Supposing there were an addictive little pink pill that would:
1) make you feel good all the time
2) have no negative side effects
3) not impede your ability to function in the world
4) only cost you ten cents a day, and
5) be legally obtainable on an ongoing basis
Would you take the addictive little pink pill? Why or why not?
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I would certainly take it some of the time. I would take breasks for the sake of variety.
interesting….
being a person that has on rose-coloured glasses 99% of the time I would say no. If I were a person that suffered from depression I would probably say yes.
Depends on just HOW good it made me feel.
I’m generally a glass-half-full kind of gal, so I wouldn’t take it all the time… but I certainly would keep a vial on hand for my “off” days.
Tell me, does it eliminate mood swings? ‘Cause then I might be forced to take it whether I wanted to or not…
This sounds like a trick question… the only bad thing is it’s an addiction. Aren’t there “good” addictions? Like exercising. Almost sounds like bran in pill form. I’m all for it.
I promise you it’s not a trick question. (But for those of you who only want to take it occasionally, please bear in mind that that might not be possible, since it’s addictive and all.)
I don’t think so… I don’t even like taking Advil for a headache. Something about meds I don’t like, though if I need a prescription, I’m responsible about making sure I follow Dr’s orders. Something about addiction wigs me out, even coffee, and even a little pill with only good and no bad. *shiver* I suppose if it wasn’t addictive I would be more inclined, but even then I think I would make sure it didn’t become a habit.
Interesting question. No I would not take it. I do not want to be addicted to anything. Also, if I felt good all the time then I would not experience the normal highs and lows that make life interesting and cause me to grow. For example, I would not be able to properly mourn for those who pass away or feel great joy when my friend has a baby. The ups and downs can be tough but I think they are essential to my emotional and spiritual development as a person. I want to be the authentic me [warts and all], not a “shiny happy” me.
Good question.
Addictive doesn’t mean addictive always – If this pill was something as simple as an antidepressant, well, that’s one thing. If this something puts you back to the way you were or worse after you’ve fought to get off it? Not so much.
My answer is that I’d wait to read the long-term studies!
I think that the world needs melancholy. Would you know you were happy all the time if you weren’t ever sad? Even if you knew you were happy, could you experience joy?
I wouldn’t give up occasional joy for steady happy.
Good answer from Megan. Since I just stopped taking the only pill I was taking, I would say “no”. I want to see what life is like pill-free. While I do believe in “better living through chemistry”, it does depend on the circumstances. If there’s nothing wrong with you, or nothing that needs fixing, why take any pill?
I’m torn. I think that being happy all the time might help me also be more confident and productive and successful. By the same token, being happy all the time would prohibit me from really enjoying emo songs like “I’m Only Happy When It Rains”, which I’m listening to right now. You see my dilemma.
No, because I’m too cynical about pharmaceuticals to believe that there are no negative side effects. Unless it guarantees me a decent night’s sleep. Then I would take it once or twice a week, to get caught up.
I wouldn’t take it but it sounds like what a doctor would say to someone who was bi-polar…”this will make you feel better and you won’t have those extreme lows anymore” but people with bi-polar disorder often go off their meds because they don’t like feeling the “same” all the time. I think that very few people want the monotony of a single level life. Just my opinion.
Hmmm. Interesting question. It sounds attractive and presumably if one took it then one wouldn’t be able to worry about the addiction.
Also, presummably one wouldn’t be able to feel the anger or distress or sadness (or guilt) etc that is often required for people to take action to change things that are wrong or unfair or just make life miserable for others.
No, for two reasons:
1) It’s addictive. I wouldn’t want to be ‘tied down’ to a drug like that. It would be the equivalent of, say, being diabetic and having to take insulin. Why would I put myself in that situation on purpose?
2) Not to sound all teenage-angst-ridden, but I think that the lows in life make you appreciate the highs that much more.
I’d be very tempted. But I think not having the option to stop something is kind of like a negative side effect. I’d also be very skeptical that other negative side effects won’t be discovered down the line.
But – if there were a non-addictive little pill that 100% didn’t have negative side effects (if that were even possible), I’d be all over that.
