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Saturday, February 6, 2010

Medication Nation

Big pharma rejoice. You have joined forces with big brewers, wineries, and distillers to deliver the knockout blow. We are a nation of zombies.

Please read this clip. I am going to try and verify the sources if I can.

. The Drugging of America

The fifth tributary that helped to create our deluge of disaster is both a cause and an effect of America's social breakdown. This is the numbing of Americans with psychotropic drugs. In 2006, Americans, who make up approximately 6 percent of the world's population, consumed 66 percent of the world's supply of antidepressants. In 2002, more than 13 percent of Americans were taking Prozac alone. Prozac is one of thirty available antidepressants. Anti-anxiety drugs, such as Zoloft, are so widely prescribed that in the year 2005, the $3.1 billion sales of Zoloft exceeded the sales for Tide detergent.

Many of these drugs, which are also called "cosmetic drugs" or "life-enhancing drugs," are diagnosed for loneliness, sadness, life transitions, or concentration on task performance. They have been "normalized" through extensive direct-to-consumer advertising and marketing to doctors who are financially rewarded for recommending them to colleagues. Regulations that once restrained the widespread promotion and sales of these powerful drugs have been relaxed to the point of near nonexistence. The United States is the only Western nation that permits direct-to-consumer drug advertising. We are also the only nation without price controls on drugs. Psychiatric drugs are so ubiquitous that the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in America, and antidepressants are their most profitable products.

I have long suspected this. I used to teach mental illness and was quite active in mental health issues. People don't make a habit of disclosing their dependencies or addictions. We pass laws such as HIPA which help cloak that dependency. We have been marketed drugs and booze to such an extent that we are virtually incapacitated as a nation. Really. I believe it is that widespread.

I could not obtain any measure of emotional freedom until I freed myself from the arcane idea that booze or psychotropic drugs (prescription or otherwise) were going to make my life better. This does not mean that there are not people who suffer from legitimate and in some cases, incapacitating mental illness. I know a few. And clearly, there are millions who don't need booze or dope to live their lives but still do so. I know a few more of those.

Emotional freedom works. It is only a concept until you put it into practice. It is a spiritually correct way of living your life without suffering emotional damage or turning to booze or drugs to solve problems that really...are quite manageable if you just develop the tools to do so.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Can You Ever Completely Dismantle Ego?

If your ego is the biggest barrier to happiness, can you simply get rid of it? Probably not.

At best all you can do is gain consciousness; awareness that it exists. You can alter and change ego but I don't think you can eliminate or completely dismantle it.

I am committed to this practice each day. It is difficult. Every once in awhile, old emotions rear their ugly head inside of me. That old black magic. Today my ability to recognize, harness, and process negative emotions quickly is greatly enhanced.

As I write, I am aware of the ego contained within my words. I simply can't escape that. I have to accept that risk if I want to help others achieve happiness. If I was here selling snake oil, or writing simply because my ego required it, I wouldn't write. I don't write to hear myself talk, to impress anyone, to hurt or diminish anyone. Those are negative and ego driven emotions and I am working hard to eliminate them.

My experience has shown me that virtually all of my old belief systems were ego driven and insane. They were the product of an unconscious life that worked nominally-until it didn't. I see that unconscious behavior all around me every day. And I have to let those people be who they are. They haven't found the ultimate trump card.

To intuitively know what is right. To love those who others hate. To realize that the biggest problem that you are going to have all day is you. Every day.

Clinging to old ego driven belief systems, requires you to defend them. As you do, you engage in one up and diminishing behavior. Behavior that you know is intuitively wrong. And the reason we do it? We simply don't know a better way. We have not emotionally evolved to treat others humanely. We take all discourse personally. If someone disagrees with an idea of ours, we believe they disagree and thus they don't like- us. We take that personally and launch personally diminishing counterattacks, challenging intelligence, credibility, labeling others, engaging in any number of hurtful and vicious word attacks.

That type of conduct is intuitively wrong. I can actually feel it. And if I am aware of it, and committed to this process, I simply have to accept it and let it go. I can't engage in any discourse that purposefully or unintentionally hurts someone else. The best I can do, is stay on point and focused on a subject. When I sense that those boundaries are being over run, I must dis-engage.

And I am ok with that. As so often is the case now, ego and happiness are often mutually exclusive. I understand that- there was a time not so long ago- when I didn't.