02/05/2002 - 5:08 p.m.

Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind.

Just about every single person I know is on some kind of mind altering anti-depressent. And no, I'm not talking about the potheads, I'm talking about the perscription anti-depressents. Why in this country do we assume that everyone has some kind of mental disorder? Most of my friends have been prescibes as "depressed", or "hyper", or have "attention defecits". The national average age for kids to begin to show signs of "depression" is about ten, with some showing signs as early as six. Everybody believes that, in this country, you should either be on medication or seeing a shrink so that you can be normal.

What the hell is this normal that they're all going for? Are we talking about Angie normal? She was like ruddy Jeykell and Hyde, the days she wouldn't take her medicine, she was a normal kid, the days she wouldn't, she'd lock herself in her bathroom with the sharp knives and threaten to kill herself. After these little displays, they'd take her to the doctor and up the dosage.

Then there was this camper, her parents went on about her moodswings and she would become a drastically different person by the hour, we were worried. The girl in question was the sweetest, nicest friendliest girl in the world- never was anything but a great kid. This is a girl with the severe moodswings?

For that matter, Flower. Yeah, she was a little, er, bizarre sometimes I give you that, but she liked herself. One of the things she told me was that she couldn't stand herself on medication, and so she couldn't stand anybody else (I mean, think pre-camp Flower, would we want that all the time?), she stopped taking the stuff. Maybe it's not an accurate portrayal, but I think I know which one I would've preferred.

I know a guy- he's always saying that the government wants to make everyone the same stupid, docile, followers so that we won't object to change. He's diagnosed with severe ADHD.

I ask you, what's this normal we're going for? How is any one of us to say what's normal? Some behavior is irrational, yes. If you're suicidal, something should be done. If you're actually doing harm to yourself or other people, then yes, that's something that needs to be looked into. But, what's to say you've got "attention defecit"?

One of the tests for attention defecit is to have the kid sit at a computer and click a box. A grey box on a grey screen with tiny black letters. You keep up this menial task for a certain amount of time, and if you don't do what they ask of you enough times in that time span- well, basically you've got ADD. I'm sorry, but who wants to sit in a tiny little room staring at a boring computer screen doing menial useless tasks?