I too live in the Northwest, and have seen both these kinds of ads and the widespread effect of the dreary winter climate in these parts on the human soul. The first time someone told me about the "Suicide Hotline" phones on those bridges in Portland, I thought that they were pulling my leg, until I saw the phones, and was informed that the local media there carefully expunges most of these bridge suicides from the news nowdays, so as not to make things worse than they already are. A commonly voiced Portland legend is the time when a young junkie couple hung themselves from the Steel Bridge, the oldest and grimmest heavy duty Portland industrial relic of all, just in time for the rush hour commute, about 6 years ago. Their bodies hung right at eye level for the horrified viewing pleasure of the thousands of smug downtowners riding the sleek MAX train over the toxic Willamette river.

Me, I work the graveyard shift in the Northwest, so the winter months are not exactly uplifting. There are days that go by where I simply do not see the sun. Depression ? Yeah, everybody gets depressed. But everyone I have ever known that went on those antidepressants, the ones that screw with your serotonin, just got really weird. Weird as in the way that people who use amphetamines get weird. Strange to the point where you wonder if the person you knew is even the same person anymore.

No thanks. I'll stick with finely refined types of Caffeine, small amounts of benzodiazepines when overwhelming anxiety takes hold, and the finest, hoppiest India Pale Ales that I can find when it's relaxation time. Redhook makes a fine product that is commonly avaliable, and I'm not above plugging it for free, as it is so darn high quality ! That's about as far as I want or need to go with altering something as precious to me as my brains. I grew up around psychologists and psychiatrists, in my own family, even, and maintain my opinion that they are 95% crooks, racketeers, and glorified drug dealers. Operating above and beyond the Pale as they do because they have the stamp of Respectability on their shenannigans, so hardly anyone questions. These people really hurt the reputations of those doctors out there who actually care---who take their Oath seriously.

Why do you think that these people are so outraged by huge segments of the United States population ordering medicines from Internet pharmacies ? Does it have more to do with a concern for ethics or more to do with personal profits ? Take into account all of the kickbacks these people get for prescribing new medicines for their patients. Test driving the new, barely understood behavior modification chemicals on human subjects outside of a control group is all that that racket is, really, and the results of a web search on this subject will frighten you.
It's simply a "beta" test of certian chemicals, and an extremely lucrative type of extortion, when the subject is abrubtly withdrawn from one chemical to the next, for the usual fee.

I knew a guy well over a decade ago who started to develop some pretty horrific mental problems. Eventually, his parents decided the best thing to do was to leave the threat of immediate re-commitment to a mental hospital hanging over his head should he not follow the esteemed shrink's every order. Problem was, the cocktail of pills he was forced to swallow made him worse, much worse. He knew it, and everyone else knew it, too. At one point, his walls were covered in indecipherable marker scrawls and bizarre drawings, and he began to talk in an English accent, insisting that he was someone else. Then he would lapse back into his own personality from time to time, and go choke down some more court-ordered pills to "make it better", or at least stay out of the loony bin. I vividly remember him laughing and crying at the same time a lot right around then.

In a moment of clarity, he drove out to the edge of town and blew his head off with a shotgun.

And I don't blame him one bit, as much as his suicide angered me.

This is only one reason why my ire is raised every time some self-important drug dealing shrink tells people what they need to be taking in order to lead a full life. No thanks, Jack, I'll just do my methodical research, carefully take what I need, and eliminate the middleman, thank you very much. I see you, and I know you for what you are. And, thanks to technology, there is very little that you can do about that.

Yep.