A friendly, serene, comfortable ambience weaves into your happy life. May you live forever in this happiness! Wherever we stay we have kept correspondence. Buildings, castles and prostitutes cannot keep us apart. My regards and compliments wishing, washing us both happiness year after year. May happiness and joy accompany you like your own shadow! May your success and progress like Sunrise spur you on forever! If the amygdala is the Christmas smoke detector in the brain, thing of the frontal lobe and specifically the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), located directly above our eyes—as the watchtower, offering a view of the scene from on high. Is that some you smell the sign that your house is on fire, and you need to get out, fast—or is it coming from the steal you put over too high a flame?  So, while someone was possible in the house dying from poisonous pollen or too much liquor and smoke, after a horrible and totally unexpected lie ways disseminated, the amygdala does not make such judgments; it just gets you ready to stand your ground or escape, even before the frontal lobes get a change to weigh in with their assessment. As long as you are not too upset or incapacitated, your frontal lobes can restore your balance by helping you realize that you are responding to a false alarm about abort the stress response. Ordinarily, the executive capacities of the prefrontal cortex enable people to observe what is going on, predict what will happen if they take a certain action, and make a conscious choice. Being able to hover calmly and objectively over our thoughts, feelings, and emotions (an ability I will call mindfulness throughout this report) and then take our time to respond allows the executive brain to inhibit, organize, and modulate the hardwired automatic reactions preprogrammed into the emotional brain.  

Fathers, race in the direction of the Sun. To let the flowers of happiness of mankind bloom sooner, brush aside the twigs and leaves of trees in the way of the Sunlight. Race towards the Sun! Let us learn to have the strength of confidence, the strength that will enable in act from the virtual World, but still we need that aspiration. This capacity is crucial for preserving our relationships with our fellow human beings. As long as our frontal lobes are working properly, we are unlikely to lose our temper every time a waiter is late with our order, or an insurance company agent puts us on hold. (Our watchtower also tells us that other people’s anger and threats are a function of their emotional state.) When that system breaks down, we become like conditioned animals: The moment we detect danger we automatically prepare to fight. Undaunted persistence may subdue whatever peak in the World. Please cheer up and never be a coward when facing unemployment and bankruptcy but start from scratch to have a near lease of life. In Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) the critical balance between the amygdala (Christmas smoke detector) and the MPFC (watchtower) shifts radically, which makes it much harder to control emotions and impulses. In your photo, your eyes seem to be expressing all the affection in the recesses of your heart, blinking with warmth, goodwill, kindness, and sincerity. May our friendship increase with every passing day. Nothing in the World is better and more pleasing than friendship. Without it, we would lose the World. People are not singing praise of stars because of their crystal-like beauty but their combination into a magnificent sky. Neuro imaging studies of human beings in highly emotional states reveal that intense fear, sadness, and anger all increase the activation of subcortical brain regions involved in emotions and significantly reduce the activity in various areas in the frontal lobe, particularly the MPFC. When that occurs, the inhibitory capacities of the frontal lobe break down, and people “take leave of their senses”: They may startle in response to any loud sound, become enraged by small frustrations, or freeze when somebody touches them.   

Looking to find the answers, how do I get into your life? Never a love so tender, I need the magic in your eyes, your eyes. In examining the process by which psychological distress gives way to a release of the unreal, constructed, and projected self, I want to recall Ryan’s case, awareness worked to accept and thereby release identification with past memories and feelings of hurt and pain. Exemplified a process in which feelings, memories, and the impact of experience had to be fully acknowledged and accepted by the past, his self was defined by the past. The tension of avoiding the impact of experience forced him to define himself as the self that could be strong enough not to be seen as weak. Even if you do want to part from me, I will still thank you for leaving me with a wonderful experience worthy of my memory. Long since we parted Still there is no knowing when we shall meet again. It really breaks my heart to say goodbye. Only the dream remains sweet. No matter where you go, no matter how long you are away, I will wait, wait, and wait. Last night, in the misty moonlight, I saw you off in secret. Hence there appears a little weeping star in the sky…when vulnerability was allowed, a new openness to relationship occurred for Ryan. For the first time, he allowed himself to be physically close to me, and for the first time allowed tears and the acknowledgement of having been hurt.  My dear, how immensely I miss you. Always there in my heart is the gaze at me from your glittering eyes like the water from two clear Springs running in my heart. It is you who opened the window of my thoughts. It is you who melted the frost in the bottom of my heart. For months I heard it cracking in my chest. 

