NOXIOUS AND TOXIC INFLUENCES

Victor Bloom MD

It is not generally known or appreciated that elements of our culture can cause serious mental problems. For example, many people, as I speak, are going crazy over the Y2K bug. This bug is invisible and can enter the brain through the nose or ears. A symptom of infestation with the bug is a slight tickling feeling in the ears and/or nose.

Once the bug gets into the brain it causes a number of mental aberrations,www.yolowawa.com such as a hoary disposition. Another is to be obsessed with the bug, such that it preoccupies consciousness, distracts from reality and leads to the hoarding undue amounts of food and water. It also may cause an irresistible urge to take large sums of cash from the bank and store it under the mattress. In addition, there is a tendency to stock up on flashlights, batteries, candles guns and ammunition. Fanatical religious people may become convinced, under its influence, that the end of the world is coming. They may spread anxiety among the populace by shouting 'apocalypse' apoplectically. This is a unique and dangerous brain disease, with varied manifestations, but nobody dies from it. Aggravation may shorten the life, but there's no way of knowing how long the person would have lived.

Madison Avenue is another noxious influence. The pop-psychologists there have decided that sex sells, and so all too many magazine covers are filled with nubile damsels with flat bellies, long legs, high cheekbones and a shapely bust. As a result, people are not buying Playboy or Hustler anymore. The mental aberration caused by Madison Avenue is responsible for the spread of rumors about a mythical 'cellulite,' and as a result, grown women are undertaking dangerous liposuction to alter their bodies to look like nubile nymphets, and some young ladies are actually starving themselves to death in the process of trying to imitate super-models.

The Madison Avenue bug also causes sexual addiction. Since sex is everywhere in the media, some people get overstimulated. Some very prominent politicians have been afflicted with this devil-sent disease. Executives who seem to be the model of a modern CEO, may shoot themselves in the foot, forget to zip themselves up and wind up all embarrassed and humiliated.

The worst result of these advertising-induced sexual excesses in such men, already debilitated by the millennium bug, is the depletion of vital, bodily fluids. The reality of this eventuality was vividly demonstrated in the famous Kubrick film, "Dr. Strangelove" (Or How I Learned to Love the Bomb). It is better for a man to avoid sex altogether than to suffer the effects of the depletion of vital bodily fluids. Without the problem and stigma of sex, men and women would get along better.

Probably the most noxious influence causing mental derangements in American today is the fact that the IRS insists on our paying taxes. It is said that there are only two things you can be sure of--- death and taxes. Therefore, taxes remind us of death. Every year as we find ourselves in the month of April and heading toward the dreaded 15th, we fear that our money is going to be taken from us. We know that if we don't pay, they will come and get it from us with guns. We tend to feel like it's highway robbery.

The mental aberration due to taxes is manifest by worrying about money and deadlines and procrastination. Maybe, people think, if I wait long enough, the IRS will change its mind. Maybe some clerk will erase my name from the computer. Hope springs eternal. Ordinary people who are otherwise generous, do not like the idea of 'our' money going to 'them'. The IRS makes you not love your neighbor.

The food industry also gives rise to diseases of the brain. Because of fast food, people eat fast and drive fast and run each other over. People have been seen running from one fast food emporium to another. They run and run and run in order not to get fat, and they call it 'jogging'. Actually, the juggling of the fat leads to drooping and sagging, which people try to deter by lifting weights. They figure you have to run forty miles just to burn off one Big Mac. Since we are what we eat, we avoid rutabagas.

Finally, the most insidious noxious influence on people's minds today are the political parties. They want to divide you up into left and right, good and bad, smart and dumb. Obviously, we are right and good and smart. They are sinister (left), bad and dumb. The brain disease caused by noxious politics makes otherwise sane and friendly people discuss politics and religion, which often leads to fisticuffs and overturned soap boxes.

Nothing matters anyway, because in the end, we all die. Since April Fool's Day is full of surprises, maybe for once we will not all die! And with this hope, I wish you all a Happy April Fool's Day!

Dr. Bloom is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University School of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and he welcomes comments and questions at his e-mail address: vbloom@comcast.net.