By definition, an addictive substance “impede[s] your ability to function in the world.” It may be “legally obtainable on an ongoing basis,” but there are always issues of travel, getting stranded on desert islands, etc.
I think Huey Lewis wrote a song about that pill.
It would be a little boring to be happy all the time so I think I’d take it six days a week and cry all day Monday.
Definitely! I’ve been battling depression off & on for years. Sometimes it isn’t until you climb out of the pit a little way that you can see how low you had fallen, and how severely both you & your loved ones have been affected. A cheap, legal, easily available little pill to avoid that pain? If it worked, I’d take it without hesitation.
No, I wouldn’t. In fact, the idea scares the crap out of me. Life is for living, and what’s the good of happiness that isn’t earned? Things lose their value when they are too easily obtained…
I was about to automatically say no, because what if I rely on it and it runs out? Stops being legal?
But then I realized, I drink soda every day for the caffeine, and I’m not convinced that’s different from the little pink pill.
The whole question is self-negating. “Addiction” is a negative side-effect. You can’t be happy all the time if you’re addicted to something because a great part of your mind will be on ensuring that you have a steady supply of pink pills & that would create anxiety. You could not help but be anxious about ensuring the supply regardeless of how readily available the product is. Anxiety does not equal happiness. Also, being happy all the time would impede one’s ability to function in the world. A person does not function optimally in a constant state of happiness. We need to want. We need to be challenged. We need to overcome obstacles in order to function properly. Sooo – no way I’d take this mythical pill.
I’m so surprised that so many people would refuse to take the little pink pill!
I don’t see addiction as harmful in and of itself, only in its spin-off consequences such as the toll it takes on one’s health and the ways in which it impedes day-to-day functioning, and the difficulties in ensuring one’s supply.
My hypothetical example attempted to eliminate all those spin-off consequences from the equation.
However, you do bring up some excellent and thoughtful points, such as Re’s assertion that the normal highs and lows keep life interesting and help you grow. And Megan’s point about not wanting to give up joy for happiness. And Kay’s point about how sadness and anger at injustice in the world motivates people to do something about it.
Interestingly, none of these points relates in any way to the fact that our hypothetical drug is addictive, but more to the authenticity of happiness and experience.
Now I’m curious though…if the little pink pill were *not* addictive, would any of you change your minds about whether to take it or not?
I would likely take it once I was fully assured of the lack of negative side effects. Sometimes I just feel sad and anxious for no apparent reason, so given a choice between feeling artifically happy and uncontrollably sad, I would take happy any day. I suppose I would like to know HOW addictive the pill is. On the scale of caffiene to heroin, how painful would it be to quit? What lengths would I go to if I couldn’t get my happy-fix?
If you are already feeling all these symptoms why do you have to take the pill?
Which symptoms, J?
Heather, I’ve been happy and I’ve been sad too, and happy is SO much better.
*No* negative side effects? I’ve never met a pill like that. If that were the case, totally I’d take it. I see in the other comments that some people object to being happy all the time, but you didn’t say it would make you happy, but feel good. I’m all for feeling good. (I guess feeling good would make me happy.) I very much dislike feeling bad and think that at my age, I’ve had all the emotional-growth-angst I need. If there are no negative side effects and no worries about supply, then the addictive nature of the pill is irrelevent, IMHO.
But, of course, I took addictive (prescribed, so no supply issues, at least) pills that DID have very harmful side effects, so maybe I don’t always make the best choices.
I pay substantially more than a dime a day for addictive substances that may or may not improve my mood and have side-effects that I’d rather avoid.
So, Zoom, your little pink pill sounds pretty good unless the “happy all the time” thing means that I don’t feel grief, anger, embarrassment, and other “unhappy” emotions when it is appropriate to feel them.
I imagine addiction is anxiety-making for people addicted to things that are illegal or hard to get, but I don’t have that problem.
Well, okay, yesterday someone didn’t think to order for me when she went into the restaurant before me while I locked up her bike, and it was a bit tense until my coffee finally arrived, but I didn’t feel anxious. I knew it would come.
