They wanted to be happy

The psychotropic epidemic claims many lives every year

The race for success, feigned optimism and forced smiles… The United States often positions itself as the ideal of freedom, almost a paradise. However, facts are stubborn things, and they show that about a quarter of Americans are deeply distressed. A significant part of them are on illegal heavy drugs while many people take antidepressants. In addition, doctors say little about the fact that under the influence of psychotropic drugs, people often die from overdose, whereas addiction to such pills is akin to nicotine or alcohol. The thing is that the illusion of a happy and carefree life sells very well and annually brings billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies. This is what foreign publications write about this problem.

An innocent pill? 

In order to understand at what point the American nation got hooked on all kinds of drugs, it is worth recalling some facts from the history of the issue. At the beginning of the 20th century, morphine was used as an analgesic, heroin was used to treat cough, and cocaine was believed to cure depression, syphilis and alcoholism. It was only after a while that it became clear that all these substances cause the strongest addiction and lead to death. 
A striking fact of recent history — the infamous Sackler family founded several pharmaceutical companies in the USA and began to actively market its addictive painkiller OxyContin, which was chemically related to heroin, yet the manufacturers modestly kept silent about this. According to The New York Times, some people were even prescribed a week-long course of such drugs after wisdom tooth extraction, when it was enough to take a simple analgesic during a very short period of time. People — without even realising it — began to get hooked on opioids en masse, which led to a real opioid epidemic in the 1990s. According to the Euronews investigation, about 500,000 Americans died from OxyContin overdoses at that time. Over time, the drug was banned, but this did not solve the problem. New drugs have appeared on the market, with a new composition, yet with the same basis.

According to the BBC, for every one million Americans, approximately 50,000 doses of opioids are currently taken per day. According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) —  the US national public health agency — in 2021 alone, about 80,000 Americans died from using a relatively new drug fentanyl, which is an opioid analgesic 50 times more potent than morphine. 

At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between opioids (which have already caused a number of loud scandals in the United States) and seemingly ordinary antidepressants. Some of them can still be bought in the USA without a prescription. But are they that harmless? The CDC has stated: in 2024, the number of US deaths involving antidepressants was on a par with those from heroin overdoses. The Newsweek magazine refers to a study that has revealed that uncontrolled use of antidepressants is associated with violent crimes among young people aged 15-24 years old. This is not to mention the growing number of suicides in individuals taking medications. However, even knowing that such an outcome is possible, doctors continue to prescribe these drugs to a huge number of patients. 
This is the case of the Valium tranquiliser — not that long ago, American doctors prescribed it literally for everything — insomnia, depression, migraines, alcohol dependence and even stomach problems. They recommended taking these pills even without a specific diagnosis, including for children under 18. The argument was simple: every person is prone to anxiety from time to time and needs a quick sedative. This is how the drug became the most prescribed medicine in the USA and the first to have sales exceeding $100m.

Pain corporations 

The reason for this psychotropic problem is rooted in the US healthcare system. The USA does not have free medicine that would be funded from citizens’ taxes. In contrast, it boasts a well-developed insurance mechanism, with medical services paid for by the patient or their employer. 

The insurance policy for middle-class Americans covers virtually no treatment other than pills. Instead of a full course of therapy, a person buys medicine because it is easier and cheaper. This is how the pharmaceutical industry, aka Big Pharma, gets profit. Six of the world’s ten major pharmaceutical concerns are concentrated in the US. In no other country do drug manufacturers enjoy such power and influence as there.

Moreover, it is in the United States that advertising of psychotropic drugs on television is still allowed. The BBC has cited such an example. In 2015, the American Medical Association (AMA) called for a ban on antidepressant advertising, but just a few months later, during the commercial break of the final NFL game — the most expensive advertising time on TV — a minute-long video about an opioid drug was shown. It was only in 2017 that the White House recognised the fact of the opioid epidemic in the United States, and Donald Trump declared it a ‘nationwide public health emergency’. 
The Guardian has published a high-profile article about the detention of the founder of one of the companies selling opioids — curiously, a relative of those very Sacklers. His corporation’s aggressive marketing consisted in the fact that the manufacturers hired doctors as speakers at educational seminars to advocate prescribing high doses of psychotropic drugs to patients who, in fact, did not need them. False experts eventually received more than $1m for this. This is not counting the fees to ‘scientists’ who write articles about the harmlessness of psychotropic drugs.

Great Depression 2.0 

Despite the blatantly criminal activities of US pharmaceutical companies, Big Pharma is not the only one to blame for what is happening. According to the American Institute of Public Opinion founded by George Gallup, events in the world and the country led to the fact that in 2023, the proportion of US citizens suffering from depression reached a historic high. According to the study, depression affected 17.8 percent of Americans. However, the problem with the treatment of this disease lies much deeper. 
The Al Jazeera TV channel, with reference to World Happiness Report, has noted that it is young Americans who most often suffer from depression. Among the reasons are ‘the cost of living, university fees, and gun crimes’. In addition, the article talked about the growing crisis of loneliness caused by the active use of social networks and the entire entertainment industry on the Internet.

By Yulia Demeshko