How Unneccesary Is Our Pain?

Now science is said to know enough
about how human minds work
that pharmacalogical industries
sell us vast arrays of substances
under many names to positively alter our moods.
For all for all of us to take more of, more often.
There is nothing new in the principle of mood alteration. 
That great political orator, William Ewart Gladstone,
fortified himself with laudanum before he gave
important parliamentary speeches and saw it
as natural to him as his habit of going out at night
to befriend attractive young prostitutes,
to persuade them to ply a more virtuous trade.

But today's persuasions by governments
and corporations are different-yes the young
are particularly pursued for their maleability-
but now we are all rendered ever more flexible
and softer of mind  for the benefit of the corporations
who sell us drugs. So that we now appear to be happier
than ever to avoid the darker more internal verities of life.