Drugs may be bad for you, cont. (SSRI content)

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

You'd think there'd be more behind the science of antidepressants than "it seems to work... - let's get more federal money!"

Scientists closer to understanding how Prozac works

My supervisor, btw, worked at the CAMH studying and advising on precisely this field, and I remember him saying that CAT scans of people on SSRIs and people doing Cognitive Aversion Therapy turned out to be virtually identical.

I wouldn't go in for either, honestly, but I still find it interesting. We do have more power over our own brains than is typically recognised or acknowledged.

(As usual, btw, it's mice that get subjected to the final tests....)

[Lazlo]

How come mice get to have all the fun.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Luck of the draw. We get experimented on for good or ill.

[edger]

What is your aversion to cognitive aversion therapy? (Just curious)

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I first ran into it in the evangelical Christian world, where everything smacks of self-domination for the purposes of some higher abstract principle. In a word, it's always struck me as to auto-manipulative, like a kind of trick you play on yourself to arrive at pre-determined ends - and who, in the end, really establishes those ends, nobody knowing where in life things can really end up?

It's a bit like that (cheap and horribly reductionistic) trope about the difference between Hindu and Buddhist meditation - the former aims to focus the mind, drug-like, on a single point, whereas the latter tries to open the mind outwards - and be open to surprise at what happens along the way. In the interests of the latter, I'd rather see what else is going on in the world, rather than predicate my own world on what I can willfully control going into my own consciousness.

[edger]

Hard to argue with that, and truthfully I don't know much about it. However, it's got to be worth considering over pumping yourself full of SSRI's.

However, is it not wise to challenge one's own negative assumptions that may have accumulated over years of experience, thereby altering the way in which one perceives an incidence, a gesture, etc.? Or atleast actively choose to try and "will" yourself to focus on the positive. To me it seems as though that could actually fall in line with the Buddhist tradition (also something that I do not know much about) in that ones perception and emotional reaction is quantified/qualified by what is going on in the rest of the world (i.e. experiences that have shaped "the self" through time)

Is cognitive therapy different from cognitive aversion therapy?

[Lazlo]

Luck of the draw. We get experimented on for good or ill.

We? Obviously nobody has had the heart to tell you, but you're not a mouse. Mildly retarded maybe, but not a mouse.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Ah, then it's as I thought it was - I can continue to aspire to be a mouse, pure and simple (mental debilitation notwithstanding).