Hey everybody,
Sorry for my extreme lateness when it comes to posting this. I think that the reason I wasn’t able to post on time relates to our topic for the week pretty well.
My dad is a manic-depressive and an alcoholic and this weekend things went kind of south. Everything is going to be ok but it got me thinking about myself. My dad’s side of the family has a history of being very susceptible to mental illness. My grandma and my great grandma were both Bipolar. So obviously it’s in our genes, right? Well, that’s what the doctors tell me. They have already said that I should think about taking anti-anxiety pills as some sort of preemptive strike. But how can they be so sure that I’m going to go nuts? Well, obviously I can’t answer this question with a great deal of certainty and I don’t think that the doctors can either. But it seems to come down to nature versus nurture. Hopefully I was raised differently enough from my father that I can override what my genes are telling me to become.
On a side note, I would like to address a topic brought up during the debate. One of the reasons that I voted for the affirmative position is because the debaters stated that by labeling it as disorder, it allows members of that particular group to find each other and relate with one another. They no longer have to feel alone. Alcoholics anonymous has always been a great tool for my father (when he actually goes) and I feel that it is very similar this. If he weren’t able to find people with the same problems as him, he would probably feel even more alone and isolated.
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