Drugs and Stress Management

[Guest guest]

Was: Safe Drug Doses

Eddie White:

<I will share a personal experience here. Sometime ago my wife and I were

having some problems which prompted a voluntary separation. This led to

something I had seldom experienced in my life -- deep depression and an

accompanying loss of weight and sleeplessness. My doctor prescribed a

ten-day supply of sleep medicine and also gave me some Paxil. The sleep

medicine worked fine and my health improved, but the depression on one

particular day became very difficult.

I took one of the Paxil tablets before bedtime only to awaken a short time

later very sick. I was sweating profusely, very nauseated and dizzy. For a

short while I thought I might be dying. I recovered several hours later and

never took the drug again. I pretty much stuck to an ibuprofen and a

Bud-light after that.

My point is that I am a very healthy person who generally spurns medications

and most supplements and yet I had a very bad experience with one of those

quick help drugs that doctors so readily give out. If one is sick then

medication may be the only remedy. Often, however, we want that quick fix or

easy road which is how we get involved with drugs. Sometimes we just need

to be a little more patient, tougher and definitely use better judgement.

When you look at the abuse of over the counter supplements and drugs, as well

as prescription drugs prevailing

in our society how can any of us thumb our noses at athletes who succumb to

the temptation of drugs. I always believe in cleaning up my own back yard

before I worry about someone else's.>

*** Note that anxiolytic (anxiety decreasing) drugs can precipitate fearful

depression and conversely, anti-depressants can precipitate anxiety, so that,

in cases where one is suffering from " reactive " mood change (which often

involves elements of depression, anxiety and other emotional states), the

medication can diminish some symptoms, but profoundly worsen or even create

others.

Thus, when one is very stressed mentally, it is clear that you are trapped

somewhere between a rock and a hard place, especially if drugs are being used

to help control a perfectly natural, though horrendously disturbing, state of

mind. It is very important to use every stress in one's life, no matter how

small, as challenge to help us train for the inevitably greater stresses to

which we will be exposed in our lives.

In a society where children are rarely " failed " at school or allowed to have

their self-esteem even slightly dented at sport, school, home or play, or are

given medication to handle minor crises, where people take great exception at

any of their ideas being slightly questioned, where frivolous legal cases are

used to manage stress that many other countries wouldn't even take seriously,

where political correctness has gone overboard to protect some exaggerated

sensitivities, where psychiatric aid is often sought for things that normal

adults should be able to handle for themselves, and where fast-fixing drugs

are given little more thought than a packet of French fries, we are setting

ourselves up for exceptional susceptibility to stress and gross inability to

handle the really major stresses of one's lives.

Life is a series of challenges - use those challenges, don't avoid them. You

don't develop great strength of body by avoiding physical stress --

similarly, you don't develop great strength of mind by avoiding mental

stress. Never ever forget this!

If we look at life bluntly - so what!! -- you lost your spouse, you lost your

parents, you lost your child, you lost your health, you lost your car ... who

has not or will not at some stage of one's life? I continue to lose so much

in life, and I loath and despise, wail and lament, every time that it

happens, but the underlying understanding of what life is -- and not what I

would like it to be -- helps me to continue, because the other side of life

is so very rewarding and special. My dear very disabled wife continues to

teach me daily about how life can go on fully and lovingly -- and my own

miraculous recovery after a near fatal heart attack continues to teach me

some very close personal lessons about stress and its management in life.

Even then, I know that one day I will be faced with even greater stresses and

that my limits are going to be tested to the extreme. I certainly don't look

forward to that day and the prospect of it makes me question what life, this

planet and all religion is really about, but I just have to accept that is

the way it is and that is the way life here is going to be, no matter how

much I philosophise and moan about it. All that I can do is not make things

worse by adding any further negativities and pains to the experience - and to

rely implicitly on better philosophies, faiths, hopes and spiritual depths to

see me through those darker moments.

Stress, pain and suffering are major characteristics of life on planet Earth

and to think otherwise is looking for trouble. Elvis Presley once sang " If

you are looking for trouble, you came to the right place... " We came to E

arth in some way or another - we sure came to the right place - we really

did, as far as trouble is concerned. Yet, in between those troubles are some

really

ineffable people, friends, families, jobs, joys and loves - revel in them, too,

and

let them help you cope with stress!

Dr Mel C Siff

Denver, USA

Supertraining/