"The medicated generation: drunken, drugged and damned"

Since my freshman year, I've had disdain for both my generation and humanity as a whole. Upon entering college it seemed like everything good and pure was sucked out of this world, never to be embraced again.

Every morning freshman year, I would wake up to my roommate humping his bed like a seal trying to make his way back to the beach. After the sloppy aftermath, my disgust for my species was irreversible.

This past summer I lived next to a schizo who would beat himself senseless, and talk to his wall like Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" when he didn't have a bottle of Canadian Crest to fuel his alcoholism and soothe his troubled mind.

"You gotta problem? I'll f*** you up," he would say to his wall before running down the dorm hall, sputtering his lips with a make-believe machinegun in hand.

Masturbation and schizo horror stories aside, I've met drunks, sluts, players, potheads, and addicts of all sorts who all share one thing in common: they're part of the medicated generation.

Aldous Huxley predicted in "Brave New World" that we'd find a super drug to dull the senses and ease the mind, allowing us to escape from reality without a menacing hangover. It was promoted to keep society structured and in-line.

It seems we've found our "soma" in anti-depressants.

Instead of relying on strength of character to get over an ex or a death in the family, we swallow some Paxil and let our troubles drift away.

Students popping anti-depressants like Tic Tacs depict a much graver drug problem than that of the '60s generation.

If we're not devouring "uppers" we're guzzling and smoking "escapers."

A few weeks ago, I asked my buddy Jon if he'd like to go to a movie with me.

"Sure," he said, "we can pre-game at my place."

"Pre-game? Are you kidding me? It's a documentary about Jewish swimmers during the Holocaust."

It seems like every time my friends go out, alcohol or drugs must be mixed into the night's festivities in order for it to be a good time.

Humans have survived hundreds of thousands of years without drug dependence. So why is it that we "need" them all of a sudden? If everyone's taking anti-depressants, what are we so depressed about?

Is the society we created unfit for humans in their natural form or is our attraction to drugs just another sign of human weakness?

We've built a highly energetic and controlled capitalist society where everyone feels pressure to climb the economic ladder, to look prettier, and to buy, buy, buy.

The strain of all these pressures wears us down, and suddenly the advertisement on TV for that wonder drug could easily take off that weight.

We've become more civilized, but in doing so, we're less capable of coping with the problems our society fosters.

Not only is the intensity of our dog-eat-dog world the root of the problem, but it's also our gung-ho mentality to take the "easy way out" whether with a pill, a blunt, or a 12-pack of Bud.

But by inoculating ourselves with so many chemical substances, we are losing what essentially makes us humans.

If it's not drugs or alcohol, sex is our drug of choice. The frequency of one-night stands and cheating among people in our age group is nauseating. Sexual rendezvous of this sort only give a false sense of worth, devalue one's dignity, and inevitably hurt those involved.

These haphazard relationships are good for no one. Why is it that we need some horny degenerate from the opposite sex to make us feel secure about ourselves?

Like drugs and alcohol, the relief is only temporary and the pain will manifest again when the buzz wears off.

Drugs and sex are not only hazards to our health, but distractions that blunt ingenuity, and soak up too much of our time.

While the WWII generation knew how to shoot a gun and save the world, my friends can puke-and-rally three times a night and construct a funnel blindfolded.

If I believed in hell, I'd say we were all headed straight there. With a deplorable number of kids going up on Ritalin and Prozac, it's obvious that the medicated generation will propagate. We're just strata in the teenage wasteland waiting for future generations to be piled atop.

But don't worry too much. Just have a beer.