The Pharmacology of Fun

I wrote a column entitled "The Perils of FDS: Fun Deficiency Syndrome" for the Fall 2009 issue of h+ Magazine, which is a first stab at establishing the scientific value of fun as medical therapy.

Modern cosmetic pharmacology focuses so heavily on eliminating depression that it entirely misses one essential point: depressed people are suffering from a lack of fun. Nobody ever describes depression as a "Fun Deficiency Syndrome," but lack of fun is clearly the root cause of all depression. It is impossible to be depressed when you are having fun, yet modern therapies for depression seek only to minimize depressive symptoms while doing nothing to maximize the daily intake of fun. This backwards approach to treating fun deficiency syndrome -- or FDS -- is not only dangerously ineffective, it will be viewed by future generations as one of the greatest failures of medicine.

h+ Magazine Fall 2009, Page 78-79. You can download the electronic version or PDF from the h+ website, or wait until later this month and find it on newsstands.