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If you remove the pain of anxiety, you remove the desire to fix the solution of anxiety.

Exactly. Just as the pain you feel when you place your hand too close to the stove warns you that it's time to move your hand, emotional pain warns you that it's time to re-examine your beliefs or thinking patterns.

I'm of the opinion that the "mood enhancing" pharmaceutical drugs are merely socially-accepted forms of escapism, and, at their essence, they aren't truly better "solutions" than alcohol or heroin. They treat the symptom, not the underlying problem. And worse still, they mask the underlying problem and allow the patient to avoid dealing with it. If you have a bone sticking out of your arm, you can probably mask the pain with enough morphine... but that's not going to help you much in the long run.

I find the whole trend of "fixing" emotional pain with drugs to be very disturbing. Life always gives us the lessons we need, and spiritual growth always involves some pain -- the fact that this new breed of doctor tells their patient to simply avoid the lesson altogether is counter-productive to individual growth.

In my family, we have a variety of problems: ADD, Bipolar syndrome, Obsessive-compulsive disorder, and clinical depression.

Using meds not merely a form of escapism for all people.

It's too easy to lump the problems of a person who is unhappy because they are living a lifestyle guaranteed to make them unhappy with people who need meds to function properly.

I have a son who is ADD and has SAD and tried to kill himself last year. My brother without his meds will sit and comb his hair all day fugued out staring at the mirror when the stress gets bad. My niece has both ADD and Bipolar syndrome. My husband has clinical depression and is an adult with ADD.

It's not all in their heads. It's in their bodies. They aren't escaping. They are trying very, very hard to cope well.

There are people out there who want the doctor to give them a magic pill to make their unhappiness go away. Pills don't do that.

But for those who are out there with "mental" problems that are physical illnesses (i.e., aren't of their own creating by lifestyle choices, or short term situational things), medicine is there. A friend of mine started going psychotic because she has developed a massive vitamin b-12 deficiency. My sister-in-law will spend the rest of her days getting medicine to treat her bi-polar condition. There is not much difference, except the meds used. It's still the body causing mental effects.

Don't forget there are real needs, and not everybody is escaping.

What if your hand is hurting and there's nothing that is hurting it?
You could have a nerve disorder.

With brain disorders, there is no reason for the pain, because the brain isn't working right. Or do you believe the brain is the one organ that never fails?

BTW, drugs for depression aren't mood enhancers. They aren't at all like uppers and downers, and if working right, shouldn't interfere with normal emotions, which means, if bad things happen, you still experience emotional distress. Like NORMAL PEOPLE.

For most people taking drugs for mental illness, that's all they want-- to be normal.