Tom Cruise

I couldn't help reading this piece entitled I can't Believe I am Defending Tom Cruise. Cruise appeared on the today show with Matt Lauer.

Lauer: If she said that this particular thing helped [Brooke Shields] feel better, whether it was the antidepressants or going to a counselor or psychiatrist, isn't that enough?

Cruise: Matt, you have to understand this. Here we are today, where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric shocking people, okay, against their will, of drugging children with them not knowing the effects of these drugs. Do you know what Aderol is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?

Many students try to get diagnosed with ADD to use Ritilin as a study aide. If you can't get it prescribed, there is always a friend who has too much. Lauer's careless attitude that if it works it's ok is completely irresponsible. When steroids first hit the market, athletes had a very similar attitude towrds drug abuse. Only after time did the health problems become more clear. How many people today are unwittingly comprimising their future mental health?

Lauer: Aren't there examples ... of someone who benefited from one of those drugs?

Cruise: All it does is mask the problem, Matt. And if you understand the history of it, it masks the problem... There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance...I'm not saying that [depression] isn't real. That's not what I'm saying... I'm saying that drugs aren't the answer, these drugs are very dangerous. They're mind-altering, antipsychotic drugs. And there are ways of doing it without that so that we don't end up in a brave new world.

And the bottom line:

Cruise: And to talk about it in a way of saying, "Well, isn't it okay," and being reasonable about it ... I think that you should be a little bit more responsible in knowing what it is.

Lauer: But —

Cruise: Because you communicate to people.

...

Cruise: Matt, but here's the point. What is the ideal scene for life? The ideal scene is someone not having to take antipsychotic drugs.

Lauer: I would agree.

Cruise: Okay. So, now you look at a departure from that ideal scene, is someone taking drugs, okay. And then you go, okay. What is the theory and the science that justifies that???