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It's interesting to think about people using drugs or alcohol to alter their realities. I've always thought of people using them to escape from reality as they see it. As far as drugs like antidepressants are concerned, I've thought of them as a way to bring people back to reailty. Depression seems like another example of a deviation from the average reality to me. I've always understood it be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain that results in an individual's altered sense of reality. Antidepressants were, therefore, a way to correct the imbalance and return the brain to reality. This might no longer apply if reality is defined in the individual by what the brain creates.

I recently watched a documentary called Grizzly Man, which was about a man who lived in the wilderness in Alaska to "protect" wildlife. His focus was mainly on his ability to live around grizzly bears without being attacked and even to remain in some sort of harmony with them. While he remained successful at this cohabitation for a long time his sense of reality was obviously unlike anything I had seen before. Theories about his mental health frequently come up when he is discussed. Many believe that he is manic-depressive and that this condition contributed to his unique sense of reality with regards to nature and wilderness. While my reality is drastically different from his, he does manage to maintain his reality for a period of time. Giving him medications to correct his disorder would not necessarily return him reality, but merely change it into something closer to the norm or average.