The American Spectator

I like my article the uninflated size it is, at which neither truth nor comedy are distorted. Inflatio ad absurdum is just as dangerous, my brother, as reductio. But its gross tumescence is even less attractive, which is the whole problem with Paxil. Fattening up, hypersymptomizing, discomfort is bad enough; calling a "chemical imbalance" in the brain that "makes" one feel uncomfortable in public settings a disorder instead of a symptom itself is not just a cheap trick of semantics but a trick turned, as well, by the medical profession — for a pretty penny indeed, with several tens of millions lined up at the hopper. 

I don't know about you but the sight of so many would-be therapeutics waiting pantingly for their psychonarcotic devirginization is enough to make me ill all by it- and myself. The point is not that Paxil can be, or is, "quite helpful" in at least some circumstances. I am not the one arguing against the sedation of our insane. The problem with Paxil — I think this came out somewhere between Exploding Balls and Itchy Uvula — is that it lowers the bar for Disorder-liness so low that drug therapy becomes a reflex, an assumption, a very glib and dense and chintzy and dangerous sensation of "It helps, so it can't be bad." First, do no harm — second, do no capricious help. (Remember marijuana works wonders for anxiety, too, in cop-free environments.) Paxil is bad on the scale that distributing morphine for paper cuts and hangnails would be. Only this, you see, treats not stubbed toes but stubbed egos.
 
If you're willing to alleviate a statistical cohort of their mental neurosis in tradesies for a full quarter of the US population inspiring the issues-laden rest to a lifetime of pharmacomediated seratonin management, I can only refer you to one of this country's most venerable mottos, for which men have killed and died:
 
"Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Sweaty Palms."