What bothers me, Zoom, is the stigma attached to the idea of being “addicted” to something. My father died in terrible pain, refusing to take enough morphine, and horrified that my brother and I wanted to get him heroin for his pain because he did not want to die an “addict”.
So, as you said, if you remove the term addictive from the equation, would people change their minds about the pill?
P.S. I would take it, but only if it were purple!
Absolutely not. I am who I am, and I don’t need or want anything to alter me.
YES! Of course I’d take it!
“Addiction” is a strong emotional trigger as a word, but is poorly defined even by medical standards. I’m “addicted” to all kinds of things (exercise, family relationships, knitting, prayer, coffee). Since this pill doesn’t impair my ability to function, I assume that this offer includes a fully functional emotional life. To be a fully functional human while maintaining a high level of contentment sounds just ducky to me. Sort of like communing with God all the time. I’ll send you my address and if you’ll be kind enough to pop a month’s supply in the mail, I’d be so grateful.
(We still burn witches at the stake today, but we call them addicts instead.)
A single emotion felt everyday with no effort is undeserved. Even if it’s “happiness”, it’s meaningless. It’s not emotion in the sense that we’re happy to see our children. It’s emotion in the sense that the unmedicated depressions given to me by the manic depression were emotions… it’s the light from a flashlight compared to the light from the sun. I spent fourteen or so years feeling emotions at the whim of a disease, now I’m taking pills so I can feel them naturally… so no happy pill for me.
No….I don’t think “feeling good” all the time is what I strive for. I think you need to be able to feel sadness, joy, fear, anger (a dozen other big emotions and countless variations) to be a whole person, to be a protective mama bear, to be able to show empathy.
I tell you, I am spending a whole lot of expensive time with an osteopath to go from NUMB to feeling PAIN cause PAIN is a whole lot healthier and indicitive of healthy than having a leg that is numb 90% of the time.
To me “feeling good all the time” would be like feeling numb.
AND
I think if you felt “good” all the time you’d lose sight of what good felt like and you’d still be seeking “good”…or “better”
I would have answered this differently when I was a depressed anxious teenager though.
Addictive answer: I don’t think I would. First of all, I’m not a naturally positive or overly happy person, so I think that taking it would change me essence, with which, I am more or less happy as it is, despite my shortcomings. Yes, there are some things I would change, but being happy all the time isn’t something I would aspire to. I would think that that particular sort of happiness would be of a lesser quality than true happiness. The lows are what makes the highs good, if you see what I mean. Being happy all the time would slip into a normal state and the lack of contrast would take the joy out of it. Yes, you’d still be happy, but it would lack a certain something. And somehow I just can’t shake the feeling that it would all be fake. A happiness built on shadows.
Non-addictive: I might take it from time to time. There are always times when you can use a good cheering up and even if it were only temporary, it would help to prevent deepening depression and keep things from falling into a possible vicious circle of unhappy state. Still, I doubt if it would be something I would take often, or perhaps for a time and then I’d desist when I no longer needed it – like with prescription drugs or painkillers. As soon as I’m no longer suffering, I forget to take them, which is not good when it’s an anti-biotic, but great when it’s sleeping tablets.
Regarding addiction though…I am definitely physically addicted to caffeine, I get a headache if I don’t have atleast one cup of coffee every day.
But I guess I don’t have an addictive personality because I can forget to have coffee, get the headache and it’ll be a day or so later (and I STILL have the headache!) when I go “Oh! I haven’t had a cup of coffee!…or maybe I’m just REEEEAAAAALLLLLYYY lazy, cause even then, if I can’t get the coffee made for me by someone who makes good coffee (ie Mo) I’ll just throw a teabag in water and have a cup of tea. But if the coffee is made for me I’m there with my monster cup.
When I did do some drugs I was the same way – roll my own? nah I’ll abstain, BUY MY OWN!!!??? Forget it!
Yeah I’m too cheap, and too lazy to be seriously addicted to anything.
So…if the pink pill wasn’t additive I’d probably have some and take one when I needed a “break” from LIFE…and I’d slip them to Mo too…but only if they weren’t addictive.
Am I the only one paranoid enough to see the beartrap?