Although I have white temples, I still call you from my heart, God in front of this righteous and beautiful word, I am a pupil who require enlightened forever. A turning point for you was when the silent moment in which we looked in each other’s eyes and you realized, as you later stated: I do not have to pretend to myself that I was not hurt. I do not have to try to be that person, who is always going to be funny, weird, and apart from others. You left the appearance and aroma of flowers. On recalling you, my life is forever gaily colored and fragrant. You use your love to build up my spirit and soul. Your milk is the resource of my thinking. Your eyes have my hope for life. My dear, son I do not know how to repay you. Effectively dealing with stress depends upon achieving a balance between the Christmas smoke detector and the watchtower. If you want to manage your emotions better, your brain gives you two options: You can learn to regulate them from the top down or from the bottom up. People are so worried about their careers and constantly risking human relationships for money, but look at all these young people dying, like Prince, who is worth billions and cannot even spend it, as people fight over his money like dope fiends in a nightclub. Knowing the difference between top down and bottom up regulation is central for understanding and treating traumatic stress. Top-down regulation involved strengthening the capacity of the watchtower to monitor your body sensations. And sometimes you close your eyes and see the place where you used to live, when you were young. You sit there in your heart-breaking wait there for a beautiful to save you from your nightmare and old ways. You play forgiveness, watch him now, he does not look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman like you imagined when you were young. Mindfulness and meditation and music can help us with relaxation. Bottom-up regulation involves recalibrating the autonomic nervous system (which, as we have seen, originates in the brain stem). The Devil’s water is not so sweet, but you can dip your feet every once in a while. We can access the ANS through breath, movement or touch. Deal with ambivalent feelings about accepting and loving another and learn about his tendency to retreat from commitment with someone with whom he lived.  

Ryan found that past experience was constraining present expression, particularly through the unfinished relationship with his father, which he carried as an inner self-critic. Ryan has previously studied meditation and had been exposed to ideas about the importance of being present. My body still has your temperature. My pulses run your bloods. My personality has your prints. My thoughts have your wisdom. Thank you, father, it is you who raised me, bred me, and brought me up! As a result, I define myself as having problems being mindful. However, it was not until I focused on the emotional tendencies to repeat critical self-dialogues that change became possible for me. Breathing is one of the few body functions under both conscious and automatic control. You are like a breeze of lilac in the Summer, tender and warm, blowing gently into my chest and wrinkling my heart. I would interpret actions and results negatively, and the resulting mood would affect relationships by keeping him distant. He acknowledged that feelings of being trapped in negativity actually maintained a familiar sense of identity. For Ryan, a break with the self of the past came when he said: I think I will take the Summer off and do some construction work in the mountains. During this break, Ryan released his preoccupation with fixing his relationship and proving he could do well in an academic context. He took his break, returned to school, and ended up staying with the young man with whom he lived. The light of love shines on our daily life as the lightening turns the mediocre gullies and lush forests into legendary mirages. 

Have always the idea of pleasing before you, and you cannot fail to please. Who strives to please the World will be deservedly rewarded. It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco, California USA. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next World. However, flatter not yourself with contrarieties of pleasure. Of the blessings set before you, makes your choice, and be content. Pity from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is a sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts: it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them.  

