I picked up a copy of my parents' Newsweek today, on the cover was a blaring 'How the Mind Works' article. i was half excited and half fearful that someone had beaten me to what i'm trying to accomplish here. i turned to the page and started reading. before long, as you could probably guess, i was pissed as hell.

i know you think that's such a cliched reaction, and i would agree with ya, but it's the honest truth.

the article discussed just about nothing but how much pills a person should pop in themselves to enhance their body up. i could go on and on bitching about how stupid this is just by looking at it from a balance point of view, but i'm also thinking that the kind of people that buy into happy pills aren't the type that are gonna be sitting here thinking too deeply into themselves.

what i will do, however, is tell you what i really know about the mind, in a nutshell. the mind is like the physical body, but in general people tend to take much shittier care of their minds than their bodies because they can't really get any visible feedback from it. and what do these folks do when they do get feedback? pop some fucking pills! sorry, i'm getting off point again.. shit, i just can't believe trash like it was printed in a magazine.

as i was saying, the mind should be treated fairly and respectfully, like you would take care of a body. althought it's just easiest to get what you need out of your mind from time to time and let it go to waste when you don't need it, this is about as healthy as never getting any excercise except for what you absolutely need to do.

most importantly, the thing that people never seem to grasp, is that yes, indeed, you can fuck your mind up. bad. people that grow into adults with just about any amount of control zapped out of their lives (I.E.: 99% of corporate jobs, the military, the government) forget how to control things, or perhaps they never learned control at all. when they see their mind is telling them 'fuck off, you're not handling me well', they go for the quickest fix - easy to use drugs like prozac that are actually endorsed by shitheads stupid enough to believe in it. having this much control taken out of your life results in the ever-present 'it was bad before, but it'll all be ok now' philosophy that coulds everything, leading to this psychaitry.

if you fuck your mind up, it's fucked. live with it like you would a severed arm or missing eye. of course, in order to see that you're really not operating normally (wait, there is no normal - tell that to them) these people will actually have to have some form of introspection to see a glimpse of what's going on, which i doubt they'll ever have with the way it's going with all these pills. the fact remains though, you have the power to make lifelong decisions about what happens to your mind.

if you get to some reconciliation with your mind, you'll live better. it's simple as that, but for most people the truth hurts too much.  since i've been writing and come to grips with who i am, i think better.. it's a fact. no tricks.

perhaps that's what the psychiatrists want, to keep the people dangling with their tongues out and money up front. i know newsweek certainly didn't do its homework.