Originally Posted by Guitars+gems
I have wondered if SSRI's are the cigarettes of today. Hear me out.
I'm a boomer. When I was growing up, it seemed like everyone smoked cigarettes. My parents smoked, my friends' parents smoked, the teachers smoked. Smoking was allowed pretty much everywhere; restaurants, airplanes, even movie theaters. Smoking was pretty normal.
Anyone who has ever smoked knows what a mood enhancing drug nicotine can be. It calms, it stimulates, induces feelings of well being, and when ingested by mouth or lungs the effects are immediate. Smoking is orally gratifying, It's comforting. Oh sure, it is addicting but it didn't used to be a hard habit to feed. Cigarettes were cheap, easily available and smoking was socially acceptable.
That was all before. Before we became aware of the dangers. Before we saw images of the black, withered lungs of smokers. Before the surgeon general's warnings. Before we found out about the scheming of the tobacco companies. Before we knew about second-hand smoke. Etc.
I have often thought that all that smoking was self-medication against depression. Many, many, many people used cigarettes to make themselves feel better, as hedges against depression and anxiety. And now they've been pretty much deprived of that option. Yes of course, there are still smokers, but really, it's difficult to smoke these days. My daughter lives in an apartment building where smoking is not permitted anywhere on the property, not even in the private apartments. And I think cigarettes cost 10 or 12 bucks a pack.
In addition to all the pressures of modern life, many of which have been mentioned in this thread, I suspect that loss of tobacco use as a form of self-medication is partly why we're seeing so much diagnosed depression. I mean, life is hard now, but life was even harder a hundred years ago, albeit in different ways. And actually, some of the same ways too. The human struggle hasn't changed all that much really.
So yeah...maybe Prozac is the new Lucky Strike.
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