Meds for Personal Happiness

I don’t know, does God think less of me because I take high blood pressure meds, heartburn medication or meds for my chronic pain? Or that my wife is on thyroid medication? Or my friend is on insulin? All of these things seem to be biological functions and I think our theology is that none of these physical ailments will exist when we enter the spirit world or post-resurrection. From the psychiatric point of view mental health is exactly the same as my high blood pressure, my wife’s thyroid condition (Hashimoto’s disease) or my friend’s diabetes. Why would mental health meds be different?

Speaking for myself (and I can’t stress that enough), I don’t like taking pills to try solving whatever it is that isn’t right inside. Thus far, I’ve stubbornly managed to go my entire life without taking a single prescription medication. If I can, I prefer to get at whatever is causing the ailment and deal with that directly. That said, I’m not above taking headache medicine when my head hurts and cold medicine when I have a cold (admittedly it’s usually after my wife has told me to go take it). But again, that’s my own stubborn approach to life.

I don’t believe God will look down on anyone for trying to take care of themselves, physically or mentally. Even if it is a crutch to take anxiety meds, sometimes people need crutches. It would be cruel to expect someone with a broken leg to hobble around on their own without them. Like the examples DJ mentioned, there are many legitimate reasons to take something. If someone has anxiety that is gnawing at them, I say that is a legitimate reason. I don’t think someone using meds to help themselves feel better will disadvantage them in this life, or the next.

I ended up laying down for about 3 hours this weekend in a darkened room because I did not take migraine medication “ahead of time” enough. I knew the migraine was coming- these is a cyclical thing for me now that I mark on my calendar, my stress levels were through the roof for reasons, and I felt the precursors a good 48 hours before it hit.

I was not “happy” about the situation. My entire weekend was swallowed up in the pre-headache precursors, the actual multi-hour “event”, and the better part of a day in “recovery”.

If anything, I suspect that God would hold me accountable for not doing what I needed to do earlier then I did as a “sin of omission”.

Here’s hoping I am smarter next time around:)

THE NEXT LIFE

The main theme that keeps coming up in my life is how I answer these questions:

a) “What do you Need?”

b) “What do those around you Need?”

c) “What are you doing to get what you need and give what other people need?”

d) “Are you doing it in a sustainable or un-sustainable way?”

e) “Whom are you talking past because it doesn’t compute that they need that and you don’t want invest in that for them? (the line between meeting their needs with your resources is so very, very fine – and all I know is that the line is there and I have talked past people because I was so certain that I had the answer that I didn’t hear the correct question.).

If these are the most important questions – then medications become nearly invisible constructs (just like mostly germ-free water in more technologically advanced countries).

I have often wondered if God will censure us for not controlling our thoughts within the 40% range

I am not sure that I believe in a God that censures us. I am positive that I don’t believe in a God that censures us for properly using prescribed medication.

We live in a time when we have technological advancements. I believe it is wisdom to judiciously make use of them.

The thing that gives me some comfort about this is that in the next life, we get perfect bodies. And for a while, awaiting resurrection, we are purely spiritual beings. This means any deficiencies in our biological makeup that contribute to unhappiness are a non-issue. So, taking meds in this life for happiness due to biological reasons doesn’t put me at a disadvantage in the next life — assuming the problems are truly biological.

What about this though — I was reading The How of Happiness by a famous Stanford psychology researcher named Sonja LYUBOMIRSKY. She said that 50% of our happiness is genetic, 10% is due to circumstances (a figure I thought was pretty low — think about a paraplegic, for example), and 40% of happiness is something we can control.

I have often wondered if God will censure us for not controlling our thoughts within the 40% range, using meds to handle that part of it, perhaps by influencing the 50% genetic part instead. I hope not.

Also, if HE does mention this to me, I would probably ask, respectfully, what else could be done given the fact that I’d seen cognitive therapists and tried pretty hard throughout my life to be happy within the 40% of influence I had. And that only led to frustration. Then point to the fact that I was much happier after the meds took over.

I am glad you have asked questions, but I must apologize because I have no definitive answer. I am not sure there is a definitive answer that works even on the majority that ask this question. I have medications that I take for high blood pressure. I have competed (amateur level) in sports my entire life and have a resting heart rate in the mid 50’s. Most high blood pressure meds slow one’s heart rate, so I have to take a cocktail of meds.

I invested in a great deal of research and even the science is not clear in this matter. Part of the problem is that because of individual genetics, very few individuals have balanced biological chemistry. We all have various genetic advantages and disadvantages. The purpose for taking meds is to help correct imbalances in our individual biological chemistry. The problem with taking meds is that our science and technology is not advanced enough to balance the meds we take with our individual biological chemistry. The buzz word for unbalanced meds is “side effects”.

But there is another problem. If someone (like myself) is taking a minimum of 5 individual meds there is a statistical probability that two of the meds will unbalance each other and produce additional uncharted side effects. In addition, if someone (like myself) takes an occasional aspirin, Advil or Tylenol for injuries or something for a cold or flue or even a shot for shingles or some other problem – any of which can have additional effects because of my meds and genetic biological chemistry.

All this means that I must make choices and in some cases none of my options are to my liking or with sufficient information that I can make and intelligent choice. Now you have asked how G-d fits into all this. I will give you, my opinion. I think such is all part of his plan for our mortal experience. I had an engineering professor in college that gave us a final of 10 problems and a week to complete the final examine. We could use any resource at our disposable – even team up with other class members but what we did not know was that 7 of the problems had no known solution. I think G-d is somewhat like that college professor. That he gives us unsolvable problems – not for his amusement but more as a challenge for us to learn both to deal with our problems with all we have learned and to also discover for ourselves how we respond when we run out of options.