Killing My Body to Save My Mind

Readers Response (Killing My Body to Save My Mind)

Lauren Slater, used this essay to try and convince others suffering from depression or similar diseases, that mental happiness far outweighs physical happiness. She uses personal experiences and French philosopher, Descartes, reasoning to try and persuade them. Descartes, conceived that mind and body are two separate entities, while Slater had experienced physical happiness, but no mental happiness and vice versa. Slater is trying to overturn the assumption that many negative side effects mean a medication should not be used.

I have never considered the disease of depression specifically, but I have in the past wondered why people with diseases would rather deal with negative side effects in medications than deal with the disease itself. Really, I still do not fully understand. After reading this through I now have a better idea as to where they are coming from. Slater stated, “The result of my choice is that I often feel as if I lived hunched up in my head, which has to drag the offending, unfamiliar carcass all around town. “Go! Go now!” my mind orders the lipidinous tyrant, the carcass I’ve had to disown, but she only laughs long and hard” (Slater 260). In a way I feel that she has not truly overcome her depression, but that the Zyprexa causes a different view on the depression. It can almost be labeled as a happy depression or a drug high.

Slater makes the argument that, “Zyprexa, or experience of taking Zyprexa, moves one out of the twenty-first century and back to the age of reason. It makes clear to the patient taking it that she must choose between her mind and her flesh” (Slater260). She states,” Because of Zyprexa, I no longer see my life too far into the future” (Slater 260). These comments do not sit well with me. These statements tell me that she still has no real control of her mind. She is still living with the depression and is only camouflaging it with other depressing thoughts....