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Bus stop lady

I need to be medicated to keep my blood pressure at a healthy level. Should I be shot?

Slightly different though in that blood pressure medication doesn't tend to alter your sense of who you are. Obviously with propanalol being used as an anxiolytic it may reduce panic and anxiety symptoms, but I don't reckon that there's that many people who view feeling panic as an important part of who they are, or if they do it's likely to be something they wished wasn't part of their personality.
 
Slightly different though in that blood pressure medication doesn't tend to alter your sense of who you are. Obviously with propanalol being used as an anxiolytic it may reduce panic and anxiety symptoms, but I don't reckon that there's that many people who view feeling panic as an important part of who they are, or if they do it's likely to be something they wished wasn't part of their personality.

Actually, BP meds can do that, to an extent. My husband and I are both on beta blockers, and the lower blood pressure does make us feel different in our minds. It tends to inhibit panic attacks, simply because we aren't struggling with elevated BP. Cognition is easier, clearer.

Are they designed to do that? No. It's a side benefit.
 
Actually, BP meds can do that, to an extent. My husband and I are both on beta blockers, and the lower blood pressure does make us feel different in our minds. It tends to inhibit panic attacks, simply because we aren't struggling with elevated BP. Cognition is easier, clearer.

Are they designed to do that? No. It's a side benefit.
Yeah, Propranolol is good for that. It is one of the few "better" things I have taken.

ETA: No, it was nowhere near the difference in my original posting. Propranolol is not a replacememnt for anti-psychotics. But Propranolol made a real difference in my life,
 
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Yeah, Propranolol is good for that. It is one of the few "better" things I have taken.

ETA: No, it was nowhere near the difference in my original posting. Propranolol is not a replacememnt for anti-psychotics. But Propranolol made a real difference in my life,

Propanalol is one of the more helpful meds I've used. Benzos make me feel dizzy, which makes me panic and sort of fight against the effects of them. Used in conjunction with other meds, which have bigger downsides though.
 
Propanalol is one of the more helpful meds I've used. Benzos make me feel dizzy, which makes me panic and sort of fight against the effects of them. Used in conjunction with other meds, which have bigger downsides though.
Yeah. Propranolol is actually good. Still taking it occasionally.
 
This is wandering pretty far afield. I might mention that the bus stop shelter now has a torn May Day poster in it.
 
It seems everyone has snipped out the most important part of jarlaxle's post, that puts the final sentence in its proper context: "My brother was on Ritalin for a while in high school. He was a different person...no creativity, no emotion, pretty much no personality. He was half a step above catatonic on 15% the normal dose."

Obviously, there was something unacceptable about the way jarlaxle's brother was "functioning" without medication, or he wouldn't have been told to take Ritalin. He may have "functioned" in a more socially acceptable way when taking it, from an objective viewpoint--there's no way of knowing with the little information given, since we don't know what he was like before--but it subjectively wasn't what he or jarlaxle wanted.

Without it, he was easily distracted, a little hyper, and a bit emotional. In other words, he was a fairly typical teenage male. With it, he was an emotionless, joyless, nearly-catatonic robot.

Society would generally be sympathetic to a person who said they would rather die than live helplessly bedridden, hooked up to feeding and breathing tubes, even though those tubes were making the body "function." There are living wills for just that situation. I think more people would be appalled if society's response was, too bad, if you need to live hooked up to tubes, we'll ignore your wishes, and even if you're able to complain, we'll drug you so you won't want to.

Exactly.

It's like we're okay with people who don't want to live in a broken-down body and provide living wills for that circumstance, but if they have a broken-down brain, too bad, their wishes--even when competent--don't count.

Now, I know everyone will get in a quibble about "kind enough to shoot me," and take it literally, saying we don't kill people on life support, we just take away that support until they die.

No, actually...if I am losing my mind, I hope someone would be kind enough to put a shotgun slug into it. I think my wife WOULD carry out my wishes if necessary.
 
Way to deliberately (and dishonestly) miss the point!

Not at all.
If medication can be effective in controlling blood pressure and keeping the patient healthy, how could anyone argue they would rather die than take advantage of that?
Similarly, if medication can be effective in controlling one's mental state(that is, the function of the brain) and keeping the parient healthy, how could anyone argue they would rather die than take advantage of that?
 
Without it, he was easily distracted, a little hyper, and a bit emotional. In other words, he was a fairly typical teenage male. With it, he was an emotionless, joyless, nearly-catatonic robot.

If he was fairly typical, why did they put him on it?
 
Not at all.
If medication can be effective in controlling blood pressure and keeping the patient healthy, how could anyone argue they would rather die than take advantage of that?
Similarly, if medication can be effective in controlling one's mental state(that is, the function of the brain) and keeping the parient healthy, how could anyone argue they would rather die than take advantage of that?

No, it's missing the vital part of the analogy. It's not about someone turning down a medicine that makes them function the way they want to. It's about turning down a medicine that makes them function the way society wants them to, without regard for their own opinion.

I dunno... maybe there are people who define death as the worst possible thing that could happen to them, so anything is better than death, and others who can picture things worse than death so they place it differently in the heirarchy, and therefore one side just can't understand where the other is coming from.

A better analogy would be:

It's 1970. If medication can cure a man's gayness and make him function normally, why wouldn't any gay person want to take it?

Or, it's 1850. If medication can make a slave happy to be a slave, why wouldn't any slave want to take it?
 
Not at all.
If medication can be effective in controlling blood pressure and keeping the patient healthy, how could anyone argue they would rather die than take advantage of that?
Similarly, if medication can be effective in controlling one's mental state(that is, the function of the brain) and keeping the parient healthy, how could anyone argue they would rather die than take advantage of that?

Comparing a medication to correct high blood pressure to what amounts to a chemical lobotomy is dishonest.
 
I asked: "If he was fairly typical, why did they put him on it?"

It was easier to drug him into catatonia than to actually work with him.

Why would you need to work with him? High schools are full of typical teens. Was he just a random victim pulled out of the crowd to make a point or something?
 
Comparing a medication to correct high blood pressure to what amounts to a chemical lobotomy is dishonest.

No it is not dishonest.
Various parts of the body can malfunction and good medicine corrects the malfunction.
The brain is just another part of the body and can malfunction.
Calling medicine which can correct the malfunction of the brain a 'chemical lobotomy' is dishonest.
 

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