants were kicking in we found ourselves remarkably susceptible to believing that various markets--beginning with the internet--would never crash . That bubble eventually deflated and then burst as the planes crashed into the towers, but instead of facing reality we swallowed more fistfuls of anti-depressants and kept on buying. As always the force of our denial was equal and opposite to the amount of crap we were trying to suppress. We swallowed the notion the infinite rise of real estate values and the viability of credit default swaps like so many M&Ms. And then boom, it all began to crash, again.
We swallowed Obama hoping he would make everything magically all better. Then he had the audacity to be human while trying to deal with the nuts of bolts of our long ignored realities. Instead of mustering more fervor and support for him, we buried our t-shirts and fell silent in the face of those who decided that pounding the reactionary bottle would do the trick [good luck with that].
Anti-depressants are life-savers for the clinically depressed [until they stop taking them, cf. J.F.Wallace], for the rest of us walking wounded, like all drugs, they merely forestall facing reality. Therapy, analysis, inter-personal communication [i.e. talking] are all messy and imperfect modes for dealing with the burdens of reality. How about we give them a try? What do we have to lose? The first taste is free...
Hey kids! Here's an awesome video about a great moment in sports and a time when most drugs did not come from Duane Reade.
No comments:
Post a Comment