Before and After, or Half a Twin Today?

Just recently someone I know said to me, “I worry that I’ll be anxious all the time.”
This preposterously cyclical symptom of life in modern society came the day it was announced (by a completely unscientific source) that antidepressants make peoples’ faces “droopy”.

Apparently this finding was based on a study of twins; one took antidepressants and the other didn’t. The one who took antidepressants (i.e. the anxious one) looked older than the other twin (the happy, relaxed one) and so it was concluded that drugs, not stress, were the cause of this condition. Isn’t it weird in a culture – where we are constantly told that being stressed is for losers and chemicals can fix everything – that drugs have finally been nailed as a bad thing? Only for the “finding” to be completely bogus.
The funniest part is where the authors recommend that victims of droopiness perform facial muscle exercises to keep the tone healthy. I’m not sure that the muscles of the face are so paralysed under medication that they really can start to sag. If the authors of the article had claimed antidepressants compromise muscle’s integrity at the molecular level that might have sounded a bit more convincing…but making them too relaxed?

Stress is bad, dude. Very bad.