Happy Pill

The Placebo Effect is a well known phenomenon to anyone who has studied a little science or psychology. But just in case here it is; the Placebo Effect is where someone is given a pill or treatment, and told that it is supposed to do something when it is actually an inert pill or treatment.

My earliest memory of the concept was watching MASH as a kid and Colonel Potter suggested giving sugar pills and telling the wounded that is was the medicine they had run out of recently.  It worked on the show and in real life.

In medical trials they will give test subject an inert pill and they pill they have developed to cure something.  They compare the results to see if their new medicine works.  Well apparently the drug companies constant commercials about this and that drug that we need has increased the populations belief that pills cure because the Placebo Effect has improved.

Wired magazine gives the story how the Placebo Effect is undoing the effectiveness of new drugs,

It’s not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It’s as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.

I started studying psychology when I was a teenager and there is a love/hate relationship with it.  This is one of the phenomenons I really wished I didn’t know.  I think everything is a placebo effect and believe few things have an effect on me.  This may be why I can fall asleep after drinking a Mountain Dew but I will question any medicine solely based on this concept.

But once you go down the rabbit hole you can’t stop and now I question everything that goes on with our minds and behavior which makes this site heavenly for me.

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