Problematic Verisimilitude 20

One of my friends told me about how her seven year old sister is on Ritalin. Seven years old. When I was seven years old, I was a bit busy with waking up early on Saturday mornings so that I could catch an hour extra of cartoons.

Apparently, this phenomena is sweeping the nation. People are being prescribed antidepressants at earlier stages of their life, on a wider scale, then ever before.

Why is this? Why are children being put on drugs that change the way they think?

Seriously. At seven years old, your average child doesn't have problems that require medication. Yes, there are children out there who are indeed in need of something to balance them out. But those children are few and far between, and as easy to spot as a nudist in a nunnery.

We do not need to be putting every other child on something to mellow them out. Ritalin is still a very iffy drug. I have lingering suspicions that more then a few children lose a lot of independent thought after they've been put on the Great Balancer.

But it's not just children that are being affected by the over-prescription of pharmaceuticals. I work at a library, so I feel that I'm more then just a little qualified to point out the fact that every time I open a newspaper, there's a new reports about a suicide related to antidepressants. Sweeping the nation like the phrase `wardrobe malfunction', teens and post-teens are being prescribed antidepressants. Truly disturbing numbers of them are ending their lives.

I'm sure that they are being put on the drugs in true worry of their parents_but isn't it just a little odd that drugs prescribed to keep a person from depression seems to plunge them into the deepest part of it? With the exclusion of the automobile and tobacco industry, we don't tolerate products that end our lives. We take an especial dislike to products that do the exact opposite of what they are intended to do.

Why are we allowing this? This flurry of suicides works against the basic ideals of capitalism (which it seems the ruling body is running itself by), it takes the lives of our youngest and brightest, and lowers the bar for the next generation.

Is it because parents are more and more afraid of their offspring? I wouldn't be surprised. `Rehabilitation centres' have been in the business of breaking pre-adults into the mold for decades. It's just that now, you don't have to get rid of your kin to get them to no longer scare you. Now, you just slip little pills into their drinks. Sure, you have to put up with odd behavior, but hey, what's the worst that could happen, right? Say, where'd the trusty family rope go?

The older have been afraid of the younger since we could fling our own feces. That isn't going to change. As it was shown in an older version of my column, the world isn't really getting worse, it's just that there's more of us to do bad now. So why is this whole pill thing so_viral with parents?

The problem may transcend them. This may have something more to do with doctors that are a little too willing to diagnose a peculiar mind with something to stop those peculiar thoughts and actions. Are they trying to line their pockets, or just overly neophobic?

This is a multifaceted problem_parents afraid of their children, doctors afraid of the poorhouse, and other avenues that a neophyte columnist like myself has no really ability to delve into. But I can tell you that this all revolves around fear. People are afraid of the future, so they will try to make it just like the past.

I see a future where drugs that tweak with our minds are put into our food much like fluorine in the drinking water. I see countless children with blank faces, walking from point a to point b in their mandatory uniforms. I see parents swallowing down their discomfort when they walk into their children's rooms and see bare walls.

These drugs change the way we think. In time, they will take away our ability to truly think at all. I see a future where all the kids have lost their souls.

So there you have it. Tomorrow is never coming. We killed it in the crib with pacifiers dipped in drug cocktails. I hope that you feel safe, parents. Your child will never, ever frighten you with something new.