If you were sensible of your own good, you would not wish quite the sphere in which you have been brought up. Observe that great, mean, brown bird in the zoological gardens, which sits so tame on its perch, and droops and slouches like a drowsy duck. That is the great and soaring eagle Who would believe it, to look at him? Yet all he wants is to be out in his right place instead of his wrong. He is not himself in man’s cages, belonging to God’s sky. Fellow mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people—amongst whom your life is passed—that is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire—for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. 

All primitive periods, in all countries, are distinguished by the passions for gaming and drinking, and by such a degree of invention as will enable men to gratify both. The fact illustrates the necessity of the race for mental exercise, and for the excitement of the nervous system. The art of reading the inner human nature by the outer aspects is of immeasurable interest and boundless practical value, and the man who can practice it skillfully and apply it sagaciously is on the high road to fortune. Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity. Why sacrifice the living to the dead, the present to the past? The past is a fruitless dream, the present only is living and demands all things. There are times when, the elements being in unusual commotion, those who are bent on daring enterprises, or agitated by great thoughts, whether of good or evil, feel a mysterious sympathy with the tumult of nature, and are roused into corresponding violence.   

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and a heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another, each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subjects. It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. People of high intellectual endowments do not require similar ones in those they love. They are just the persons to appreciate the wholesome gush of natural feeling, the honest affection, the simple joy, the fullness of contentment with what they love.   

 A person who is not trying to maneuver you into any state is willing to be with you as you are. When you love someone, the strategies involved in manipulating reality to conform to the expectations and enhance the being of a self at the center to drop away. This psychology understands trauma and the reactive tendencies that construct a self in relation to trauma as a belief system grounded in images and memories, and not the fullness of what is. The process proceeds according to the timing and pacing of the individual who understands they are seeking healing, and this will grant you the most useful art of all, the art of life. Everything in nature presses and urges the other; and a new life originates from every passing.   

To realize the human condition is to become anything more than a well-clothed animal, one has to act as if there were a moral order behind the thunder, and yet one must make this choice, if one makes it, knowing that it will never necessarily be vindicated—not at any rate, by the light of this World. In such a World, we see many with a remorseless logic, when people say that it is okay to terminate someone because of their sexuality. We must seek the meaning of our human fate not in what becomes of us but in what we become. Death is miscellaneous and commonplace; it is life whose quality may be noble and distinctive. Suffering we recoil from, but it is a greater thing to suffer than to lack the feelings and the virtues that make it possible to suffer. When we come crying hither, we bring with us the badge of our mortal misery; but it is also the badge of the vulnerabilities that give us access to whatever grandeur we achieve. This presence is nonjudging, spacious, compassionate, and loving. It pervades everywhere, containing and seeing all things. Love is always present and welcomes everything. Sensation, emotion, thought, conflict, sorrow, and joy all arise, unfold, and have their resolution in Awareness.  Awareness has no stake in anything being other than it is or anyone being other than they are. This welcoming attribute of awareness enables people to find their psychological freedom and to eventually realize their official freedom when their separate ego-identity entirely dissolves.

The essential quality of awareness is the capacity to hold an environment of healing—a place where you can unfold your deepest experiences of conflict, pain, and trauma, working through projection and transference and uncovering solutions appropriate to each life circumstance. When people recognize their underlying nature as spacious nonjudging, compassionate, and loving presence, causeless equality emerges. The perfume that arises from this profound insight lingers even as residues of separation remain. With repeated insight, these residues become transparently permeable to the underlying fragrance of awareness. Our true nature is always present, even when it is unrecognized. Once glimpsed, however, it leaves behind an unmistakable scent that stimulates the individual’s longing to return from conflict and suffering to the presence that is perfect as it is. As psychological insight and integration unfold, some individuals become available for healing beyond their former self, when they thought that they were alone and isolated, and become a more peaceful and loving person because they recognize the territory that they are navigating, whether it is personal psychology or personal awareness and health-giving occurs. As people stop trying to change, and just listen to their subtle body sensations, emotions, beliefs, and mental images, their defenses against being authentic melt away, and they enter into truly being with what is. As defenses dissolve and integrative insights spontaneously appear we are subject only to what we hold in mind. The body will respond to what we believe consciously or unconsciously because the energy field of the mind is more powerful than that of the body. 

