The Bible has precious little to say about substances other than alcohol.
I am not a professinal in ANY way, shape or form, so my advice here is second hand and layman.
I worked in a pharmacy for almost two years when I was younger. I met with and talked to numerous pharmacists, doctors, and nurses. I can tell you one piece of advice they ALL agreed on: take as little medicine as you possibly can. The less, the better.
They also had a LOT of negative things to say about the way Americans use drugs (I worked in the US at the time). They HATED ADHD drugs with a passion, and hoped that they would be labeled illegal.
I took anti-depressant drugs for a brief period of time when I was younger, and the pharmacists recommended I quit. One pharmacist, who was also a pastor of a local Baptist church, highly recommended that I quit using them; he felt they were unnecessary.
There are also studies linking suicide with anti-depressants (but, supposedly, these people were already depressed anyway).
For the VAST majority of all medicines, the exact mechanism by which they work is listed as unknown. Check your package inserts, you know, that really small folded up piece of paper that looks horribly borning and technical. Read how it says your medicine works, and most will say 'The exact mechanism by which this medication works is unknown.'
As unknown, we really do not know the long-term effects of the drugs we are taking. The motto of the day should be, if it's not necessary for your health, think long and hard about whether to take the medicine or not.
My anti-depressant made me lose weight from an already skinny frame, and it made me feel strangely happy (it made me act differently, and even stupidly at times).
I agree with much that fox had to say.
That being said, My life has been destroyed by prescriptions drugs, starting with "psychotropic" meds.
I won't go into the spill, because its long, but in a nutshell, when I got divorced (something that most people would normally get depressed for anyway) I ended up on a roller coaster of diagnosese, (%5 different ones?) as well as meds, then one of the medications which was a new "miracle" drug, ended up inducing body wide chronic pain. I struggled with my job, and trying to jump through all the hoops, that were placed in front of me, and ended up on pain meds, in a vain attempt to keep what was a crummy job in the first place, well Guess what, one of those medications caused some sort of severe allergic like/whithdrawall type reaction, which has basically crippled, me, and I not only lost my crummy job, but now I can't really do much else either.
So while I am not saying never see the doctor, and never take any pills, make goood and sure its not something you will get over yourself, first, and research, Many people are quick to call mental illnesses a disease, etc, but ask the very same doctors about the demons Jesus cast out, and what do you suppose will be their reply?
Psychiatry, is far diferent than Medical doctors, in that its mostly based on the opinions of a hand full of men, rather than any real research.
Plus the field is in a Rapid state of change, so much so that in just a few short years old text books become completely obsolete(I ised to buy into it, so i know for sure, its terrifying, if not discusting how much the "field" has changed in the past 20-30 years.
I do not have a reference so if anyone else does, I would love to hear it, because i have been called out on it before, But I heard somewhere that the US uses 90% of the GLOBES psychiatric medication.
Chew on that a bit before you go off and pop some pills.
Hi there.
