For God's Sake, Shut Up
Sit through a brief ad and then discover the latest on the apparently never-ending Tom Cruise anti-psychiatry rampage. I am in shock. What a dogmatic, intolerant, bullying asshole! I'm surprised the Bush Administration hasn't hired him yet. Here he is, ranting on national television that he "knows" anti-depressants are wrong and psychiatry is a "pseudo-science" and that everyone can be cured through vitamins and exercize. He was totally rigid and inflexible in his attitudes and unwilling to listen to anyone who claimed to have been helped by these things. When Matt Lauer insisted that Brooke Shields had been helped by therapy and drugs, and "if [it] worked...isn't that OK?", Cruise replied, "I disagree with it." When you think about it, that's scary. What would he do if he had the power? Would he go so far as to deny her her meds or stop her from seeing her therapist?
If Tom Cruise has to get so damn mad about something, can't he pick something BAD to get mad about, like genital mutilation or human trafficking or hunger or poverty? Does he have to keep beating up on one woman who made a personal choice for her life?
Jerk.
If Tom Cruise has to get so damn mad about something, can't he pick something BAD to get mad about, like genital mutilation or human trafficking or hunger or poverty? Does he have to keep beating up on one woman who made a personal choice for her life?
Jerk.
posted by Savannah at
10:23 AM
6 Comments:
achshully, as much as i am irritated by tom cruise, i would tend to applaud his annoyance with the general public's acceptance of anti-depressants and drugs for adhd. they are not the "be all and end all" for depression and can cause all sorts of problems for patients taking them. if our society wasn't so enamoured with the quick fix mentiality we might give a lot more room in our lives for the emotionally and mentally ill. these drugs are just new on the market and they have many side-effects that shouldn't be downplayed.
By
Anonymous, at 6:50 PM
What bothered me is that Tom Cruise was taking such an extreme position. No meds ever, no psychiatry ever. That's *very* different from saying "drugs are not always the answer" and "hey, by comparison to other countries, it looks like we're over-medicating our kids" (which I think we are). I'm actually not a fan of antidepressants either, and I'm very upset about Ritalin. But I found Cruise's anger, his extreme position, his seeming belief that he knows what's best for people, and his need to "win" against Matt Lauer, to be disturbing.
By
Savannah, at 7:48 PM
right on savannah. and it's one thing to adopt a position of extremism, but completely another to foist it on everyone else.
By
me, at 8:34 PM
(josh) if I had to guess, I would expect this is one of L Ron's teachings.
As big a load of crap as he is, he sure makes some cool movies. I can't wait to see War Of The Worlds.
By
Anonymous, at 9:34 PM
In general, we do overmedicate. You hear all the time about cases where schools will demand that parents put their kids on Ritalin because the kids won't listen--and not to bother sending the kids to school if they're not on Ritalin.
But there are times when medication is absolutely necessary, and if the choice is between side effects and crippling mental illness, you take the side effects. (There was an article in...Time, I think, recently, where the author said "You know what? If I have to choose between taking Vioxx and maybe having a stroke but being without pain, or not taking Vioxx and living with pain...I'm taking the Vioxx.")
By
Robert, at 10:38 PM
(Ham) Leaving aside the whole issue of whether everybody is over-medicated, wasn't it nice to see some celebrity on a show not just belching forth the usual 'safe' dialogue in promotion of the latest media event? The kind of rehearsed, phony talk between celebrity and interviewer that will publicize the latest movie or TV show or broadway play?
Though Tom Cruise may have been a dick, he didn't allow Matt Lauer to say "Tom, I'm really excited about the upcoming movie! Can't wait to see it!"
By
Anonymous, at 9:04 PM
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