Pill Pendants

Today I ran across these pill-shaped necklaces. As a psychology grad student, I have a complicated relationship with drugs: when are they necessary? When are they over-prescribed? Is there a way to regulate who gets them, and when, effectively? When is it okay to medicate against a patient's will?

Luckily, I'm not in clinical psychology, and these aren't questions related to my subfield (at least, not since the 1960s). But they're still disturbing questions. The obvious answers aren't always the right ones. People who can prescribe psychoactive medications don't always understand them.

Drugs are incredibly powerful. No wonder we revere them like totemic figures. I wish we, as scientists, doctors, consumers, producers, abusers, could figure out how to be ethical with them.