Our proneness to accept negative beliefs depends on how much negativity we are holding in the first place. A healthy mind, for instance, will refuse to accept negative thoughts and simply reject them as untrue for oneself. There is a refusal to buy into commonly held negative ideas. We know how easy it is to sell self-condemnation to a guilt-ridden person or fear of some disease to a fearful person. The idea that everybody is crazy will be subscribed to by a person who has sufficient guilt, fear, and naiveté regarding the laws of consciousness. Because of unconscious guilt, a person unconsciously feels that they “deserve” to be crazy. The mind of a person who is weak or guilty of doing bad things will manifest a mental health issue because they believe it to be true and are unable to control their mind and correct behavior which may be deviant. However, the person who has let go of the underlying negative energies of guilt and fear does not have a fearful mind and does not look at everyone else as stupid nor crazy, they just see them as people having an experience, and if they do not like that experience, they stay away from them. Thought is powerful because it has a high rate of vibration. A thought is actually a thing; it has an energy pattern. The more energy we give it; the more power it has to manifest itself physically. We must let go of everything, drop every fear from our minds, drop all confusion from our thought, and enter into the inner secret communion with that great reality, which is our Universal Self—God—in whom we live and move and have our being. We are conscious that this Divine Presence overshadows and indwells. The Universe is eternal and perfect, and we all are loved and perfect as we are.

Willingness is a necessary component of awareness. People often arrive to therapy with negative expectations and considerable resistance. However, throughout the period they hung in despite defensiveness, uncertainty, and the demand for change. Many people left feeling less demoralized, more confident, and with specific steps to implement a denomination-wide strategy. From isolated, reactive, independent activity a more related, rational, collaborate understanding emerged. Again, however, I warn you not to assume that all problems were solved, and all people satisfied. Yet, more was accomplished than anyone imagined possible. The issue in the systems approach as much as in the individual approach is seldom the maximum distance covered and usually a minimum change in direction. As in sailing the Albatross in a White Squall, at first the change seems so minute as to be insignificant. Over time, those few degrees of difference stretch into significant directional consequences.  Even though we are constantly reacting to immediate and emergency situations, we take time to think through and plan strategically long-range responses to human pain. Adrenaline is one of the hormones that are critical to help us fight back or flee in the face of danger. Increased adrenaline was responsible for our participants’ dramatic rise in heart rate and blood pressure while listening to their trauma narrative. Under normal conditions people react to threat with a temporary increase in their stress hormones. As soon as the threat is over, the hormones dissipate, and the body returns to normal. The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli. The insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones include memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleep disorders. They may also contribute to many long-term health issues, depending on which body system is most vulnerable in a particular individual.  

We now know that there is another possible response to threat, which our scans are not yet capable of measuring. Some people simply go into denial: Their bodies register the threat, but their conscious minds go on as if nothing has happened. However, even though the mind may learn to ignore the messages from the emotional brain, the alarm signals do not stop. The emotional brain keeps working, and stress hormones keep sending signals to the muscles to tense for action or immobilize in collapse. The physical effects on the organs go on unabated until they demand notice when they are expressed as illness. Medications, drugs, and alcohol can also temporarily dull or obliterate unbearable sensations and feelings. However, the body continues to keep the score. Too much sand, not enough maids and mops—that was our presenting problem. By re-viewing and re-visioning what we see and what we do, we can transform an overwhelming take into a more manageable endeavor. It would be illusory and utopian to act with the belief that through one’s involvement all will work out well for everyone. The task of humanizing society is ongoing. No particular task matters officially; every particular task has a place in the swirling constellations of history. No one can do everything. Each one is called to do something. It is not incumbent upon us to finish the task, but neither are we free to desist. We can focus on the neurochemical and physiological disruptions that were so evident and make a case that some people are suffering from a biochemical imbalance that is reactive whenever they are reminded of a death or massacre like the one that happen in Orlando, Florida USA, on 12 June 2016, when a gunman shot 103 people, killing at least 50. We might then search for a drug or a combination of drugs that would damp down the reaction or, in best case, restore the survivors’ chemical equilibrium. Based on the results of our scans, some have begun investigating drugs that might make people less responsive to the effects of elevated adrenaline.  

