Funny how you said "day mood stabilizers", when marijuana would fit so much better. Except the roles are reversed - people want it, and the authorities are forbidding it.
I live in a medical marijuana state, but I think alcohol is still more of a controlling factor. However, I think weed is replacing it in the younger generation. This is especially true for the "just out of college" population. In this group you have a lot of people with degrees, lots of debt, etc. who are working crappy jobs they hate that are often unrelated to their education and who are getting paid close to minimum wage. I know quite a few people like this who are big into weed, and the first thing they do when they get up in the morning is smoke a bowl. I can't fathom getting high at the start of my day. I'm pretty liberally minded when it comes to parting, but I used to wonder why anyone would want to dull their senses and numb their mind when they are doing their job and going about their day. Then I realized if I was massively in debt and/or stuck in a dead end job, I might turn into one of those people too...
I haven't, but I'm on another SSRI now, and I can't begin to see this as a drug useful for placating the masses. If anything, it's increased my motivation to fix things that are broken. It's replaced apathy with a wide range of sometimes intense emotions.
Some people call them happy pills, but my experience is they're something else entirely.
