[Buddha-l] Was the Buddha mentally ill?

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 27, 2010, at 2:32 AM, Joy Vriens wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 11:40 PM, Lidewij Niezink <lidewij at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Or 'the depression epidemic' by Trudy Dehue, 2008.
>> 
>> ADHD will be 'norm' by the time DSMV will appear (2011 I believe,
>> they're working on it).

The radio program Fresh Air featured an interview with Dr. Daniel Carlat, author of the book <title>Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry.</title> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128107547

Dr Carlat, a psychiatrist, talks about the tireless efforts of the pharmaceutical industry to market new psychoactive drugs and to sell them even when they are proven either not to be effective or to have dangerous side effects. A search for his book on Amazon.com (I remember when Amazons were not virtual book dealers very tall women from Amsterdam) brings up dozens of books by doctors writing exposés about the psychopharmacological industry. What Daniel Carlat says is nothing I haven't heard before in a general way, although he offers some pretty hair-raising details. (I think there must be a drug one can take for Risen Hair Syndrome, although a better remedy might be to become a Buddhist monk. As the Buddha used to say in the television commercials of his day: "Got a horripilation problem? Shave your head.") If you're not a raving paranoid before listening to Carlat's interview, there is a good chance you'll be one afterwards. But don't worry, there's a pill you can take for paranoia: cyanide.

Although I have a notoriously phlegmatic nature, there are a couple of topics that can get my bile flowing. One of them is the pushing of pharmaceuticals and the constant manufacture of new disorders, diseases and syndromes. While it just makes me plain sad that there seems to be a market for drugs that treat "erectile dysfunction" (as if it's somehow crucial to a happy life to have sex after the age of 35), it makes me furious to see how many psychoactive drugs are given to children in the cultural wasteland that I call home. And now even domestic pets and farm animals are being targeted as candidates for SSRIs (selective seretonin re-uptake inhibitors). Giving fluoxetine or paroxetine to a quadruped really gets my goat.

Another topic that can bring out my bilious nature is to go to the opposite extreme and to treat everything as a purely spiritual problem that can be managed with meditation or chanting or prostrations. I have had one mentally ill friend who attempted suicide and two others who succeeded when they were encouraged by their Zen masters to abandon their psychiatric treatments and to spend more time on their meditation cushions. That reminds me of the ex-Marine who taught physical education at my high school; his cure for every physical injury was to make the injured person run laps. Trying to meditate your way out of paranoid schizophrenia is bad medicine. As the Buddha said—I forget in which sutra—"The only cure for paranoid schizophrenia is to accept Jesus as your personal savior."

Still crazy after all these years,
Richard