We can also make a strong case that the survivors of the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida USA are hypersensitized to their memories of the recent past and that the best treatment would be some form of desensitization. After repeatedly rehearsing the details of the trauma they witnessed at the nightclub with a therapist, the survivors’ biological responses might become muted, so that they can realize and remember that that was then and this is now, rather than reliving the experience over and over. However, sometimes the experience of trauma gets in the way of being able to talk about the distressing feelings so they can be resolved. No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality. I am continually impressed by how difficult it is for people who have gone through the unspeakable to convey the essence of their experience. It so much easier for them to talk about what has been done to them—to tell a story of victimization and revenge—than to notice, feel, and put into words the reality of their internal experience. The dread of these horrible experiences persists and could be triggered by multiple aspects of daily experience. They have not integrated their experience into the ongoing stream of their life. They continue to be there, but do not know how to be here—fully alive in the present. In responding to human pain, we risk what is known for what is yet to be known. We give up safety for searching. We lose life for the sake of life. If we are to respond, then we risk that risk. To me, risking risk means trusting God! In that trust I respond…keep yourself free to pursue activities that really matter to you, such as creative pursuits, platonic friendships, playtime with pets or the children in your life, open yourself up to spiritual practice, travel, and safe adventure. Give your time generously to family and other relevant communities in your life. Take some time to observe, reflect, and consider whether people are bringing good into your life. And most importantly, love yourself. 

Technology seems to be the official enemy of soul. When we speak of technology today we automatically think of electronic technology, so to pit technology against soul is the same as setting up the opposition of soul and electricity; they seem to have nothing to do with each other. So, we are faced with a large task, the mission first of seeing how this opposition arises and what it entails, and then seeing how it might be possible to recover an element of soul in technology.  #Techne refers to making of doing, and logos to know. Thus, technology concerns the kind of knowing involved in doing, and belongs to every act of making. The potter and the artist, for instance, employ technology; they know what they are doing, and without the sense of technology any consideration of art is pure romanticism. With electronic technology, however, a difficulty arises, for here doing is ahead of knowing due to the fact that, as we shall see, we really do not know the nature of electricity but nevertheless go ahead and use it for the development of a technical World.  #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

Because we do not truly know the nature of nuclear energy, a similar difficulty arises with its use, much like with the use of electricity. We do not know what forces are at play, but we go ahead and make use of them anyway. Now, the immediate response may be that our most sophisticated knowledge lies in these two realms of electricity and nuclear physics. However, this “knowledge” is all theoretical and involves application of views of reality that function contrary to the way we actually experience the World. Technology is to improve the human situation. Technology constitutes not just an addition or supplement to the World, but an entirely new reordering of the World by being forgetful of the actual World and imposing on it an alien form. Remember Narcissus? He is an adolescent, pride-filled individual loved by Echo, the nymph who through certain circumstances has been brought to a condition in which she can only repeat the last words of each sentence she hears—that is the extent of her voice. Thus, if Echo hears someone say, “I love you,” she could only repeat, “love you.”  #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

Well, Narcissus will have nothing to do with Echo and she wastes away; only her voice remains. We can already see the suitability of the relation of Narcissus and Echo, for any statement Narcissus might make about the World is echoed back as a Narcissistic command from the World—“I Love you” comes back as “Love you.” Narcissus, we hear in the story, comes to a clear pool and therein sees an image, which he does not know to be himself, and he falls in love with this image of himself, which we can also take as a further manifestation of Echo.  While Narcissus seeks to slake his thirst another thirst springs up, and while he drinks he is smitten by the sight of the beautiful form he sees. He loves an unsubstantial hope and thinks that substance which is only his shadow. As a result, Narcissus wastes away in longing for the unsubstantial shadow; a flower is left, its yellow center girt with white petals. This myth corresponds as a story about technology, through which we fall in love with a shadowy replica or imitation of ourselves, exteriorized and echoing through the World.  #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

