But another meaning is actually closer to what I’ve been thinking over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been fortunate to be privy to a round·table discussion among some of our best and brightest, people who were around in the period of excitement and discovery when psychopharmacology was in its infancy – the days before those often-cataloged corrupting forces grabbed the wheel. I obviously can’t contribute much, having ridden my own train down a different track, but I can listen and learn. And there’s quite a story to be told.
I hope that it gets written in all the complexity it deserves. A lot of it is in books already written, but not often read.
Before Prozac<\/a> by Edward Shorter come to mind. They’re long and detailed, but that’s actually part of my point. This is one complicated story, one that deserves a thorough understanding rather than the simplified versions we hear so often – populated with trolls under the bridge, handsome princes, and fairy godmothers – those artificial and flattened characters people make up to drive home a point. This time, we need to get it right…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I almost feel like I ought to make an apology. For the last month, my head has been partially elsewhere – a wedding anniversary of note and a celebration cooked up by our daughters that drew a crowd from our earliest days forward. It’s over now, and things are edging their way back to normal. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66419"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66444,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66419\/revisions\/66444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/wp-content\/themes\/coffee_cup\/images\/parkbench.jpg\")
I almost feel like I ought to make an apology. For the last month, my head has been partially elsewhere – a wedding anniversary of note and a celebration cooked up by our daughters that drew a crowd from our earliest days forward. It’s over now, and things are edging their way back to normal. That picture above was taken by a visitor the morning after a gathering on the back porch over the weekend. I got an email asking if it’s a permanent change, did it have a meaning? I think I put it there because I liked it. It reminded me of the weekend and the coming together of friends from different times in our lives. ![](\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/wp-content\/themes\/coffee_cup\/images\/backporch.jpg\")
But I can always generate a symbolic meaning in a pinch, and I thought of a couple immediately. First, in this enterprise of trying to clean up the mess made by the academic·pharmaceutical complex, it’s time for a coming together of people from different places and times with a shared purpose rather than a litany of differences. <\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/trolls.gif\")
I hope that it gets written in all the complexity it deserves. A lot of it is in books already written, but not often read.