medicine

woods93

I am currently taking Prozac for depression and I have read that Buddhist aren't to take drugs for mood altering feelings, But in this case I feel this is acceptable. how do you other Buddhists feel about this subject?

vinlyn

I've seen the Precept which covers this written in different ways. The most acceptable translation to me is: "Refrain from taking intoxicants". I don't see Prozac (I used to take Paxil) as an intoxicant.

It's not an easy question. I am now living in Colorado, and medical marijuana is legal here. Just today at a party (we were all over 60 years old) I learned that one of our group takes medical marijuana...not sure what her condition is, but I do know that her most obvious problem is difficulty walking...not sure of the cause. So, here you have the difficult case of trying to decide if a prescribed "drug" being used to relieve long-term pain is also is an intoxicant. Not an easy answer, but on the other side of things, there are pain relievers this person could use.

Hmmmmm.

woods93

@vinlyn -I see where you are coming from. I seen it as me taking it as medicine to help me for the good. What I would see as not acceptable is a drug addict taking it to get high off of.

compassionate_warrior

Exactly. We have members taking "mood-altering drugs" to correct imbalances in their brain that cause schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder, and the like. Any doctrine that would deny people healing measures wouldn't be worth much.

person

The precept to abstain from intoxicants is not because they are inherently wrong or directly cause bad karma. We refrain from them because they cause heedlessness and when we're not properly mindful its much easier for all the other harmful behaviors to take over. So in the case of pharmaceuticals that help restore brain balance, since they make it easier to be mindful and refrain from negative behavior they should be encouraged.

sandy

I can't see where something that is necessary to have to carry out day to day living would be bad. I'm on celexa for anxiety disorders and take Klonopin when it gets so bad that I can't handle it or talk/meditate my way out of a panic attack. For me it's so debilitating that sometimes I can't leave the house for days when I have a bad spell. My medicine helps me. I hope one day I won't have to take it any more but for now I view it as a positive for all the changes it's helped me make in my life.

SherabDorje

My situation is the same as sandy's. The medications are even the same, except that I take others as well. It's hard to cultivate with a nervous system that does those things.

seeker242

The precepts against drugs are against drugs taken for pleasure, not medicine.

SeaOfTranquility

I lot of people who end up discovering the Buddha's teaching are suffering from depression or anxiety.

They are motivated and find a practice of daily meditation beneficial.

It is a process of looking inward to see what is real and applying this knowledge to helping end our self obsessed delusional thought. The teachings provide us with a guide to this awakening.

Now some take the precepts as rules or commandments, but that is not the purpose. It is a matter of doing what helps and not doing what does not help.

Suffering is universal and only you can know what works for you at this particular time. But don't let your current use of drugs for the treatment of emotional distress deture you in any way from learning more.

Best Wishes

Mountains

Let me start by saying that I've taken antidepressants off and on since the early 1990s (mostly on). I do not dispute their effectiveness in *some cases*. They certainly made me feel and function a whole lot better at several points in my life. However, there is now a fairly large body of very well conducted research that says that in most people, antidepressants do no better at altering or improving affect than placebo. If it were one study saying that I'd dismiss it, but there are numerous studies to that effect. I think there are way more variables involved that cause different effects in different people, and I'm not saying I'll never have to use them again myself. But I think in general, antidepressants are given out like candy as the cure-all for everyone. I've seen patients from 12 to 100 years old taking them, which to me says that there's not something wrong with the patients, there's something wrong with the society they're living in. I think our society has GROSSLY confused the idea of sadness with depression. Sadness is a normal human emotion that all of us feel at some time or other. The big pharmaceutical companies and the media have convinced us that we should be happy as spring lambs, dancing around and having sex five times a day in oder to be "normal", so they'll sell us a pill to make us that way - or rather, to make us think we're going to be that way. We never *are* that way, but yet we still keep buying and taking the pills.

I think there is a LOT that the vast majority of people can do to alleviate the symptoms that are described as "depression" without taking pills. Like I said, I've taken them, and I may take them again. But in general, I think most people who take them could easily do without them with some fairly simple lifestyle modifications. Diet is a HUGE component of depression, as is exercise. Exposure to broad spectrum light (sunlight is best) makes a HUGE difference, as do sleep patterns and quantity (95% of us don't get enough sleep).

I'm not saying you should stop taking the pills, but I am saying that anyone who does should *very* carefully evaluate what they're getting out of them. If you can elicit the same response from a non-pharmacological method, why pollute your body with man made chemicals (and I'm a nurse saying this...)...

jll

Medicines are exempted from the 5th precepts.

Mr_Serenity

When I was a teen I would take paxil for anxiety, depression, and agoraphobia, but one day I just decided I had enough and started trying to reverse it without medication. I decided to attack my mental issues head on. To confront them and try my best to reverse them. I no longer have any anxiety problems. My mental state does not stop me from doing what I want to do.

I still get stressed out, and sometimes depressed, but it's temporary. Much more so than say before I found Buddhism and psychology in general. I try not to dwell on the negative, and instead focus on building, focus on the positive. By remembering that I *get to do this, and that everything is temporary it helps me appreciate things more.

So I do believe that things like depression and anxiety and mental issues like that can be fixed without medication. Medication has side affects too. I would think one would want to take the least amount of medication possible. So in my opinion it's worth trying to be off the meds for mental issues and work things out without them. It's definitely possible to reverse some psychological disorders without meds.

DaltheJigsaw

I don't personally agree with much medicine or medication. I hardly and I mean hardly ever take medicine, even when I get a headache I usually try to relax my mind, meditate or walk outside. However, when depression and other more serious disorders are concerned, I would still feel the same way. But this is just MY OPINION! And only mine.

Mr_Serenity

The average drug lists over 70 side effects.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/09/average-drug-label-lists-over-whopping-70-side-effects.aspx

So if there is a way to beat it without the drugs, might as well.

pegembara

There is a subtle difference between intoxicants that dulls the mind and medication that relieves anxiety-depression. The difference is not so clear cut. Anything that dulls the mind isn't advisable.

Anyway the 5th precept is a training rule, not a commandment.

Zenshin

Like a lot of other posters have said psychiatric drugs are over prescribed these days, a lot of mild to moderate depression and some more serious psychiatric disorders could be better relieved without drug intervention (google diabasis or soteria for info on non pharmaceutical intervention in psychosis for those who are interested). The pharamaceutical industry is big business and mood disorder drugs are a portfolio for year on year profit growth.

I however have schizophrenia and have depression related to being given this label, I haven't taken any citalopram for around 6 months due to wanting to live as med free as possible, over the past few days I've fell into a really black suicidal depression and have started taking the anti-d again becuase otherwise I would have ended up binging on booze which was likely to cause a lot of friction or bad karma and making a suicide attempt. I don't think karmic forces are going to "punish" me for taking something thats going to enable me to try and live by the precepts or continue to live so I can learn more about the liberation of the Dharma.