I head from an acquaintance of mine back in the States. It seems his teenage son has a problem with nail-biting.  The poor kid gnaws on his nails whenever he fells stressed, nervous or bored. And being a teenage boy, that means pretty much all the time.

Actually, when I was in high-school a friend of mine also bit his nails obsessively. He beat his habit in a month, by digging his fingernails into a small bar of soap he carried around with him.

It seems such simple solutions are no longer in favor today, and American parents prefer to have their children take anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs. Yeah, seriously! I did a bit of research and it seems that over 40% of adolescents suffer from this problem and that anti-depressant and anti-psychotic medications are the most common way of dealing with it.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but screwing with kids brain chemistry in these situations just doesn’t seem right.

Actually, it’s part of the ongoing and escalating drugging of American society. Every year more and more “conditions” are invented and thresholds for things like hypertension and cholesterol are dropped. Feeling blue, insomnia, occasional muscle twitches and trouble concentrating have somehow become conditions that must be treated with chemicals.

What ever happened to “Just say No to drugs”?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 7:58 pm and is filed under America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.