Mind Optimization Part 7: Why Use Meds

Why do we need medications? Because the pace and demands of life have become unnatural, and our biology cannot keep up.

This video is part seven of twenty-six excerpts from a presentation hosted by SOUL Food Salon in March 2019.

You may check out the full playlist of this video series on The Art and Science on Mind Optimization here. Alternatively, you can also click here to watch the previous video and here for the next one.

Video Transcript

I’m going to take a short dip and talk to you guys a little bit about pharmacology. I think we can learn some very valuable lesson in pharmacology. Life principles, as well, I think can be extrapolated from what you guys are about to learn about what I consider to be the basics of taking psychiatric medication, any medication, and perhaps even more globally, any life intervention more generally. People always ask me the question, “Why do people need to be on medications? How can this be?” And my answer to that quite simply is that I think life has picked up to a pace that’s sort of unnatural. We’re doing things that we have never done before, at a speed that we have never done before.

And the reality is also that technology advances exponentially. Your computer 10 years ago was not even 1000th of what you have in your pockets right now. So the world is speeding up at this unprecedented rate, and quite frankly our biology cannot keep up. And that’s usually what starts the conversation, at least for some level of pharmacologic intervention, when it’s necessary. And I should tell you also that I don’t see medications as the end-all, but I do see medications at some point as subsiding inner turmoil and inner anxiety enough to allow the therapy to work, to allow the marriage counseling and career counseling to take place.