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Originally posted by Flyingclaydisk
Excellent thread! So good in fact that it prompted me to take the plunge and (finally) join ATS.
One thing I've seen mentioned here, though not really explored in too much detail, is the role that video games play in all of this. Now I know there are tons of threads here on ATS about the video game subject, but my thoughts relate directly to the discussion at hand.
Just in this thread alone I think I've read no less than 4-5 firsthand accounts of folks who have been prescribed SSRI's who in short order begin to withdraw socially, to seemingly lose the ability to care. To paraphrase, words like "acting" out emotions in the absence of real ones, 'anger' and 'focus' have been used. The wildly popular First Person Shooter games capitalize on every one of these emotions or lack thereof. To be good you must have focus and in many respects be angry (or at least aggressive). Now I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a gamer by any stretch, but I have played a few, and in just the little exposure I’ve had it seems like the underpinning theme is kill, kill and more kill.
So what does all this have to do with SSRI’s and the big pharma leviathans? Well, for starters it seems that the combination of SSRI’s and video games exaggerates the effects of the SSRI’s. When you couple that with the effects of distancing of oneself from society and not caring you’ve just about created the “perfect storm” to create a killing machine.
If you watch any of the MSM rhetoric (which I try to avoid) about going out and rounding up guns, in the very same breath there’s some kind of a statement about needing to shore up mental health. As others have noted, this theme almost drives people towards, not away, from seeking even more of these psychotropic drugs as the solution, not less.
Perhaps part of the solution for the use of these drugs may lie in at minimum warning users, or better yet somehow ‘prohibiting’ users, from combining the use of SSRI’s and first person shooter video games. It’s no different than the very prominent warnings about not combining prescription pain killers and alcohol. (e.g. if you do it, you or others around you may be injured or killed!).
With as little as is known about how SSRI’s function inside the brain, it seems to me there’s a pretty credible case to be made for at least making a concerted effort to understand what outside stimuli (i.e. video games, etc) cause adverse reactions to these drugs. Seems like a sensible course of action to me.
Just two pennies worth from a newby.