It’s addictive. Today it’s legal and costs 10 cents a day.
What about next week? Or next year? Still legal? Still 10 cents a day?
I wouldn’t take it, if only to keep myself from being controlled by some big pharmaceutical outfit…
Gayle – because it’s my hypothetical question I get to control the parameters, and I say the factors I outlined in the post will remain stable forever. In other words, the little pink pill will remain legal, cheap and easily accessible, and you will continue to feel good and not experience negative side effects nor any impairment in your ability to function in the world.
I find it interesting that there seems to be some perception of happiness as a moral issue. Gabriel, for example, talks about whether the kind of happiness the little pink pill would deliver is ‘deserved.’
I’m not sure that happiness is something that’s allocated fairly in the first place – I see it more as a function of brain chemistry which is partially a function of heredity and partially the luck of the draw. It has little to do with how much happiness one ‘deserves.’
Melinda’s comments about ‘fake happiness’ are interesting. I know what she means, but can emotions be fake?
When I was clinically depressed and started on Prozac, I realized that the drug was working when I felt Normal one day. I had forgotten what Normal felt like. I didn’t need to be made to feel Happy – I just wanted to be Normal. So the answer is still “no”. I like being human and normal.
Wow after reading all the comments I feel less certain about my answer. I’m inclined to say yes. I need my caffeine every day and I don’t beat myself up about it. I’ve felt bad and I’ve felt good and I’ll take good, thank you very much.
I am reading one of Bernie Siegel’s books. He writes:
“Think about what you would say if God told you, ‘I want you to be happy for the rest of your life.’ What would you do to be happy?”
I think there is the answer to the problem you posed. We have to DO to be happy. If you just take a pill to be happy, you won’t have made anything happen, you won’t have earned anything and the happiness is hollow.
Would I take this pink pill? Abso-fucking-lutely! Where can I get them?
Go Aggie! I’m interested to know what people mean by having to “earn” happiness. To me, happiness (or feeling good) is a state of physical and mental wellbeing that comes from being content with yourself and your life. I don’t think you have to have suffered previously or anything in order to feel good, but I think you do have to come to terms with who and what you are and be satisfied in that. I think the pill would only be valuable if it corrected a pre-exisiting chemical imbalance — not if it created one.
XUP, using your definition, I would ask ‘how do you become content?’ Imagine that you woke up in the morning and felt happy. But then what? What if someone made your breakfast and went to work for you and did all your stuff for you. You would not have done anything positive to move your life forward – you would have just existed. How could you then be content or happy with your life? You wouldn’t be. You have to DO something to move your life forward. And when you DO something, you ‘earn’ happiness. You earn the right to be content because you contributed something, you made something, you did something. And even if you were a quadriplegic who HAD to have all the usual stuff done for you, you can still contribute in other ways, enough to feel you have ‘earned’ your happiness for the day. Even things like being kind to strangers and being thankful and smiling at caregivers, can be enough. It depends on the person and the circumstances. But I think if you don’t DO anything positive to move your life forward or to make someone else’s life a little better, then you don’t feel happy and it’s because you haven’t earned it. That’s what I mean by ‘earn’.
Nope, I think the highs and lows in life an mood are natural and it just seems like there would be some sort of lash back (not from the pill but from not experencing those natural highs and lows)And if everything was good all the time how would you actually know it was good when nothing makes you feel bad enough to compare it to?
Aggie, I love your conviction! When I find a reliable source for those elusive little pink pills, I’ll share my stash with you.
XUP: “I think the pill would only be valuable if it corrected a pre-exisiting chemical imbalance — not if it created one.” That’s an interesting way of looking at it. At the very least I believe it would be valuable for that purpose. However, I’m still inclined to believe it would be good for more than that.
Julia, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here: “Even things like being kind to strangers and being thankful and smiling at caregivers, can be enough.” The positive ripple effect of the little pink pill could be significant, since when people feel good they’re more likely to be good to each other. Also, your conclusion that people won’t feel happy because they haven’t done anything to earn their happiness, wouldn’t apply in our hypothetical example since the little pink pill DOES, by definition, make them feel good.
