The spike in mental health diagnoses and drug use ... it feels like there's something seriously wrong with the world and environment in which these people exist. The system is broken, as it were.
Add to that the stress of work. Then the stress of politics, then the stress of social media, and now, lockdowns and doom/gloom news. It's no wonder people are at wits end.
Isolation is what media and tech companies want, as it means you'll spend more time 'engaging.' Keep checking your feed while watching the 24h news cycle. And in doing so further alienating people from one another.
I have no idea how this is resolved, but it certainly doesn't seem sustainable.
Heroin's not the same thing as asprin, nor the same as caffeinated coffee, for that matter. Lumping them all together and trying to draw conclusions thats society is fucked from that, when there are much louder, specific signals that could be addressed (but are more difficult), is questionable.
Approx what year would you characterize this "spike" as having started?
Though I do agree. I read some study somewhere about the absurd proposition that the Nordic countries are the happiest on earth--when they also have the highest use of SSRIs in the world. What kind of world is it wherein people are driven to lame pharmaceuticals to maintain their lives?
I'm almost willing to bet that that evolutionary crucial awakening of the "human" consciousness, that pivotal moment when our ancestors split from their apelike predecessors, was likely from the clash of normal consciousness and some drug or hallucinogen.
I am not a drug enthusiast or user outside of caffeine really, but I can empathize with people that want to do more, to go farther, to make the next evolutionary step in their own lifetimes, you know?
Why not let them see where they can reach?
(The same is true of pretty much anything. In the 1700s, there weren't a lot of people with Internet streams driving around looking for tornados. In the 2020s, there are, and as a result there are a lot more tornado reports. Does that mean the frequency of tornadoes is increasing? Nope. It just means the one that touches down in a field in the middle of nowhere is live-streamed from 20 separate angles, instead of going unnoticed by humanity as it would have many years ago.)
In a Gaussian world, where suffering and thriving are the result of more or less independent random factors, this is fine.
As systemic interdependencies increase, the situation shifts to a Paretian world, a power law distribution that emerges from feedback loops.
In the end, there are few who thrive and many who suffer. Often because of the thriving of the former.
And just to depress the mood a bit and abandon all hope:
The Paretian world may be even more stable, as long as sufficient resources are available.
I feel you are an alternative-perception deprived individual.
It is an essential component of the human experience that we must at least try to understand the nature of perception, and experiment with our consciousness. There is nothing seriously wrong with this, except societies (and the State) condemnation of human nature.