People can't see

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I've seen people defend drug addicts and alcoholics, saying ah but it's an addiction, it's so horrible, it ruins people's lives.

They don't get it. People take those things to escape a bleak reality. If life sucks for people, and for so many people it can, they find a means of getting out of it.

People think, oh let's solve it by creating drug treatment centres, counsellors, etc. but ultimately that's like putting a bucket on a floor when the roof is leaking. When the bucket gets full, society replace it with another bucket. And so on, forever. They never bother fixing the roof. That's what society is doing. Obsessed with treating the symptoms rather than the causes of people's problems.

Build more public gardens. Make houses more cheerful, paint them in colours. Pay some talented musicians to play uplifting music on the streets in areas where there are high rates of depression. Do something. But no this stupid society just crawls along, carrying on being complacent and unimaginative.

I totally agree.

Also, the problem exists on a personal level. People always look for ways to use others to make their own lives better. They don't think of the consequences. They don't think of what they can do for the other. They want their own good above all else. Not just strangers, but also friends, families, people who are supposed to love each other. Whenever something's not right, they always find the other at fault. They never think of the possibility that things can be solved, happiness can be achieved and maintained with minimal effort. They rather discard everything that isn't perfect, destroying two lives in the process: their own, and the one's who's been discarded and left alone. And then what do you do alone? You start smoking, drinking, or maybe using drugs. And then society labels you for not being perfect, making it all worse. You end up in therapy. You end up being "different". You end up being "in need for counselling". In the end, it all leaves you feeling more empty and left alone than ever before. No therapy can help you, because your problems are rooted in the failure of your relationships that were supposed to be lasting and meaningful, not in some sort of superficial therapy group.

No one cares about their loved ones. Everybody is alone. Sometimes all you need is a hug, but you get labelled, discarded and left to rot instead. That's the main problem, I think.

Sorry for the long post.

Yeah I totally agree with you too. Therapy and being made to feel different can be really upsetting. As you put it, it's often superficial. If only there were more genuine friends and understanding family members out there!

I tend to use drugs to isolate myself from... myself. I scare myself with how much I despise myself. When I'm me, I do horrible things to myself. But I won't take the pills that therapists give me. I refuse them, because they are... awful. I'd rather know what the side effects are of stuff I've already taken for years rather than have something that's socially acceptable..

I'm sorry that you feel that way. What makes you despise yourself?

Agreed on all counts.

Exactly, and what's even scarier is they are starting to do this with physical problems as well as psychological ones. I was on the brunt of this with chronic pain. All the specialists could talk about was "management." I kept asking - manage what? What's wrong? Where is this pain coming from, and how can I fix it? But all they ever did was prescribe heavier and heavier courses of painkillers and other treatments into a "pain management plan."
I ended up finding a surgeon who would work with my research, had surgery to remove a malfunctioning abdominal organ, and the pain was fixed. No pain, no drugs, no "management."
After that someone cynically commented that there's less profit in curing illness. You cure the illness, and that's it. Finished. Treating symptoms can be a life long regimen of pills, doctors appointments, scans and tests, treatments etc.
Doing this with psychological ills is even easier. Prescribing pills, changing pills, lifelong therapy, etc. It never gets down to what is really wrong, what's going on, and how to cure you.

Indeed. I'm attending a talk about this next week, and intend to bring up this term "addiction." Because for me it wasn't addiction, it was aversion. I didn't like substances, in fact I hated alcohol, but I did it because I had to avoid my own mind at all costs - because if I didn't, it would eat me alive. I didn't abuse substances because I craved the substance, I did it because I could not bear being exposed to myself.
And if you really get into why you cannot bear your own mind, when you face up to that and really take steps to fix whatever it is in your head that is literally killing you, then there is no need to treat symptoms anymore, because there are no symptoms. These drugs don't fix problems unless it is a straight out simple neurochemical imbalance. All they do is mask symptoms, ignoring the real cause behind them.
There are a few good therapists that aim to follow this model - find out what is wrong with you and end it, but most just drag on, talking about things that don't really matter and don't make a difference to you, and all you do is come back next week. Real therapists are rare.

Yes, but I would argue that real happiness is not that which relies on relationships with others to exist. Nothing is lasting. Even meaning. If your happiness is going to be dependent on things, on an expectation that these things will be eternal and stable and never change and always be there as they are, and by contrast will turn into suffering when these things are removed form you, then it is still a superficial happiness in my view.

This is interesting.

What can be done about the doctors (at least in the UK) who get paid a lot for prescribing drugs from the drug companies?

Even my local mental health centre tried to tell me that I couldn't use their services (I was just looking for a social worker) unless I took medication, and that the psychiatrists were only there to adjust peoples' medications (not the pharmacist who visited??). I have pretty good critical thinking skills, and I detected this BS as soon as it left their mouths.

People should probably start a protest movement against psychiatric drugs. They're not the answer. I have a brother who takes them and I accept for some people they can in the short term provide relief, but he's seriously physically ill now from taking them. He's also manipulated by a ruthless social care and health system to do everything he's told or he's threatened with being institutionalised. The whole system is a power trip and the way people are abused in it isn't right.

I suppose you'd be lucky just to get me into an office anymore. Therapists to me are just manipulative bastards who interrogate people. I know it's a harsh image, but that's always how it's been to me.