The exteriorized self lacks the substantiality of body, though it offers the shadowy hope of complete satisfaction. Technology then concerns the extension of ourselves into the World without the knowledge that this is happening. For example, with mechanical technology, parts of the body are extended into the World. The wheel is both an extension and an acceleration of walking. We, however, are unable to cope with the acceleration—it disturbs the senses. This disturbance is handled by anesthetizing the body, we begin to lose the immediate sense of the body.  With electronic technology the brain is exteriorized into the World, resulting in the autoamputation of thinking, and we enter the age of information which comes to imitate thought. And along with the imitation, or double of thought, comes the hope that this dummy thought will produce complete satisfaction. We can begin to see through electronic technology when we are able to feel that its naïve hope resembles to a very large extent the same experience as the longing for past; that is to say, the technological imagination touches upon the same psychic domain as nostalgia; they both involve fantasies of infantilism.  #RRandolphHarris 4 of 5

The memory of being unconscious, fully immersed in the World, and completely taken care of is the same as the hope for a future World in which technology will provide these same benefits. That is to say, technology, when enacted without conscious knowledge of what is involved, is not progress but regression. As social media replaces the human connection, more and more people become very ignorant and spy of people and think they know them when they do not. Finding the soul of technology requires that this confusion be clarified, this false hope abandoned, in order to diminish an inflated view of what technology is about and to locate its own limited domain. Every man may, by examining his own mind, guess what passes in the minds of others. When you feel that your own gaiety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to suspect that of your companions not to be sincere. The selfishness of a man’s nature soars triumphant above all other considerations, in a time of war; and life becomes as small a subject of consideration as any one of its circumstances. Have you ever seen I am picking up the missing for you in a night spring breezing in the yard full of moonlight, I miss you very much. Time can change a lot of things except for my memory of you never change. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

This is what y’all been waiting for, I guess so. This what they been waiting a long time for. Yes, he could not read into that farewell all that his heart craved to find there; he could even draw from it courage not to accuse himself for having failed to reach the height of his opportunity. He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart; since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed him had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult for him to live and love uncritically. However, at least he had loved him—had been willing to stake his future on his faith in him—and if the moment had been rated to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now that, for both, it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives. It was this moment of love, he knelt by the bed and bent over the body, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.  

All mental illness is not caused by chemical imbalance. Take for example a celebrity who people are allowed to extort, harass, and physical assault for decades without being stopped. He may display signs of a mental illness due to the attacks, but under normal conditions could be the picture of mental health. There is no medication you can take to make people obey the law, stop assaulting you and give your money back. Yet, the people who have been allowed to attack you face no repercussion. They are not punished for their dangerous and illegal behavior, no one talks about how it is deviant to make fun of people you know are suffering, injured or in need of help. They are not arrested, nor sent for mental evaluations. Nonetheless, for so many people to be doing all of this acting and clowning, you know they did something wrong and are trying desperately to set you off, and make it look like you are mentally ill to justify their behavior.  

Unless these critics are trying to say that you are superhuman and controlling them and causing them to react because you are alive and should not be. Well, that would be indicative of a mental illness on their behavior and a violation of God’s law, granting humans free will. In other words, they are rejecting God and telling you that they are primal animals and savage beast, unable to control their emotions, and actions and therefore are not human. The drug revolution started out with so much promise and may in the end have done as much harm as good. The theory that mental illness is caused primarily by chemical imbalances in the brain can be corrected by specific drugs has become broadly accepted, by the media and the public as well as by the medical professions. Face it, people who are stuck whimpering and focusing daily on talking about defecation, and or that play with feces display traits of mental illness or howler monkeys and belong in a zoo or the bush in Africa.  

