2002’s Equilibrium is about a government regime seeking to solve society’s problems by eliminating human emotion from day to day life.  The idea is that human emotion causes instability and instability amongst people causes conflict. The members of society are stripped of their individualism and no longer able to think and behave as themselves.  They are required to take prozium daily which turns them into emotionless drones. Each person is totally dependent on their daily dose to maintain the standard level of operation the government has set out for them.  For without prozium, they would begin to feel emotions, think freely, form their own opinions, and actually ‘be themselves.’  This “individual think” would create a problem for the government as thousands of people operating individually with different opinions, beliefs, and interests is much more difficult to control and manage than thousands of people operating exactly the same. Entering a constant (medication) takes numerous variables and uncertainties out of managing and controlling a large group of people. It is considered prozium does help in the sense that people will not have to experience negative feelings and emotions like pain, worry, hate, anger, and fear. However, it also prevents them from being able to experience anything at all including the emotions of joy, enthusiasm and pride.

Now of course this idea is from a science fiction movie. Realistically, despite any oppressive or suppressive government, an entire population would unlikely take medication without immediate rioting and rebellion.  When a person believes their power of choice is being taken away, they instinctively begin to push back.

However, control over a segment of the population could likely be undertaken without too much notice.  This would have to be accomplished so people believe they are doing it by their own choice. If they are choosing to dose themselves daily because they deem it necessary, doing so would not be seen as a problem. They aren’t being made to do anything (like the characters in the movie), they are consciously doing it themselves.

But how would you get an entire group of people to do this while making them believe it is by their own choice?  Probably the first thing that would have to happen is each individual would have to see something wrong within themselves. After all, if there was nothing wrong, there wouldn’t be a need to fix anything.  But let’s say for instance I believed I had a condition, either mental, emotional or physical. That would mean I had a problem to which I needed to find a solution. I am certain the fear of my condition worsening or affecting other areas of my life would far outweigh any concern I have about the medication I would need to take to solve my ‘problem’.

I am not trying to suggest our society has become like the one described in the movie. While we do not make it mandatory that people are dosed with medication, over time it has been made much easier for people to meet very broad, general criteria that allows them to be diagnosed with a particular disorder. A disorder that accompanies daily dosing of a particular medication.

Today, if a kid is having trouble focusing in the class room, he has ADHD.  If someone experiences periods of mood swings, to whatever degree, they are bipolar. If a person is often feeling tired or disinterested and has little energy, they ‘have depression’.  I would say most people would agree that during day to day life, they might experience a loss of focus at work or in school, fluctuation in their mood, and/or a lack of energy ALL in the same day! In reality that is nothing more than going through life.

Any unwanted or uncomfortable feeling someone experiences in their daily life is often identified as a mental disorder to which the solution is medication. “If you have a problem, here’s a pill.” A pill that really does nothing but detach you from the problem and reality as a whole and attaches you to a state of chemical dependency (I say that from personal experience).

While there are many things different about the movie and our society, the solution of solving life’s problems by taking medication is very similar.  But what actually gets solved?  The original problem is still there with the added problem of being chemically dependent.

Society seemed to get along just fine before the introduction of the numerous mental disorders and medications that are present today. Before depression was considered a medical condition, if a person was experiencing a period of low energy and a loss of interest, they just had to suck it up, handle their business and keep it moving. Today you can just pop a Xanax and forget what you were depressed about, along with everything else.

We need to promote personal responsibility and solutions for one’s life more than we promote evaluation and medication.  Turn on the television and check the number of commercials flooding televisions daily and objectively look at the message communicated. The United States is one of the only countries in the world that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise new prescription drugs. (See earlier blog re: the only countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to promote.  Hint it is only two countries.) With an infinite supply of psychiatric drugs, pharmaceutical companies need to create a demand.

They do this through advertising and introducing new disorders and conditions with numerous symptoms almost anyone could identify with.  And when a person identifies with any of these symptoms, a demand is created with a person who originally never thought they had a problem (outside of the day to day obstacles and barriers of life).  At that point the person ‘decides’ to start taking a medication for their problem.  But did they ever really make that decision?

Do most of the people on psychiatric drugs (Xanax, Zoloft, Adderall, etc.) actually need them or have they just been made to believe they do? Is the pharmaceutical companies intention to help people get better or to make money? Are there better ways to go about helping people with their problems than dosing them and factually turning them into drug addicts?  You tell me.

In the movie, medication was enforced.  In our society, we are consciously doing it to ourselves.  After all, we need it, right?

Written by Guest Blogger Bobby Owens

As the son of two educators, Bobby’s own goal of becoming a teacher began at the Hampden City/Sydney College in Virginia. Just a few credits shy of reaching his goal, he worked his way to the classrooms of Narconon.  Now a Narconon Course Supervisor, he assist clients as they move through the steps of the Narconon Drug Rehabilitation program.