You're Using a Crutch!

To those saying my use of medication is a willing use of a crutch — you’re correct.

We merely quibble over whether a crutch is inherently bad or not. I’m of the opinion that crutches are awfully helpful tools that give an individual greater ability to move about the world in spite of a handicap. I’m also reasonably certain that no one begrudges a person for using a crutch, so long as that use is temporary. So it’s not the crutch itself causing such consternation but the realization that someone might need to use it for an indeterminate amount of time.

Short-term crutch usage = “mighty fine, continue about your day good citizen.”

Long-term/permanent crutch usage = “you’re not even trying to get better, way to burden the rest of society.”

No one gives me grief for having worn glasses since the first grade. I wear arch-supports in my referee shoes because I’m horrendously flat-footed, and people don’t seem to care. When I hit thirty and preemptively started taking Advil before strenuous activities my older friends nodded approvingly, as if welcoming me to this new stage of adult life.

Glasses, arch supports, and pain relievers are all crutches that may be used for a person’s entire life. Similar crutches do not inspire angst because we’ve come to accept them as a natural part of living, but I think there is an even deeper reason why the masses react with fear to long-term psychiatric medication. We can treat the body all day and feel somewhat distant from that treatment because we consider the body “ours” and our consciousness rides within it somewhere. That ownership line is blurred when we treat the brain. Are we modifying some part of who we are? Will someone’s mind be irretrievably different if we tinker with the natural chemicals in their brain?

These are not easy questions. Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have examined the problem of where our mind resides for hundreds of years. I used to think that “I” sat astride my brain, directing where it went and occasionally correcting a wayward thought or emotion. Having several severe depressive episodes forced me to accept an unpleasant conclusion: I AM a brain. The “I” that I consider myself to be is not separate from my neurons, just as “I” am not separate from my lungs. I don’t possess a body and I don’t posses a brain, I am both of them. This kind of thinking can induce anxiety because there is an inescapable conclusion: if my brain is altered, am I altered? I’ll dive into these metaphysical questions in future posts because I find them deeply interesting and deeply unsettling at the same time. For now, I turn to advocating that there is no difference between a physical crutch and a mental crutch — both are used to move more freely about the world; what must be challenged is the strange temporal nature that we’ve imposed upon the use of crutches.

I use the crutch of daily Prozac to alter my brain so I function with depression. Just like Josh Sundquist uses crutches daily to function with a missing leg. Our crutches make us better, and instead of calling attention to the obviousness of human weakness, I feel we need to celebrate the strength of human ingenuity in overcoming the cards dealt by life.