The Commodification of Angst, Part 2: The Disorder Scam

In Part 1 we saw how the Monsanto/Bayer merger enables the conglomerate to profit from the production of psychoactive toxins and drugs that treat psychological malaise.

In the same way, industrialized medicine creates “disorders,” sells them to the public, and then profits from the drug use that results. They invent a problem and prescribe the solution.

The Medicalization of Normal Human Experience

In my practice as a psychotherapist, I regularly encounter adults who were prescribed psychiatric medications during childhood or adolescence for what could be considered normal trials and tribulations while growing up.?

Most were diagnosed during periods of typical developmental turbulence—the social anxieties of early adolescence, the mood fluctuations of puberty, or the attention challenges of young people trying to adapt to the demands of school. Optimally,? those challenges teach us a lot about ourselves. We learn our own identity, we create it, we find out what we want to do first in life.

When those normal experiences are considered “disorders” that require drug therapy, it has a profoundly negative impact on their development.

Right off the bat, the drug situation causes them psychological issues, even before the drugs begin to change their brain chemistry and foul their normal development. That’s because the moment a kid starts taking drugs, they no longer know where their thoughts and emotions come from. Is it me? Is it the drugs??

Worse, they come to believe that there is a “healthy” way to deal with everything, and since they experience discomfort and struggle, they assume that their way of dealing with things is not healthy. They become passive, passive-aggressive, or even nihilistic. Being diagnosed with a “disorder” and then given medication to deal with it makes them feel set-apart from “health.”?

The pharmaceutical industry has played a pivotal role in expanding the boundaries of what constitutes a "disorder" requiring medication. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), is deeply influenced by pharmaceutical industry funding and research.?

Each new edition has expanded the range of behaviors and experiences classified as disorders, creating new markets for psychiatric medications.

Creating the Poison

The financial implications of early psychiatric intervention are profound. Diagnosed children often continue their prescriptions into adulthood. As the first drug stops working, doctors routinely prescribe other drugs to be taken at the same time. This creates decades-long revenue streams for pharmaceutical companies.?

Unlike talk therapy or behavioral interventions, which often healthily resolve issues and free people, psychiatric medications typically require ongoing consumption and regular prescription renewals.

The average cost of psychiatric medications ranges from $200 to $1,000 per month – per drug, so people taking more than one generate even more money for the drug maker.?

One might think that insurance companies have a vested interest in keeping this cost to a minimum, but in fact they will far more readily approve a drug prescription than they will long-term talk therapy.?

And if we hope the government might do something, we’re wrong again, as they routinely extend patents and approvie formula modifications that maintain this massive revenue stream.?

Creating the Market: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising

The saddest aspect of this is the fact that the industry creates the very demand that they claim to be meeting. People clamber for these drugs – insist upon getting them, in fact. And doctors are happy to provide them.

That’s because of the pharmaceutical industry's marketing machine. The United States and New Zealand are the only developed nations that permit direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising.?

The machine operates on two parallel tracks: direct-to-consumer advertising and physician-directed promotion. This creates a situation where both the doctor and the patient have the same perception. They are conditioned to view normal human experience through a lens of pathology, and the only cure is drugs from big pharma.

Their marketing campaigns follow a well-documented pattern. First, they work to normalize the concept of chemical intervention in everyday life. This is accomplished by depicting medication use as a routine daily activity, similar to drinking tea or coffee. These advertisements typically feature relatable actors in comfortable, middle-class settings, suggesting that popping pills is a normal part of a successful, happy life of well-being.

The campaign then reframes common human experiences as potential indicators of underlying disorders. Deliberately vague descriptions of symptoms that could apply to many people encourage viewers to self-diagnose. Sometimes they even provide a checklist.

They cite studies. Lots of studies. No one ever looks under the hood of these studies – no one in the medical profession has a motivation to do so, as the status quo keeps so much money flowing. But these studies are often ridiculous. They might ask people if they feel nervous before speaking before an audience with no notes. When people say “yes” they run some statistics comparing their results to similar studies from the past. Lo and behold, they find out that “social anxiety is on the rise, and getting worse.” That’s the quality of most of these “studies.”

Finally, the campaign generates anxiety about untreated conditions. Whatever’s on the checklist might escalate into more serious problems. You have to act now. You need to intervene. It’s all about pursuing health, being there for loved ones. If you don’t get the drug, you’re going to let everyone down and probably die a slow, miserable death.?

So off people go to the doctor, already knowing that they have a disorder and which drug they want to cure it. There’s a weird “coolness” factor involved here. People who have actual disorders, such as bulimia, often engage in what’s called “competitive suffering” or “illness olympics.” If you have a disorder, then you want your disorder to be the worst disorder possible. People strangely identify with this and doctors are happy to fall for it.?

