Dr. Rook was asking me a question.

Fascinated, I listened to his calm voice, noting the accents on certain words-- he was such a hypnotist!

The Appointment

I should have been more specific when I set up this doctor's appointment, but now here I sat. I was only here to ask some questions, but the fine doctor was treating me like I was just another one of his patients. This was a little worrisome, as I wasn’t here for psychiatric help, and he was probably quite expensive to hire.

The Song and Dance

Soft and cool-- like a python-- his words coiled around me, and I remembered to breath. He was good. Dr. Rook wasn’t just a psychiatrist, he was clearly also a fine musician as he sang his questions into the room in catchy rhythmic verses. Was this musical sedative the beginning of a long, chemically-bound relationship between doctor and patient?

Both Cobra and Flute

With such command over the tune, Dr. Rook scarcely asks that his patients trust his words, because they will so childishly trust that authoritative melody. The patient needn’t be wary of the doc's methods because that old sentimental tune touches their hearts with it’s caress, so that his words might simply provide the comfort of a familiar human voice. Both cobra and flute, Dr. Rook weaves his way into the souls of his patients with cunning lyrics and hypnotic song.

Dr. Rook, the cool cobra. He was already flicking his tongue into the air, trying to taste his way into my head. Perhaps this explained the serpents that were so prominently displayed on his medical emblem, and given this doctor’s skillful and illustrious tongue-- that primitive, reptilian device-- mixed with his high intellect and lethal chemical arsenal, I stayed cautious and attentive, as is a good practice around poisonous snakes.

Loony Tunes

His voice! He sounded like one of those old radio announcers, it was that transatlantic accent from the vintage cartoons; unoffensive and smooth. I tried not to smile as I listened:

”As a mental health specialist, I hear a lot of things about these topics, what might be called Conspiracy Theories. You know, I’ve even been told that I’m a part of a vast secret plot, and that a powerful pharmaceutical industry is parasitically thriving on the inherent cultural authority that is given to doctors like myself-- that I hold the powers of a god in my diagnosis and in my inevitable pharmaceutical solution, all orchestrated to keep the world doped up and submissive to a ruling class while I legally sell their drugs. What do you think; do you believe that I could be a part of such a plan?”

Could Dr. Rook be "part of this plan."

Such a charged question from the doctor! This could end up being lively. Dr. Rook had just opened a tempting buffet, and obviously wanted to see which delicacy I would dive into first-- there were indeed some juicy morsels laying there for the taking. Before I could choose though, the doctor’s voice began anew, and I did feel a tinge of satisfaction as he resumed that curiously familiar song before I could answer.

”In the online questionnaire, you wrote that you were sometimes restless in school when you were a child, and you admitted that you had felt anger when you were disciplined for your overactivity and for your inattention in class. You wrote here that it was not a child’s fault, being “trapped” in a classroom all day, and that it was “natural” for a child to ask questions and to defy certain unreasonable rules and traditions, science and religion, even questioning the societal norms that we depend on for order and lawfulness later in life. Basically, in your defiance to authority, you found yourself blaming the school system itself for your own misbehavior. ”

He was right, of course. Every word was true, but how did he make it sound so irresponsible? I don’t think I was much different from any other child in the room in those days-- children are firing with excess energy like little organic dynamos-- trying to get thirty of them to sit still all day sounds... what’s the word? Crazy.

Or is it me who is crazy, for noticing the absurdity of this system that we put our children through?

Blaming the Children

This whole thing is ridiculous. I still find it difficult to accept the notion of sticking a bunch of kids in a box every day of their childhood, and to then punish the children who show signs of childhood by assigning them a mental ‘disorder’ so that they can be medicated.

How immature really, to develop a faulty learning system and then blame it’s poor performance on the children.

I Was Lucky

I was in school during a time, long ago, when we were free to daydream in class, where we might be present, but absent-- and even the most enthusiastic teachers knew that trying to keep our attention all day was unhealthy for all involved. But now, these children are forced to sit quietly for long periods of time, and risk forced medication if they deviate, become restless, or misbehave in the slightest.