DeLaina, several other commenters also brought up the relativity factor – that feeling good only feels good relative to feeling bad. I’m not sure it’s true because sometimes I just feel really good or really bad and those feelings could easily stand on their own without any point of reference. Still, I would love to find a way to test this theory.
Hey, I love all these comments. You guys are brilliant. And we’re about to surpass the previous record for most comments, which was in response to a post about your pets’ names.
Probably not, the ten cents concerns me.
I’m not good at keeping track of change. I only have 10 cents if I spent money and get back change and then I’m not good at keeping track of it and I lose it on the floor and stuff.
And then I think if I had 10 cents I’d want to pool it with other change and buy a chocolate bar or a whole pile of minis to paint.
Chocolate makes me happy.
When I was majoring in psychology, I learned about a rather terrible experiment. Mind you, this was 20 years ago, and the experiment was relatively old at that time (iirc). The numbers i’ve included are examples based on recollection, NOT exact results.
The investigators (“they”) implanted electrodes into rats’ brains. Each time the rat pressed a lever, it stimulated the pleasure center. “They” found that at first, the rats zinged themselves every (say) ten or 20 minutes. The rats would eat, sleep, make little rats, then go get another zing. The time between zings got shorter and shorter: 5 min, 1 minute, 24 seconds … constantly. Eventually, the rat would starve/dehydrate to death: all it wanted to do was press the lever. I suppose it was one of the early studies of addiction — but I don’t recall the source, or who did it or when. (If pressed, I’ll suppose the 1950’s, and somebody in BF Skinner’s lab, or at least philosophical camp.)
Coming back to the question of the pink pill … I think not for me. The pill I need is the one to get me out of the occasional low: a kick in the pants, as my mother says; just enough to get me out of the sinkhole and interested in the world again.
My nephew! Wild Thing? Or Dark Mirror? (I know it’s not Sprout, he’s pre-chocolate.) I think chocolate is addictive too, but tastier than little pink pills.
Gwyndolyn, yes, I remember learning about that experiment in school too. Very disturbing. But I also read that rats subjected to the unnatural stresses of captivity, social isolation and sensory deprivation are more likely to be induced into addiction as a coping method than ‘normal’ rats.
Another experiment was subsequently devised, called Rat Park, and it provided rats with a similar drug-taking opportunity but in a healthier, rat-friendlier environment. The rats did not become addicted.
Your nephew…what about mine? He doesn’t paint, that was the only reason I knew it wasn’t the Thriller
That would be Dark Mirror.
I thought maybe a teen should weigh in here and invited him over to read the hypothetical….
Maybe I’ll ask Nature Girl next (Sprout says he takes a little pink pill already…it tastes fruity)
Okay Nature Girl thought about it for 30 seconds and said “No…because I wouldn’t want to have to take a pill every day for the rest of my life. Especially if I wasn’t sick…is this like the pink pill you made me take on the plane and I wasn’t even sick? (insert suspicious glare here) “No that was gravol so you wouldn’t get sick”
Hmmm…I would ask if an emotion can be called an emotion and not just a chemical reaction if it’s a response to a chemical additive instead of a real life experience. I suppose it must be an emotion to a certain extent, because emotions are simply chemical reactions within our bodies to our experiences, but is a chemical reaction to a chemical the same as one to an experience? I guess that’s why I would call it a “fake emotion”, because it’s chemically induced instead of experience based. I suppose it’s one of those things you could discuss for hours. Sounds rather fun actually.
Deb, I knew it wasn’t The Thriller because the link went back to Mudmama’s blog. 😉
Dark Mirror – what if the little pink pill was free? Would you take it then?
Nature Girl – what if the little pink pill tasted good?
Melinda, if only you lived a couple of thousand miles closer, I’d love to get together over a bottle of wine and discuss this further. Next time you’re in the neighbourhood…
Ooh, fascinating question and comments. Now that I’ve quit smoking (a few times) and quit coffee after addictions, I don’t think I would take it. I feel so much freer not having nic fits or caffeine withdrawal headaches for sleeping in on the weekend. I remember that horrible wanting, twitchy feeling of nic fits very clearly and I really don’t want to go back.
