Our Iraq Strategy and Antidepressants


Listening to the President talk about Iraq last night, I was suddenly seized by the sensation of déjà vu.

"Losing in Iraq would be a disaster for America. We’ve been sending over troops and bombs and planes. It isn’t working… let’s send more!!!"

Where have I heard that??? It’s so hauntingly familiar… I know—that’s what psychiatrists say!!!

If you, or someone you know has ever suffered from depression, of course it’s no joke—it can be physically exhausting and debilitating, ruin your immune system and make life so painful—but what is comical about it is, the way antidepressants are diagnosed.

Your doctor prescribes Zoloft or Wellbutrin or Prozac. Two weeks or a month go by, and your symptoms are the same. Maybe even worse. Here’s what your doctor tells you: one, you’re hardly taking enough for it to be a therapeutic dose, two, if it is a therapeutic dose, this isn’t long enough for it to take effect, and three, the side effects will probably go away. So….? Let’s prescribe MORE!!!

And so it continues, in this bizarre trial and error way, until, God willing, you’re lucky enough to find something that is consistently helpful, and you no longer have muscle aches, exhaustion and pain, just from walking from your bedroom to the kitchen in the morning.

The key difference here is, with proper therapy and treatment, nobody dies from trying an anti-depressant that doesn’t work. It just requires tremendous patience.
In Iraq, raising the dosage, the troop levels, while it might give Mr. Bush a temporary lift, shows little promise of relieving the problem. This is more like offering a drowning man a bucket of water.