Anyone who thinks I'd be better off without meds is welcome to take me in for the experiment. All I require is an internet connection, some plain food (rice and beans will do; I'll find or grow any other food I need) and somewhere to sleep. For all I care it could be a shack in your backyard and a pile of clean rags.

I'm always ready to reestablish a reputation with some local community as an off-my-meds eccentric but mostly harmless dumpster-diving semi-homeless guy. I may be living in your shack (or not) at various times, or hours, but I might also disappear for weeks at a time and if you are any kind of compassionate person you will wonder if I am dead or held against my will somewhere. Probably not, I'm just wandering, oblivious to clocks and calendars.

My grandfather was a similar sort but his obsessions and compulsions were useful to the Army Air Force during the Second World War, and later the space program including the Apollo Project. (My own obsessions are rarely useful, not in this society.) My grandfather's doctors prescribed amphetamines. He lived 90+ years, so drug abuse obviously wasn't a problem.

It would be interesting to know a little more about him but mental health issues were kept deeply in the closet in past days. Intriguingly, mathematician Paul Erdős used amphetamines too. (That drug has no appeal to me at all. Blechhhhhh.)

The drug warriors always claim drug use is the cause of problems when it's usually the other way around. Sure people can slide down the slippery slope of addiction and abuse, but for the most part drugs are very useful for many sorts of chronic health problems including mental illness.

Nevertheless I think our culture could reduce drug use by being less cruel to people who are different in some way and by treating addiction as an ordinary public health problem.

Robin Williams was taking these meds to keep himself out of some unimaginably terrible mental state. The odds are these drugs didn't put him there, they were simply not working, the same way an antibiotic might not work against some infections, or a few aspirins might not effectively treat some sorts of pain.