A few weeks ago I was reading about people shooting coke, their experiences, I guess from the other side of rehab, and they all said that the subsequent highs are never as good as the first one. I guess that’s a principle of rehab 101, but that’s really the nature of addiction isn’t it? That you need more and more to induce the same high, and it’s never enough. I see myself doing that on a smaller, less harmful scale (like I have a beer on a warm patio after several weeks without booze at all and it feels so good and buzzy that I have a beer every warm sunny afternoon and it never feels as good. I just feel full) or feeling let down after a shift after the drop-in. Those first few shifts made me feel really ALIVE, but now not so much.
If you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would have said FER SHER!!! But not now…
Would I take it if it was free?
If I was planning ahead, probably no. Because I know I’d be too lazy to make sure I had more.
If I wasn’t planning ahead I’d probably take one.
Well, well well. So far 58 comments on this topic- thats very telling. In response I would say YES to 1-5. Why not? I would because life is too long to feel shitty, so taking it would make me feel good all the time, not make me shake or do weird things, i could still work which i love to do, the cost is right and i wouldn’t be breaking the law. When I am happy the whole world is happy.
interesting responses. didn’t know about the rat park follow up study…huh.
a little better than chocolate and cheaper? even if body habituates to need higher dose yep, think I’d take it occasionally for a mood stabilizer upwards as needed.
I meant to mention that Dr. Andrew Weil wrote a series of essays in the late seventies about all the things that trigger our nervous system to create a high (including mangoes, chilis, and eclipses). His point, I think, is that the high isn’t a bad thing. He believes that the drug problem in North America was the result of not having any appropriate context in which to get high. Cultures that use coca have very specific contexts for its use, and nobody has addictions. Anyways, it was a fascinating book, called “The Marriage of the Sun and Moon” if you’re interested…
Dark Mirror, I don’t think you’ve got what it takes to fully commit to addiction. 😉
RAINO – welcome to my blog.
Pearl – me too.
Sin – That’s an interesting concept. It doesn’t seem to hold true in our society in the case of alcohol though. (At least not for everybody.) I’ll check out the book – thanks.
I think this is my all-time favourite thread of comments on this blog, and not just because it’s the longest either.
I’ve been thinking about this one since you first posted it, but got so busy I didn’t have time to post. I would go for it in a second. I’ve lived in constant chronic pain now for 6 1/2 years, for which there has been no relief at all. At times I think about asking for opiates, and I can deal with the idea of being addicted to something, but it’s the idea of the fact that after a while you stop feeling the effects of it, and need to increase and so on and so forth until it does nothing at all for you, but you still need it. If it kept working consistently, I’d be happy to live with the monotony of just feeling good all the time!
My biggest fear would be withdrawal – let’s say that I develop some condition that can be treated with a yellow pill. But it has nasty interactions with the pink pill, so I need to go off pink to start taking yellow. Then what?
Interesting question – it’s the main reason I haven’t had my eyeballs lasered…I’ve got family history of glaucoma, and I don’t want to do *anything* that might screw up future treatment options. That’s not necessarily rational, given current technologies/treatments, but I don’t know what the future holds, and lasering’s not necessary.
Ultimately, no, I wouldn’t take it. I’m okay with feeling whatever comes up at the moment.
Arden, I like that you focused on the “feeling good” aspect of the hypothetical question rather than jumping to “feeling happy.” They aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Melissa – in real life, yes, the future is uncontrollable and you could end up with unforeseen consequences like that. But in my hypothetical example, I’m in charge of everything, and there will be no nasty ‘gotchas’ down the road. The little pink pill won’t interfere with your yellow pill. I promise.
Yes
Hee hee! I’ll let you know if I ever make it to Canada, although I’d probably spend most of the time begging for a job there. It’s cold in Canada, so it’s high on my list of places I would like to move to.
Now if you’re ever in Switzerland…
Melinda, if I’m ever in Switzerland I’ll drop by with a bottle of wine and we’ll sit and knit and solve all the world’s problems. (That sounds so good it might even be worth a special trip…)