why cannot I accept medication but accept coin laundry and internet?

I find myself immersed in those thoughts day in and day out.

How did bipolar people survive before?

How did migraineurs survive before?

They must have survived to pass their genes on to us.

Somehow I cannot accept (easily) the idea of using the modern benefit of bipolar and migraine meds.

But when I think of the internet or coin laundry, they are modern conveniences, too, and I never think twice about using them.

What is different about medications? Why is it difficult to accept? I am sure I am not alone. Is it before medications are something you take inside your body, while the internet and washing machines exist outside?

I also find myself feeling compassion for people who lived in the past - all the time. But, until I started composing this post, I did not feel compassion for people who currently live in the third world countries, without access to healthcare. People who lived in the past have all died - they cannot benefit from my compassion. Maybe it is not really compassion, but simply my trying to imagine myself living back then, and suffering.

I do have a daily gratitude practice now, and I do feel grateful for my medications and for the medications my beloved are taking, but at the same time there is this constant nagging thought that somehow I should be suffering unassisted.

Do you think that if you were in physical pain that you are supposed to just suffer? and not medicate yourself with pain meds????
I don't see any difference.
A diabetic should not take their insulin......
meds are meds and we need them.
Maybe I misunderstood what you are saying.
bizi

My dad was dx'd with diabetic in 2013. He takes insulin. I would not deny him insulin in my mind. I think you are right in that the physical versus mental pain is the issue for me.

The internet and coin laundry are immensely effective and efficient compared to psychotropic medications, which are blunt and overpriced tools of inconsistent efficacy and often harmful side effects. Wait until the washers and dryers in the laundromat can automatically charge their operating fees to your bank account by scanning the bar code tattooed on your forehead.

yes... also, if you search for something on Google and your neighbor searches at the same time, both of you will see the same ranking of results, but if you take the same psychotropic medications, then in general you will obtain vastly different results.

My washers and dryers already read a chip card my landlord loads for me, so we are not that far from your picture of the future...

Wrong thread. I don't know what this is about.

People in the past had no medication but survived anyway, so why should we take it now when it's available?

Why are washing machines different? Why is using a washing machine okay now, even if we didn't have that in the past and survived?

What is the difference between the two?

I think that's what it's about, p.

People in the past were locked up and filed away. Insane asylums were everywhere. Getting sent away - even for 'melancholy' was common. Fortunately most of these facilities have been shut down.

History is full of examples of those with mental illness - take the witches of Salem as an example. Take the Spanish Inquisition as and example.

Don't forget too that people didn't live as long to begin with.

Fast forward to today. Many people go undiagnosed. They live difficult unstable and turbulent lives. How many people have you encountered are considered 'high strung' or 'excentric'? My own mother was undiagnosed bipolar. I recall her living with a great deal of depression. I also recall being scared of her instability and when she would become 'difficult'.

I don't believe the numbers of MI are increasing, rather medicine is recognizing them and more diagnoses are happening.

Modern medicine is a crapshoot bludgeon. It's a dramatic answer to a dramatic problem. Niceties such as laundry and the Internet are life-changing sure, but not as life-changing as knocking about with your brain chemistry. Best of luck in your sojourn.

Hey Rasps,
Still confused. Maybe even more so.
Hey, you tried to make a person out of this donkey.
Nice try , but no cigar. LuV. Rock On.

I, too, think about 'then' versus 'now.' And I also think about 3rd-world countries and how I'm so fortunate to have access to medication and certain life conveniences (such as washing machines), and how bad I feel for those who don't have such access.

Well, no one has a perfect answer for such questions. It's almost as though we all have to go on faith...faith that we are where we need to be at any given time. Or something like that.

As justafriend pointed out, time was many people spent lifetimes in a psychiatric hospital - or were killed for their mental illnesses. And people in history, their lifespan expectancy was so much shorter than ours are.

Sometimes I just thank the universe for having access to psych meds. No, they are not perfect, but when I remember back to what my life was like without meds...it makes me sad...my life would have been much easier, had I had access to meds from a young age.

Go figure - now breakfast feels incomplete because I do not take meds with it! (I take Geodon with dinner because it is absorbed with a 500 cal meal). One day I cannot accept meds, another day it is funny to eat but not pop a pill.