MBoffin.com

A fair question.

Speaking only for myself, the reason I get bothered by the whole "chemical imbalance" theory is that it's basically an attempt to make those who use it sound like they know what they're doing and/or talking about when they really don't.

It's all well and good to say your inability to stop eating Twinkies comes from a chemical imbalance, but it doesn't lead to a solution of the problem, particularly when you can't adequately define what a "proper" balance is, and neither can you give any evidence that indicates that any possible imbalance that DOES exist is the cause, rather than the effect of a problem.

For example:

Engine is running rough.

Mechanic takes it apart, finds a bent exaust valve. Clearly, this is enough to make it run poorly. so the valve is replaced.

A week later, the engine is running rough again. Oh, woops. The owner was running 87 octane on a high-performance engine that requires 93, so the fuel was preigniting before the exhaust valve closed fully and thus overheated and bent it (note slick analogy to food intake! Note further slickness as well, in that octane rating is directly related to a substance added to gasoline to improve its combustion qualities in the same way that vitamins might be added to food! BEST ANALOGY EVAR!!1!)

Obviously amounts of chemicals in the brain can be related to ones moods, but no one at this point can say "X causes Y". It seems to me that it's simply a somewhat shoddy attempt to cover up lack of real knowledge in an area, and not incidentally to allow the sales of very expensive drugs to correct said "imbalance" (which certainly don't handle the root cause in any case - either the person has an emotional problem caused by their behavior or life that results in an "imbalance", or there is an actual physical deformity or damage which results in same; in either case the psychiatric drug does nothing to actually handle the cause of the situation, and provably does the person long-term emotional damage in the meantime).