In the modern school, if children have any trouble memorizing every bit of the selected data that is supposed to occupy their minds all day, and instead find themselves daydreaming in class, they can be charged with an ‘Attention Deficit’, and instead of the adults acknowledging the modern child’s frustration and anger about being bound to a desk all day, the child could simply receive additional charges of Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), and these children might have to add an atypical narcoleptic to the bag of colorful pills that they already are being forced to take, so that they will shut up about the crappy system that they’ve inherited.

The ODD Child

What a wicked trap this is beginning to look like for these innocent children. If a child dares to be angry about anything, or have the audacity to argue with an adult or figure of authority, then the industry has come up with a demeaning name for this behavior, ‘ODD’, and has now defined it as a mental disorder.

It’s chilling to think that parents are being taught to forget the ongoing absurdity of the modern USA public school system, or especially that we would so easily allow a pharmaceutical industry to persuade us to put our children on these dangerous chemicals instead of looking at that broken system that we have handed our children over to.

We know better than this!

Telling a child that they are ‘ODD’ because they are hesitant to embrace the awful systems that we have erected, or berating them for their unwillingness to be corralled into these outdated carcasses that we call schools is like punishing them for not eating shoe polish. Have we all lost our minds here? A lot of these pharmaceutical concoctions are not only dangerous to start taking, they are dangerous to quit without the doctor’s approval.

Instead of harming our children with these dangerous chemicals (read the side-effects for the toxins prescribed to these kids today) we can take a look at the obsolete school system that most of us had to sit through, and feel a little compassion for the young people as they see the facade and the problems with the program, and then instead of medicating them we might feel a rush of pride when they dare to squawk about it.

Let's Invent 'Decentralized Education'

One thing is for sure; if these modern children aren’t medicated properly, there’s no way they are going to accept the stupidity that we have chosen to ignore in our many institutions. New generations are able to access more information than we’ve ever had before, and the best ideas will now organically make it into the world through the imaginations of all students, of all ages. Things are changing.

In recent years, it has become easier to envision decentralized systems, such as the decentralization of money as we are now witnessing with cryptocurrencies. When we can expand that philosophy/technology into realms of energy distribution and even decentralized internet access-- we can also graduate into the idea of decentralized school systems.

Conclusion

Dr. Rook has been talking this whole time, I have no clue what he was saying. How long have I been sitting here? This is actually sad. It hurts me to think that while maybe these chemicals that he pushes were designed to help-- and maybe they do help in some cases-- there are countless children who end up on these pills because of our lazy adherence to a faulty system, wherein Science is trusted to be moral and humane as it chemically forces round children into the square pegs of an antiquated military-based educational system that basically indoctrinates the young minds into a lifetime of sedate compliance with someone else’s forceful aggressions and heartless whims.

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UPDATE: Two Weeks Later

I have to go back to see Dr. Rook to get some more of these pills. They are colorful, and aside from these suicidal impulses and what-have-you, things are ordinary and fine. I don’t remember being “defiant” against the good doctor, but he said that my attitude was bad, and he didn’t like my mean questions that made me sound angry.

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the above is fiction and satire, and while the opinions expressed are my own, the information about childhood medication is derived from research and personal experience, as a close member of my family was persuaded to begin taking ’Zoloft’ a few years ago, but in their wisdom, this young person researched the product on the internet, and decided to stop taking the pills after just a few days, with no dramatic effects. About that: please be careful stopping these medications abruptly, they have to be weened off of slowly, and things like these serotonin re-uptake inhibitors are frightening not just from the side effects of the medicine itself, but the dangers of trying to quit the damned things without a doctor’s assistance. To quit these types of pharmaceuticals, it’s best to see a doctor, the one who prescribed them in the first place hopefully, instead of trying to heroically defy the system by quitting them alone, and that way the knowledge of this chemical abuse on the human system can be more openly addressed, and even avoided in the future. While this experience of mine happened before ODD had even been invented, things have gotten so insane now, here is the Mayo link to prove I didn’t make ODD up. Somebody did make it up, to silence the children, and to try to prevent them from inventing something better, but things are changing, and better systems are already appearing.

all photos here thanks to Pixabay free images

@therealpaul