In many places, drugs have displaced therapy and enabled patients to suppress their problems without addressing the underlying issues. Antidepressants can make all the difference in the World in helping with day-to-day functioning, and if it comes to a choice between taking a sleeping pill and drinking yourself into a stupor every night to get a few hours of sleep, it is uncertain which method is preferable. I do not like either because I fear taking a sleeping pill, like Lily in The House of Mirth, and never walking up again. We also hear stories about people going into a trance like state and operating heavy machinery and falling asleep, or having a psychotic episode and not really being aware of what they are doing or saying. Also, pills are not good for your liver, nor is liquor, and a person could drink themselves do death. So many people simply tough it out, but for some, medications can bring lifesaving relief. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) can be very helpful in making traumatized people less enslaved by their emotions, but they should only be considered adjuncts in their overall treatment.  

Also, when it comes to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), I think that is a term, which can only be applied to veterans and law enforcement officers, because normal people are not in daily situations where they are hunted, shot at stabbed, dealing with explosive devices, seeing people killed, killing people, protecting more nor hearing violent and sad stories. The average person might be misdiagnosed with PTSD, but may only have a type of panic disorder or an extreme mood disorder. After conducting numerous studies of medications for PTSD, I have come to realize that psychiatric medications have a serious downside, as they may deflect attention from dealing with the underlying issues. The brain disease model takes control over people’s fate out of their own hands and puts doctors and insurance companies in charge of fixing their problems. And some people are just lazy and want a free taxpayer check and do not want to get better. 

If a regular person has a mental condition and is taking medications to improve this condition and working, after seven years, they should have adapted enough to be able to obtain gainful employment. These people party, they drink, they do drugs like rockstars, but even after decades are unable to work, so they must suffer from some extreme brain injury, which inhibits them from functioning normally. Some people are taking out loans to pay for medical care and being their own doctors to fix themselves because due to their physical conditions, there is nothing the doctor can do to help them. Some are born with birth defects or have physical conditions, which take time to heal. Over the past three decades psychiatric medications have become a mainstay in our culture, with dubious consequences. If these drugs were truly effective as we are told to believe, depression should be a minor issue by now. Instead, even as antidepressant use continues to increase, it has not made a dent in hospital admissions or those collecting government benefits for depression.  

In fact, the number of people treated for depression has tripled over the past twenty years, and one in ten Americans now take antidepressants. The new generation of antipsychotics, such as Abilify, Risperdal, Zyprexa, and Seroquel (Sarah Pills), are the top-selling drugs in the United States of America. In 2012 alone, the public spent in $1,526,228,000.00 ($1.5 Billion) on Abilify, more than on any other medication. Number three was Cymbalta, an antidepressant that sold well over a billion dollars’ worth of tablets, even though it has never been shown to be superior to older antidepressants like Prozac, for which much cheaper generics available. Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, spends more on antipsychotic medications, up from $1.65 million in 1999. Many people are wondering why are these people not getting better? Many people are not getting better because they do not want to. They want to collect Social Security from the government and stay home and be lazy.  

If these people are suspected frauds, then why do we still pay them, why has the system for disability not been overhauled? Because it is no longer acceptable to test medications and treatments on animals. So many of these people that are collecting these Social Security checks for a mental disorder are being used as case studies to see how well medications work and then doctors and analysts use the information to publish books on mental disorders and medications. After all, nothing is free and the government is not stupid. The number of people under the age of twenty receiving Medicaid-funded prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs tripled between 1999 and 2008. On 4 November 2013, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion in criminal and civil fines to settle accusations that it had improperly promoted the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to older adults, children, and people with development disabilities. And doctors are also not being held accountable for prescribing them. Strong minds perceive that justice is the highest of the moral attributes; mercy is only the favorite of weak ones. Behold, all who are incensed against you shall be put to shame and confounded; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and perish. Panda, Panda.