Brave new world
First published in SX News, 5 April, 2007
©Katrina Fox
With so many of the GLBT community on anti-depressants, have they become just another 'lifestyle' drug? asks Katrina Fox.
"I don't understand ... why you don't take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You'd forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. So jolly."
That line is one of many from Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World that refers to the happiness-inducing drug taken by all members of a futuristic society in order for them to function in their day-to-day life. Psychiatrists in the 1960s used Huxley's book as a model for their claim that anti-depressants and other drugs were a useful and necessary way to control the emotions of people whose dysfunction arose from the oppressive nature of modern society.
Nowadays, that brave new world seems to have arrived, with anti-depressants in myriad forms handed out routinely by GPs and other mental health professionals to almost anyone complaining of some kind of psychological distress. It's rare to find a lesbian who hasn't either taken or been offered anti-depressants and increasingly gay men are popping prescription happy pills to keep their lives on an even keel. It's a goldmine for the pharmaceutical companies, but what about the effects on the consumer?
While it's true that some people's lives have been improved in the short or long term, it also begs the question: Have these man-made, mood-altering substances become a symbol of an increasingly morally and ethically bankrupt society that places such unnatural stresses and demands on its members that they must subject themselves to what essentially amounts to a chemically-induced lobotomy?
Michael*, 30, believes so. "We are becoming these machines - to start up you take caffeine in the morning, to feel all right about life you take anti-depressants and when you go to sleep you take a nightcap," he says. "It can't be good for the body that for everything you want to do or feel, you have to take something for it."
There were two periods in his life when Michael took anti-depressants: once when he was 17 and they "did nothing for me"; and again four years ago.
"I'd moved to Sydney, had some health issues, a relationship that went really badly, and I remember struggling to get out of bed," he recalls. "So a GP put me on Zoloft and it was a really horrible experience. I started to feel really strange, on edge, shattered and jumpy. They tried me on another drug, Prothaiden, which sent me into a weird emotional state where I felt like I wasn't in control of anything; it really unsettled me."
After a few months, Michael made the decision to come off the drugs. "I decided the only real lasting way to deal with something like that is do your own thing and make your own changes," he says. "The experience really scared me."
Astrid*, 45, on the other hand, resisted anti-depressants for years due to feminist arguments against them ("keeping dissatisfied women in their place"), coupled with a history of witnessing "gory psychiatric treatments" of a schizophrenic sibling, but now feels in hindsight they would have been beneficial. She's been on them now for the past year and feels her quality of life has improved, yet even this doesn't stop her from recognising the political implications of a society whose citizens are subdued by drugs.
"It's a fair enough observation," she says in response to the suggestion that anti-depressants have become simply another lifestyle drug. "We are in a situation where we have lowered expectations of what our responsibilities are to ourselves," she proffers. "We've got this 'gratification can be now', throwing-money-into-things, highly urbanised lifestyle and marketing strategies by a society dominated by consumerism. The negative use of the Anthony Robbins stuff is 'Fuck you, I'll do anything to get ahead and won't tell anyone how I'm doing it' - the lack of generosity around coping strategies. There's not enough lifestyle support to challenge those models; we've been turned into a service culture: 'Smile, what can I do for you today, sir?'"
Just as caffeine has become a legally acceptable drug that is used to participate in the 24/7 lifestyle, anti-depressants may not be far behind, Astrid says. "It's about what tools you're expected to use to exist in certain regimes."
It's a difficult scenario, with no easy answers. Astrid's life and the lives of many other people have undoubtedly improved through the use of anti-depressants, while others have been devastated by them. One thing is for sure - Huxley's vision of the 'future' is, 75 years later, disturbingly accurate.
Our brave new world is described with sinister precision in the words of the appropriately named character, World Controller Mustapha Mond: "And if ever ... anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are."
* names have been changed for privacy reasons.
SX News is one of Australia's leading gay and lesbian arts, entertainment, news and culture magazines For more information visit the magazine's website at www.sxnews.com.au
