There are aspects of college that make it “the best time of your life” — freedom from your family, the ability to wear pajamas wherever and whenever you want and the liberty of sleeping in until 5 p.m. on a Wednesday. In spite of all of these awesome opportunities/excuses to actually enjoy ourselves, record numbers of college students are depressed, bipolar, et cetera.

Try this sometime: walk through the Union, your dining hall or anywhere else around campus. Of the people you see around you, about one in seven is either taking, or has been prescribed, an antidepressant. Knowing this, look around and try to guess who it is. You’ll see some easy marks, though you’d undoubtedly be surprised at the inaccuracy of some of your guesses.

Despite many a psychologist’s arguments, I’m of the opinion that antidepressants are about as useful as sheets of used toilet paper. Yes, our world appears arguably less stable and safe than at any other observable point in history. However, confronted with these realities, America has made two fatal mistakes. First, we have allowed ourselves to be convinced that ignoring these realities will make them go away. Second, we have allowed ourselves, as a generation, to be drugged and dosed on an inconceivable scale by pharmaceutical companies.

The end result of these mistakes is this: the number one prescribed medication reigning over college campuses today is not aspirin, cold medicine or even birth control. It’s an antidepressant — Prozac, to be precise. Don’t believe me? This information is from Johns Hopkins University, as well as Psychology Today.

To clarify just why this is so disturbing, take a look at the historical trend it follows: for years, experts (including, but not limited to, the father of modern psychology Sigmund Freud) thought cocaine healed all ills. Now we call it an illegal drug and are aware of its horrible adverse effects.

Honestly, not being a user, I will not make any absolute conclusions, but sometimes I consider psychotropic “medications” more dangerous than alcohol, marijuana or even crack. And yet, they are the most (over-)prescribed medications in the US.

Direct evidence that these drugs actually *heighten* feelings of depression and alienation have not stopped drug-pushing doctors from releasing them, with the same carelessness of a 4-year-old with a machine gun, en-masse into our generation. I’ll bet my GPA that in 20 to 30 years, someone will discover the total uselessness and futility of pills that make you “feel” better. You’re not really coping with the problem until you tackle it head on, folks. Reality is not something to avoid, it’s something to embrace.

We all know that there are indeed cases where prescription medication could make sense, but it should be the exception, whereas today it is the rule. We, as adults, should really start being able to look our problems straight in the eye, psychological or otherwise. What kind of world do we live in where instead of experiencing stress and performing to our highest potential we can take a small pill and not give a shit?

Aren’t we forgetting that society’s dissidents, miscreants, depressed, enraged and generally “crazy” people are, in fact, the ones with some of the best ideas?