Warnings for a Heavily Sedated Planet

Humans are teetering out of balance on a smorgasbord of overprescribed or abused drugs

In five years the global market for pharmaceuticals is estimated to top $1 trillion. Self-medication (over the counter medication) was valued at $90 billion in 2007, but is projected to increase to $95 billion in 2008 and to reach $135 billion in 2013.

While generic prescription drugs demonstrate the highest growth rate, the lion's share of the world's drug market belongs to branded prescription drugs, worth an estimated $553 billion this year. This in itself is illuminating.

According to The Guardian's Sarah Boseley: "Anxiety and stress have become acceptable diseases of the late 20th and 21st centuries, linked to fast lifestyles and taxing jobs … 80% of GPs believe they are writing too many prescriptions for the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), as the class of drugs made famous by Prozac is known."

Boseley, referring to a survey performed Dr. Foster (an independent medical research company), believes "the lack of other forms of help for those suffering from mild depression and stress leaves [doctors] no choice [but to prescribe antidepressants]."

This means that doctors rather than patients are behind a worrying mindset: treating symptoms with drugs rather than changing or even understanding the underlying thought and behavior patterns behind chemical changes in the brain.

Modern Mindset

While doctors certainly have a stake in culpability, the modern mindset of ordinary citizens is no less questionable. The average person is beset with troubling habits and delusions. It is primarily our narcissism that drives selfish and shortsighted short-term behavior. The result is that most people dwell in a fugue, a fog of unrealistic hopes, wishes and ambitions.

The Internet is an enabler for many of these fantasies, but instead of connecting people, most remain disconnected, isolated and disassociated.

More.

NVDL: I wrote this article really to address one thing that I thought few Peak Oil writers have specifically addressed. That the majority of the western world's intelligentsia (and the wealthy people) are lost in a chemical fugue (either anti-depressants, or everyday chemicals like aspirins, caffeine etc) which makes us moody and irrational. Many others use leisure time and weekends to escape reality - consuming alcohol, marijuna or magic mushrooms. Those not busy with these feel-good chemical games are invested in religion - meaning very few are conscious or aware of actual reality other than in an abstract sense. This means we are a long long way from even beginning to deal with reality - but reality (in the form of resource depletion - this includes basics like food and ordinary energy) is ready to deal with us.