Yeah, sure. Always; never the same…

Antibiotics make you feel better if the thing you have is bacterial. Antibiotics for a virus makes no sense, it’s like giving a double arm amputee a pair of gloves to keep their hands warm.
Normalality is overrated. So are antibiotics and steroids.
(ISn’t the point of drugs to change the perception of normal reality for a bit?)

Antibiotics make you feel better if you have a straight-forward bacterial infection that possesses the target and has not acquired resistance; and where the bacterial growth and toxins are causing the suffering, rather than an outsized immune response; and only if you don’t kill so much of your native symbiotic flora so as to cause additional suffering (including gastrointestinal distress, malnutrition, or secondary infections).

Antibiotics for a virus may make sense if you can modulate your natural bacterial flora in a way that alleviates the suffering caused by inflammation associated with the virus and give the immune system time to clear that infection.

This is all much more complex than pharma (or undergraduate biology) would like you to believe.

I might get into drugs if it can look like I’m sneakily eating ice cream straight from the tub.

Regardless of whether the problem is viral or bacterial, can’t we all agree that the only thing certain to make one feel better is prayer?

— MrJM

I use steroids to relieve the chronic inflammation in my intestines that keeps them from functioning normally.

SO HOW ABOUT DEM APPLES!?!?

@Andostre: Cat’s eating paint; it’s a nasty habit of his.

@Matt. Ice cream is to paint as methadone is to heroin.

I’ve been in the ice cream diet now for some years. They’re talking about moving me on to ice cream sandwich therapy. From there you have club sandwich followed by club soda followed by soda pops followed by pop’n’freah followed by indigestion.

@Nadine: No pop-tarts? Man, that’s brutal.

:) almost as good as the DSM definition of Delusions, which does not include things a large number of people agree on.

I try to have as little to do with tarts as possible.

She’s driving him normal.

Drugs are bad!
Some drugs are good, sometimes.
Some drugs that were good, are now bad.
Some drugs are bad or good, depending.

The four stages of anti-drug education?

Normal is a social construct, but feeling good with self is not so relative. If feeling ok includes high anxiety, constant depression poles, permanent need of escaping from whoknowswhat, then you’re not ok. Good/bad drugs are clasified by that kind of characteristics, by me, at least.

Prayer? MrJM really? Prayer? Now there’s a scary drug – religion. Shudder. I’d rather eat paint. Mmmm. Paint.

MrJM: I got over talking to an imaginary buddy when I was about 5.

OTOH, meditation works. That’s kind of like prayer, but without the imaginary buddy, so maybe, but why waste the effort talking to someone who isn’t there?

This is also how my friends and I talk when we’re high.

Its okay Cat, food is my drug as well.

MrJM: I appreciate the benefits that one can take from religion, but I think that this is perhaps the wrong forum in which to discuss and/or advocate such beliefs. I expect that for the most part those who read this comic will look down on people who have faith in something intangible like that.

Also, for the record, I’m agnostic and don’t find much use for prayer, for myself. But there are plenty of people out there for whom religion and prayer are beneficial, and I respect that faith. Those who look down upon and speak out strongly against religion are no less obnoxious or outrageous than the religious fanatics out there.

Are we so adverse to others’ belief systems – and so insecure in our own beliefs – that we can’t even talk about them in an agreeable manner, even if we disagree?

MrJM is kidding. God doesn’t exist.

But Bigfoot does!

I used to tell people that all the legal drugs make you a better worker and all the illegal drugs make you a less docile worker. I have friends who don’t agree with that kind of idea because it seems ideological. But… good drugs turn you normal and bad drugs make you escape from normality… that’s an idea everyone can agree with. Thanks!

Suffering is normal