A sad state of affairs

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one
suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to
suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to
suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love,
or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you're getting
this down.

--Woody Allen, Love and Death (1975)

In 1995, 43 million prescriptions for antidepressants were written in the U.S. In 2004, the number written was 145 million.

Depressing isn't it?

There are now 300 million people in the U.S. Half of them depressed, the other half are, we can assume, happy or suffering, but not on antidepressants.

This is not including all the aliens living here that must be happy, or happier, than the 3rd world country run by the nicely tanned dictator who enforced a one sheet per day maximum they came from.

I don’t consider myself depressed. . .melancholy perhaps. There are days when I crawl into a dark corner, curl up in the fetal position, and curse war, famine, pestilence, and that other jockey fellow.

Part of the reason is death. Humans, with a few exceptions (Enoch, Elijah, Dick Clark) are mortal, know it, and hence strive for immortality. So, we get sad. I want to achieve immortality myself, although I want to do this by not dying.

Animals don’t get sad because they aren’t aware of impending death. They can’t think abstract subjective thoughts. Perhaps antidepressants, like watching TV, relieve the suffering mind from considering it’s impending doom.

It’s something to think about on your way to the pharmacy.