I love the Calvin and Hobbes fan-cartoon, but your post is both moving and *right*.
I don't know Ms. Lindhom, and I don't know enough about her daughter or her daughter's friends to know if any of them suffer from any disorder that would make Ritalin a useful drug for them to take.
However, I do know that I don't want to live as who my genes say I am, and I don't think anyone who has a better option should have to do so.
At times when nothing else has helped, antidepressants have made my life infinitely more livable. I don't like the side effects, which have included loss of creativity while on the drug, but I'd take that any day over the crippling anxiety, pain, and depression that the drug was there to help with.
The equation of emotional and mental disorders with creativity is an oversimplification at absolute best, and pernicious at worst.
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Date: 11 Jun 2010 09:04 am (UTC)I love the Calvin and Hobbes fan-cartoon, but your post is both moving and *right*.
I don't know Ms. Lindhom, and I don't know enough about her daughter or her daughter's friends to know if any of them suffer from any disorder that would make Ritalin a useful drug for them to take.
However, I do know that I don't want to live as who my genes say I am, and I don't think anyone who has a better option should have to do so.
At times when nothing else has helped, antidepressants have made my life infinitely more livable. I don't like the side effects, which have included loss of creativity while on the drug, but I'd take that any day over the crippling anxiety, pain, and depression that the drug was there to help with.
The equation of emotional and mental disorders with creativity is an oversimplification at absolute best, and pernicious at worst.