Sinister: [sinister]: Caulfield and Prozac?

[COURTOLY at xxx.com]

I found this article at 
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,25724-2,00.html
Its is really wonderful about Salinger and Caulfield, and depression and 
drugs and records. It is proven by this list how addictive Belle and 
Sebastian are.
 
We are going to have bands play at the Olymia Picnic! They are lovely boys, 
sure to entertain you...
Love Courtney
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY 

The Danger of Suppressing Sadness
What if Holden Caulfield had been taking Prozac?
BY WALTER KIRN

Considering his wealth of symptoms--lethargy, forgetfulness, loss of interest 
in friends and studies--can there be any doubt that Holden Caulfield, the 
dropout hero of J.D. Salinger's 1950s masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye, 
would be on Luvox, Prozac or a similar drug if he were a teenager today? No 
doubt whatsoever. A textbook teen depressive by current standards, Caulfield 
would be a natural candidate for pharmaceutical intervention, joining a 
rising number of adolescents whose moodiness, anxiety and rebelliousness are 
being interpreted as warning signs of chemical imbalances. Indeed, if 
Caulfield had been a '90s teen, his incessant griping about "phonies" and 
general hostility toward mainstream society might have been nipped in the 
neurological bud. The cultural consequences? Incalculable.

With the stroke of countless pens on thousands of prescription pads, the 
American coming-of-age experience--the stuff of endless novels, movies and 
pop songs--could gradually be rendered unrecognizable. Goodbye Salinger, 
Elvis and Bob Dylan; hello psychopharmacology. "The kids in my school traded 
Zoloft and Prozac pills the way kids used to trade baseball cards," says 
Stephen Morris, an Episcopal priest and former chaplain at a Texas parochial 
school. Of course, this school experience doesn't prove that schoolyards 
everywhere have turned into bustling prescription-drug bazaars. But Morris, 
who headed a schoolwide committee called Addressing Behaviors of Concern, 
recalls that "the problems we focused on were not dramatically different from 
my own youthful experiences." At least three-quarters of the time, says 
Morris, the kids in question were placed on medication in what he saw as the 
beginning of a vicious cycle that frequently worsened the original problem. 
"Challenges that teachers used to handle are being handed over to 
psychiatrists. Instead of dealing with kids inside the classroom, they yank 
them out, put them on drugs and stick them back in with glazed eyes a few 
days later. No wonder the kids end up as outcasts."

Such outcasts may someday form their own majority, if this trend continues. 
The pain and confusion of growing up, once considered the proper subject of 
gloomy poetry read under the blankets and angry rock songs rehearsed in the 
garage, can now mean a quick ticket to the doctor's office. And it doesn't 
take a lot of acting up for a restless teenager to attract professional 
attention. On a website sponsored by Channel One, a television network for 
school-age youth, a recent posting written with the help of the National 
Association for Mental Illness classified the following behaviors as possible 
symptoms of manic depression in teens: "increased talking--the adolescent 
talks too much," "distractibility," "unrealistic highs in self-esteem--for 
example, a teenager who feels specially connected to God." 

That last one is a doozy. And heartbreaking. Could it be that Cassie Bernall, 
who bravely professed her religious faith while staring down the barrel of a 
gun at the height of the Columbine massacre, was not so much a hero and a 
martyr as an untreated candidate for lithium? For the education establishment 
to go on red alert at the first sign of spirituality in their students would 
be a devastating development.

What is happening here? For better or worse, an institutional drug culture 
has sprung up in the hallways of All-American High, mimicking the one already 
established among depressed adults. As was pointed out in the May issue of 
Harper's magazine, the line between illicit, feel-good drugs such as 
marijuana and amphetamines and legal mood-altering substances such as Luvox, 
Wellbutrin, and Effexor is a blurry one. Many of the same optimistic 
claims--enhanced concentration, decreased anxiety, a renewed capacity for 
feeling pleasure--are made for both types of magic bullet, whether they are 
bought on the street or in a pharmacy. A profoundly mixed message is being 
sent to teens when certain substances are demonized for promoting the same 
subjective states touted on the labels of other compounds. Adolescents, who 
are famously alert to hypocrisy among their elders, will surely be the first 
to catch this irony.

At least one hopes so. Teenage skepticism--Holden Caulfield's bitter gift for 
discerning inconsistencies in the solemn pronouncements of adults--may be one 
of the troubling traits on the medicators' target list. A pill that tones 
down youthful b.s. detectors would certainly be a boon to parents and 
teachers, but how would it enrich the lives of teenagers? Even if such a pill 
improved their moods--helping them stick to their studies, say, and compete 
in a world with close to zero tolerance for unproductive monkeying 
around--would it not rob them (and the rest of yy.s) of a potent source of 
social criticism, political idealism and cultural change? The trials and 
tribulations of growing up yield wisdom for all involved, both kids and 
parents. The young pose a constant challenge to the old, often an 
uncomfortable one, almost always an unexpected one, but meeting that 
challenge with hastily filled prescriptions may be bad medicine for everybody.
For teens who need medication just to function or lessen the real dangers 
they might pose to others or themselves, the new medications may truly be 
miraculous. I know from my own experience with clinical depression 
(contracted as an adult and treated with a combination of therapy and drugs) 
that such diseases are real and formidable, impossible to wish away. But for 
kids in the murky emotional borderlands described in books like The Catcher 
in the Rye, antidepressants, stimulants and sedatives aren't a substitute for 
books and records, heroes and antiheroes. "I get bored sometimes," Holden 
Caulfield says, "when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot 
older than I am--I really do--but people never notice it. People never notice 
anything."

Maybe if people start noticing first and medicating second, more of today's 
confused young Caulfields will stand a chance of maturing into Salingers. END

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   +---+  Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list  +---+
  To send to the list mail "sinister at majordomo.net". To unsubscribe
   send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
  "majordomo at majordomo.net".  WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+
 +-+  "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+
 +-+                     "jelly-filled danishes"                   +-+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+