“In a healthier environment most people would not need chronic antidepressants or anxiolytics” is a statement about our current environment, not a statement about whether any person in particular needs a med.

This is a subtweet but not of any one person in particular.

But I think it does some harm that sad or anxious people living in a poisonous world are told in this corner of Twitter to fetishize chemical purity.

It actually attributes way too much power to psychiatric medications which are not magical and have benefits and risks like any medication or indeed any food.

Further, making massive generalizations about One Weird Trick you can use to be psychically well vastly underestimates how complex and wicked (a technical term!) the psychic effects of modernity are.

MFers will talk about SSRIs being over prescribed. Sure. Okay. But they are inevitably thinking about themselves. Or maybe a close friend or family member. Very few have any idea of the current breadth and depth and variety of unwellness around them.

That female prison guard who just got concussed and doesnt have a tribe and can’t work because she can’t get out of bed...what are you gonna do for her? You gonna physically remove her to sunshine and ease? You gonna buy her a family?

The entitled PMC dude who bet on a constant upward trajectory and now finds himself through economic or medical chance unnecessary and unable to be of service to his kids or community...what do you have for him?