galadrion

*Chuckle* Least obvious, maybe, but as the results show, I seem to have a flair for the subtle - and I revel in it. Personally, I think that by keeping myself well out of the hands of the shrinks, I've done the best thing possible. They do so put me in mind of the blind leading the blind...

Me, I think I'll continue avoiding them for as long as I can get away with it... and I have it as a firm commitment (ooh, the twistiness of the English language!) that, once they do catch up with me, I'm going to fully enforce the Rule of Three upon them. That is, for every attempted "mind job" they do their level best to apply to me, I will revisit upon them threefold and in spades. I am the only one I have ever given - or will ever give - free reign on the inner workings of my mind. I may not be normal, thanks be to whoever, but I'm comfortable with the furnishings inside my own head and I won't take kindly to some meddlesome outsider who thinks he, she, or it knows better how things should be arranged. Trespassers, be thee warned! They will be shot - survivors will be shot again.

Seriously, I think my biggest "problem" is my arrogance - or, as I prefer to think of it, my supremely unshakable self-image. And, since I've spent literally decades refining it and polishing it to its current state of mirror-bright sheen, you can quite probably guess just how much of a "problem" I rate it to be. No, thank you, I'm quite pleased with the way I've turned out, and I see little need for any major changes at this point - certainly, no need for what society is peddling as "the ideal".

*Laugh* Well, I came through the system just as they were gearing up for their full-scale pharmacological assault on the brain chemistry of the masses, and fortunately, my mother has the same highly skeptical view of their chemical "solutions" as I do - truth to tell, most of my attitudes towards such were handed down to me from her. Granted, there were any number of times I would have prefered to be coddled, told that it "wasn't my fault", and given a magic pill to take away all the bad thoughts in preference to her method of instilling discipline and the sneakiness to avoid getting caught. The lady definitely subscribed to the "spare the rod and spoil the child" view of earlier generations - though her favorite rod was a knitting needle. Which, to my mind (and legs - ouch!) was emphatically more effective than a paddle or some such. But it did teach me to never get caught twice for the same offense... another thing for which I feel gratitude to her.

Personally, I've always been dubious of the "medicate away the negatives" approach - I saw far too many classmates who latched on to every excuse which was coming down the establishment pipeline, and I watched what the results were. If you kept your eyes open the same way I did, I suspect you came to similar conclusions about how effective it was. But just to make it perfectly clear, I feel very strongly that our current extremely addictive society is a direct result - far too many of my peers (though not many of my friends) entered nominal adulthood saddled with so many chemical dependencies that they could barely function. And that was when they were on their meds! If they tried to kick the habit - as all too few of them even attempted, and even fewer succeeded - matters went swiftly from bad to worse. That, too, contributed to my outlook. Even today, I am supremely wary of any sort of psychoactive or physiological substance - when I had my wisdom teeth extracted, for instance, I took a grand total of three of the the pain pills, and threw the rest away. The medical community is welcome to regard me as a recalcitrant head case, but medicating me into submission is not a path I'm prepared to allow them to follow.