Dr Stephanie Cacioppo, director of the Brain Dynamics Lab at the University of Chicago Prizker School of Medicine, puts loneliness in the same category as thirst: a human signal that can be dealt with through our actions. Just as we reach for a drink when we are thirsty or dehydrated, we might be able to take a pill to deal with the consequences of feeling lonely in the future. "Like thirst, loneliness is a biological signal that has evolved to protect our survival," she says. Her aim, she says, is to reduce the alarm signals in the brain that can result from people feeling lonely to make them better equipped to reach outwards, rather than falling inwards into social isolation. "The goal is not to eliminate loneliness [or thirst]. The goal is to help prevent people from feeling lonely [or thirsty for the analogy]," she says. Dr Cacioppo is leading a team developing a "loneliness pill" that she hopes will help relieve the more severe symptoms suffered by the acutely lonely. "Loneliness is widespread and contagious. It is an epidemic," she says. Dr Cacioppo stresses her goal is not to stop loneliness, but rather to regulate the ways that feeling lonely affects the mind and body. She says loneliness results from signals to the brain that perceive danger all around us and push us to interact in ways that will cause greater anxiety to ourselves and others. This is where Dr Caccioppo thinks a loneliness pill could help. Could the cure for loneliness be as easy as popping a pill? https://8ch.net/4chon/res/292034.html
Loneliness is becoming a big thing in the public eye now. My country is even talking about creating a minister of loneliness.
>>24129 Kurzgesagt recently did an episode on loneliness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA). It's definitely reaching widespread attention.
I hate to shit on somebody trying to do a good thing but this is potentially worse than just letting it walk all over you. If you're thirsty you need that drink. So I take a pill and all of a sudden I don't need a drink so I don't take one. Then a couple days later you keel over and die because you weren't following your brains natural instructions. Pills for mental health stuff really skeeve me out. I've seen it happen to people where they go get happy pills and then one day they can't afford them and they turn into emotional children in a way that's downright disturbing. I saw what they did to my father and it has me terrified of them. It's good that somebodies trying to help though, they do help some people. Just use caution.
>>24131 its really easy to blame all of your problems on inanimate objects, but in reality it was your father, a conscious individual with free will, who was engaging in those behaviors. giving others easy excuses for their terrible behavior is what allows them to continue those behaviors.
>>24133 I agree he makes a lot of bad decisions but I disagree about the amount of personal responsibility and rationality you're expecting him to have. People struggle with that, especially when they're in an emotional mess. Combine that with the deceptive and predatory practices every pharmaceutical engages in and you have a recipe for disaster. Look at the opiod epidemic, a lot of these people got their start taking pills given to them by a doctor and then for whatever reason they don't have them, or their need escalates and they turn to meth. It's extraordinarily cruel to give these people a lecture about personal responsibility when it's both linked to biology and the tools for weakening your judgement are more advanced than ever.
>>24128 Scary to think that the sum of a human life will eventually be reduced to a handful of pills
>>24139 >sum of a human life will eventually be reduced to a handful of pills Isn't that only if you voluntarily choose to take the pills?
>>24143 How long will it take before pills like this are forced down people to make them conform and obey? It's only a matter of time.
>>24144 People don't need to be force-fed pills to conform and obey.
People today are already drowning themselves in bottles of pills for one thing or another anyway. Many of those already mood stabilizers. Seems like everyone I know is on a dozen medications. What's one more?
>>24146 I'm fine with killing my soul with pills or whatever if it means I won't be a nervous, angry wreck. It takes too much effort to be emotionally healthy without them anyway
>>24145 The non-conformists do
>>24148 It's unnecessary to force people like that to take pills. The conforming masses will simply ramble on about how people who actually see the truth, or at least think a bit more than average are "crazy" and "dangerous". Forcing pills down people's throats runs too much risk when tools for social control are already so perfected that the elite need not worry, because nobody will listen to them.
I wonder how far this will go. The definition of a "mental illness" grew increasingly broad over the years. Personal traits which would be considerd "weird" or "special" ten years ago are now treated like real illnesses and people affected by them pop pills against the "symptoms". I really wonder if and when things like laziness and other unlikable personality traits will be labled as a mentall illness and treated like one. In the end that would result in everybody being a flawless pill-addict and everybody who refuses to take these pills being considered a failure. I think one of the bigger problems for psychology in the next years will be the question where to draw the line between these traits and real mental illnesses.
Y'all should consider watching the movie The Congress. It features pills.
>>24150 I think we may already be there with laziness. The trick is in the language, because they are always sure to associate it with a recognised "problem". If you go to a psychiatrist and discuss how it is difficult for you to do anything (but they can't prove you are depressed) most likely you will be diagnosed with ADHD-PI (predominantly inattentive) and given amphetamines. I thought I had hit the jackpot when I was surprised with a dexedrine prescription one day. A few years later I stopped taking it because I have no meaningful goals in life anyway.
View catalog