Highs and Lows
When I discussed addiction (‘Addiction’) I pointed out that some people resort to drugs as an escape from problems and that the drug makes the problems worse, which produces a downward spiral. The medical profession participates in the process.
Many years I lived in a house with a number of drug-takers of various descriptions. The drugs of preference differed in each person but the aim was the same: to alter their mood. Invariably, these people had lost the ability to accept or change their own mood and depended on a drug to do it. Whereas most people feel happiness and sadness, or even boredom and anger depending on their situation, drug addicts rely on a drug to change their mood. The speed (amphetamine) takers took it to bring them up, and would go for days or as long as they had a supply of the drug, and then took a ‘downer’, a sleeping pill, to knock themselves out in an attempt to ward off the inevitable come-down. Such people had lost the ability to deal with the natural lows of life. In fact, even the highs that the world could offer paled into insignificance beside a good hit.
Experiencing the highs and lows of life are part of the learning process. Eventually,
it is possible to become detached from them. The drab winter sun doesn't depress
you and the summer sun doesn't elate you because you are on a permanent high.
Even when people don't take drugs they use artificial props to attain a high.
In fact, most of the distractions that people indulge in are aimed at changing
their mood. Movies, concerts, drinking alcohol, gambling, dancing and the more
esoteric diversions that young people get up to are largely aimed at escapism.
This isn't to say that there may not be value in some of these things.
People also use mental props to help change their moods. Fantasies that they return to in order to make themselves feel better. Memories of battle won; ex-lovers; the quick retort that made people laugh. Memories may have a learning value in coping with similar situations, but these mental props are not memories as such. They are embellishments that usually have very little to do with reality.
Whereas drug takers use illicit drugs to change their moods, doctors prescribe
anti depressive drugs to do the same thing and people become to depend on the
legal drug. This is the western approach to dealing with problems. Diseases
are cured with a pill or inoculation, and in the process the immune system of
humans has become depleted to the extent that the major killers are now of the
autoimmune system. Crying and melancholy are a natural part of life. In fact,
one might say that people who never cry or suffer from any form of depression
are the one’s with the problem. They haven't experienced life.
