Drugs, Imperialism and Supremacy

In a recent conversation about how individuals who are confronted with contradictions in the ideology that dominates the United States, a friend brought up the use of prescription drugs as a way of suppressing anxiety, lifting depression. When those who have been a part of the middle class find themselves falling into the ranks of the working class and can't explain why using the "bootstraps" belief we have grown up in, there are several possible responses. One would be a growing class consciousness, or understanding of the lines that divide and reproduce class in our country. Another response would be drugs. Prescription drugs can be the perfect anesthetic to the pain of the contradiction of a supposedly classless society. These thoughts took me back a few years to when I was working in a youth crisis shelter in Washington DC. Nearly half of the youth we served were medicated for some psychological or neurological ailment. When youth had to go off medication because of pregnancy, or simply running out of pills everyone would brace themselves for the "real person" that they would be confronted with. Suddenly I saw this as an effort of middle class institutions to suppress the class consciousness of the proletariat, or working class. From here my mind jumped to the spread of western medicine to the rest of the world. Medicine in the literal sense, but also in the figurative sense of prescriptions for structural adjustment plans, open markets, and cash crops. These solutions, like the drugs given to inner city youth, create much more harm than good. they also shift the focus of blame from social inequality and the forces that create it, to some sort of personal sickness, whether it be the mental/emotional ailments of a youth or the structural failings of a country and its people. Obviously these ideas are still forming in my head, any evidence, supporting or negating thoughts are welcome...