To help them out, the medical industrial complex has gotten very good at creating diagnostic criteria that are so broad they capture a large population. Common experiences like "feeling self-conscious at parties" or "worrying about upcoming social events" – things so universal that they could apply to almost anyone at certain times in their lives – become sinister indications that there is something wrong with your mind.?

People watch the commercial, and the company asks, “Do you..” If a person answers “yes,” why then, they have a disorder and they better take care of it before it gets worse. The storyline shows relatable individuals struggling, until they begin taking the drug, after which they are showered with love and success.?

Creating Social Proof: Physician-Directed Marketing

The definition of the condition and its treatment become inextricably linked for both the public.?

The same goes for the doctor. Big pharma markets drugs to them even more aggressively. They establish a situation where the trivial criteria become “accepted truth” about a “disorder,” and the drug becomes the “standard treatment.”

To convince doctors that there’s some justification for the drug prescription, big pharma strategically supports studies that favor the use of drugs, and they often suppress unfavorable research results.?

In fact, even favorable results are often borderline meaningless. The difference between the control group and the group receiving treatment might be higher than random, but so low as to make little practical difference. That fact will be buried, while the study is hailed as definitive proof that the drug is effective.?

If doctors and patients knew how little of a difference the drug actually made, and also knew the long-term detrimental effects of taking the drug, demand would drop, so big pharma does all it can to make sure that line of thought doesn’t happen.?

Doctors usually flow along with this because they have been under the influence of big pharma since they were in school. Pharmaceutical companies sponsor educational programs that emphasize medication-based approaches to treatment. They provide free training materials promoting drug therapies. They fund conferences where pharmaceutical solutions dominate the discussion.

Sales representatives serve as a direct link between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers. They make regular, in-person office visits to physicians. If you watch the Netflix series “Painkiller,” you will get a taste of how unsavory these office visits can be, and how little it has to do with patient wellbeing.

These representatives distribute free medication samples, which helps create familiarity with their products among both doctors and patients. They also disseminate industry-funded research that supports the use of their medications.

Perhaps most strategically, pharmaceutical companies cultivate relationships with opinion leaders in the medical community. They identify and support influential physicians through speaking engagements and consultancy roles, effectively creating a network of credible voices repeating their line. These opinion leaders then shape treatment protocols within their specialties to include the company’s drugs.

The Suppression of Alternative Approaches

This system promotes drugs not because they're necessarily the most effective option, but because they're the most profitable. Insurance companies fall in line, typically limiting coverage for therapy while readily covering pills.

But people need human connection to deal with the traumas of life. When those traumas are acute, such as during a life transition, the human connection is most important. Pills don’t impart wisdom. Pills don’t understand what is happening in your mind and life. Pills can’t give you ways to cope.?

The pill is the solution unto itself. It’s absurd.

The Threat to Autonomy

In fact, taking pills makes it more difficult to cope. My patients who have been using drugs for many years question the very veracity of their emotions. They don’t know if it’s “them,” the drug, or their “disorder.” The basic equation where life confronts us with challenges, and we try to figure them out, all the while growing as people, is thrown into chaos by the presence of the drug. Self-doubt erodes confidence. Handling everyday difficulties becomes overwhelming. This whole bag of mind tricks prevents the development of natural resilience and coping skills.

As pharmaceutical interventions become increasingly normalized, we see a corresponding decrease in tolerance for the full spectrum of human experience. The drugs create the illusion of “normal” or “mental health” that has only a very few “correct” definitions. This is one of the main reasons the USA is on edge right now. Thirteen percent of the population takes an antidepressant. Nearly a quarter of women over 60 do.?

We are saturated with this stuff, and it pulls our collective perception of reality out of alignment. If big pharma can declare that an ordinary human experience is a medical condition requiring drug intervention, then that ordinary experience is no longer ordinary.?

No longer is coping with that experience a challenge to be met. Its emotional impact should not be absorbed; it should be avoided. The anxiety and sadness and fear should be “cured.” That way, we can be more productive or happier or whatever. Rather than engage life, we are encouraged to barrel through it with our eyes on some career or business goal, drugging ourselves to stay on course.?

Anything that resembles seeking wisdom or learning from experience is a waste of time, an indulgence for losers. The population at large has been taught this way of thought, they believe it, and so when they suffer, they demand drugs so they can bring their desires and their behavior into line.?

This raises profound questions about the future of human emotional and psychological autonomy.?

I work with individuals coming out of the drug haze all the time. The experience is both harrowing and enlightening. Simply reorienting oneself to one’s own emotions is always a path of deep self-revelation. It should be satisfying and profoundly meaningful. It is best done through drug-free contemplation, drug-free conversations, and drug-free therapy. All three are fast becoming acts of true rebellion.

I have openings right now! I look forward to meeting you.