[mistercow]

It's exciting to hear that your personal subjective experience with "everything that can be prescribed" generalizes perfectly to the other 7 billion humans on the planet. This should save a ton of time and money on medical research.

[jessriedel]

Not to mention the highly disputable value judgement that someone crippled by depression is somehow more authentic.

[sliverstorm]

It is more authentic, the question is whether that means anything. Having invasive surgery without sedatives or anesthetics is more authentic, but we don't do it.

[jessriedel]

I disagree. I think you've only pointed out that depression and surgery with anesthetics require less intervention, but I don't think less intervention = more authentic.

Flourishing with other humans, whether in a tribe or NYC, is more authentic than starving to death in the wilderness.

[mumbi]

I think it's obvious that any psychoactive substance will change one's self. Hence the word psychoactive.

[zokier]

Of course they'll change one's self, that's the point. Also talk therapy (hopefully) changes one's self. More specifically changing from depressed to not depressed. But that completely different from your original statement of "make you into somebody you're not".

[mumbi]

To change one's self artificially is to make one into something he or she is not. Yes, I did not mention artificial, but I assumed that was a given.

[mistercow]

By the same technical semantics parsing, it is either impossible or trivial for anything to "make you somebody you're not", depending on how you parse it.

If it means that you aren't the person that you are after taking it, then that's obviously contradictory. You are always the person you are.

If it means that you aren't the person you were before taking it, then the medication is not necessary for that. At any given moment, you are always a different person than you were in the previous moment.

And even if you (erroneously) reject the latter, you would still have to concede that you are not the same person, after "fixing" yourself through non-pharmacological means, as you were when you were depressed.