Some people don't believe in using drugs to treat mental illness. I think people are uneasy about altering brain chemistry that changes their personality or their behavior. But people are less opposed to using drugs for Alzheimer's or something, and that is truly irrational. They both biological disorders that affect personality. There is a hazy line to me between altering the peripheral aspects of your personality and changing who you are, but still it seems crazy to not accept the neural basis of mental illness. Take schizophrenia again for instance. There is plenty of evidence suggesting that Schizophrenia results from overactive dopamine receptors. There is also plenty of evidence suggesting that Parkinson's is caused by the depletion of the dopamine system. They are two sides of the same coin, and yet treatment of Parkinson's is totally accepted while drugs treating a mental disorder are not. It makes no sense.
Mental disorders are neural disorders. I know that I am a staunch dualist and I don't necessarily believe that everything behavioral is rooted solely in biology, but I do believe that mental disorders are. I think there is a part of us, a soul or something, that really is conserved, but these alterations in our brain chemistry change the parts of us that are subject to change. Depression can be caused by not enough transmission of monoamines like seratonin and norepinephrine in the synaptic cleft. Anxiety can be caused by insufficient GABA transmission and decreased glucocorticoid receptors in the hippocampus that inhibit the hippocampus' inhibition of cortisol circulation and the stress response (or an overactive amygdala). Bipolar disorders are caused by who knows what, but it likely has something to do with second messengers, as lithium acts on second messenger systems. The reason I want to go into this is that we don't really know any of the specifics of these systems. But there is ample evidence that they are in fact physical system, and that drugs work because they change something physically. I want to be a psychopharmacologist. I feel obligated to defend the use of drugs in treating mental illness.
Anyway, that's my rant against people who argue against use of drugs to treat mental problems.
Now on to Obama (and not related to drugs, although I found his admittance to his drug use problems as a kid very interesting... I think honesty is definitely the best policy when you're in that position). I've been reading that he is attempting to pull off the whole FDR New Deal thing with his honeymoon period. I have been thinking about that, and I really think he can pull it off. Ask us, the whole nation, two years ago if we believed an African American could be president, and I bet we would have said no. A combination of factors (the very bad track record of the incumbent party, the insufficient credentials of the Republican vice presidential nominee, Obama's cool-headed nature and his magnetic personality, running against Hilly Clinton- although I ended up really liking her) contributed to his election, but now here he is, defying what most of us could have predicted. I'm still terrified that he'll get assassinated. There are enough people just trying to assassinate the president out of principle, and now add to it all the crazy white supremacists that are livid over his election, and I'm worried. But through all the odds he's here.
I think he has it within him to really produce the change he's promised. He's hyped this change thing up so much that he really has to or his approval ratings are going to dive, I think. While he is young-ish and lacks experience in some areas, I think he will be well-stocked with an experienced cabinet. I can't imagine they could possibly work any worse together than the Bush cabinet (as stubborn as Bush has been about claiming executive power, he really failed in having any kind of unified control over the operations in Iraq). I think, though, that the complex somewhat corrupt power-plays that usually dominate white house politics will be a little less preeminent in his era, just because I think he really does work together with the people he is calling to his team.
We're not in a great depression, but there has been a lot of analogy (even if it is a little overzealous) between economic recession and explosiveness now and the economy when FDR stepped up to the plate. I saw a comic that showed Obama holding his suitcase standing in front of the white house. There was a dog house on the lawn, and in front of it was this huge Cerberus with its three snarling heads labeled "Iraq," "Afghanistan," and "the economy." The caption said "We come with the house." Obama really is walking into a loaded white house. This really is his opportunity to change things. But on the same avenue, he really could screw them up even more. Things are at such a tipping point.
I am party a cynic, partly convinced that the world really is just ending and sometimes we just are forced to watch it burn. But I am very optimistic about Obama. I think he has the leadership skills it takes to pull our country back together. I think he has the reform plans that FDR had to really take control of recession and division in our country.
And, of course, he is the first physically attractive president (I don't buy this business about JFK), which helps :-P
Anyway, I have high hopes, and I am actually fairly confident that he won't let me down.
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