That’s just a bunch of kitchen psychology not even on the level of 19th century Freudian psychoanalysis. You’re starting from a very specific worldview—the pur

That’s just a bunch of kitchen psychology not even on the level of 19th century Freudian psychoanalysis. You’re starting from a very specific worldview—the puritanical tradition where those upholding a certain set of virtues (industriousness, tolerance to pain, etc) will be richly rewarded (on earth or later) and, conversely, any suffering can be traced back to individual faults. That mindset cannot survive contact with even trace amounts of actual data where, time and time again, medication does make a difference, although that difference remains frustratingly smaller than for other diseases. But it isn’t ‘numbing” of “fake” any more than antibiotics are. You seem to believe antidepressants are like uppers or downers where you chuck a handful and ten minutes later you feel a wave of happiness roll over you. Here’s a secret: take a few of those pills and you will feel… absolutely nothing. Anti-depressants do not produce a “high” in any sense of the word. Changes in mood take months to appear and are usually not even recognized by the patient. It’s their friends who tend to notice it first.