Without anti-depressants, writes Dichotomy Hubris, his will to live would run out in four months or less.
Originally published at Dichotomy Hubris
A strange thought has been with me as I’ve taken my anti-depressant medication the last few days. I have a beautiful wife whom I love dearly, and for reasons I cannot fathom, loves me back the same way. I have two fantastic children that are a light to my life. Life is good. Yet, if I stop taking these little pills every morning, in about four months time I will literally want to die. All because, for whatever reasons, some stupid chemicals don’t interact properly with some stupid wiring in my head. Everything between now and four months in the future might be exactly the same, yet I will be incapable of feeling happiness, pleasure or joy. Instead I will feel anxiety and fear—about everything, anything and nothing. It will all be too much. I will want to die.
“Why aren’t you happy?”
“Because I have depression.”
“Well then, why are you depressed?”
“Because I can’t feel happy.”
“Couldn’t you try not being depressed?”
“You mean pretend I’m happy even though I’m not and maybe I’ll be able to shake it off?”
“Yeah, why can’t you do that?”
“I tried that once.”
“Did it work?”
“No, it made me feel worse. I ended up sitting in the bottom of my closet measuring bits of cord, just so I knew if they were long enough to hang myself with.”
“Oh.”
“So you can’t just shake this off then?”
“Nope, too depressed.”
“And you can’t feel happy because your depressed?”
“Nope.”
“And you’re depressed because you can’t feel happy?”
“That’s right, you got it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. That’s okay though. There’s a little piece of me that is glad that you don’t understand and hopes you never do.”
The number of depressed people in your social circle may stagger you. (Especially the number of guys.) And no two may end up dealing with it the same. For me, treatment involved finding the right medication to make the stupid chemicals and stupid wiring work better. These things are not asprin and not to be taken lightly. Medication is a trade-off of the desired positive effects, against undesirable side-effects.
Some people use meditation. Others have ongoing therapy. I had therapy for the first few years after my diagnosis of PTSD to debride the huge amounts of shame and self blame over the years of sexual abuse I suffered. I don’t need the therapy any more. Indeed, I was doing so well there was even thinking I didn’t need the medication any more, but four months later…
So, for me, it’s medication for life. For others it’s something else. It could be looking in the mirror every morning and saying, “I’m a pretty princess.” If that works or you, then great! I envy you.
There is no silver bullet. Pragmatism trumps opinion. If, and I stress, if what you are doing is working for you, then I wish you good fortune, and would never tell you you’re doing it the wrong way.
—Photo credit: altemark/Flickr
learn how to meditate, author of this article, or for anyone in need of help. It will change everything for you
I know where you’re coming from. A few years ago I was put on anti-depressants and things were working fine….and I got bold and decided I didn’t need them anymore. Boy was that a mistake. But even after realizing that I didn’t want to go back on them. What made me finally go back on them was I was talking to a coworker about anti-depressants and I told her I had been on them but stopped taking them. No date or time line. I just told her I stopped taking them. (For clarity this conversation was in October, 2010 I… Read more »
This line is great and really summarizes how insightful your approach really is “Pragmatism trumps opinion. If, and I stress, if what you are doing is working for you, then I wish you good fortune, and would never tell you you’re doing it the wrong way.”
I have to take my meds (for Bipolar Disorder) for the rest of my life too. The stigma is still strong.
I wish I could give this article to everyone who talks about antidepressants as “happy pills” that zombify people. The fact is that people *do* need this medication, and that sometimes the reactions are downright cruel. If you have juvenile diabetes, you’re on insulin for life, and it would be evil to suggest that diabetics “don’t need it.” Hell, even other mental illnesses which require lifelong medication are treated more fairly.
Hi DP,
If an antidepressant is making you a zombie, then it is not doing what it is suppose to be doing. Find a mental health professional you can trust and explore other options with them. There is no one treatment that works for everyone, so avoid advice people who make blanket statements about “happy pills”.
Dic. H.
P.S. I am not a mental health professional, so feel free to avoid my advice as well.
Its not that I feel zombified; I was referring to my frustration with people’s perceptions.
I understand. The, “if an antidepressant is making you a zombie, then it is not doing what it is suppose to be doing,” argument is also something you can point out to the happy pill crowd if you feel they are worth educating.
From my experience, I think people should be very wary of antidepressants. I don’t think they work anywhere near as well as advertised (plus the side effects are virtually never mentioned), and it’s absolutely horrific to get off them.
They really epitomise everything that’s wrong with big pharma.
Hi Ian, I agree with you that you shouldn’t take them without due consideration. And as I said in the article it is a trade-off of the desired positive effects against the undesirable side-effects (Zoloft gave me a mild tic, scared the hell out of me.) They are also not a magic pill that is going to make all your problems go away and let you live happily ever after. But the right medication can give you the opportunity to be happy. Unfortunately, finding the right medication that works for you can be a long drawn out process. You really… Read more »
I probably should add that you should only ever be exploring treatment with medication under the guidance of a mental health professional you trust (I am not a professional in anything concerned with health, mental or otherwise.) So if you think medication may help you you have to suck up that ego and humility and go see a doctor and say, “I think I’m in trouble, I need help.” Don’t wait twenty years like I did.
Thanks for the response! It wasn’t me personally who took antidepressants, my wife did. I believe her GP was too quick to prescribe antidepressants without exploring other treatments (which links in to your comment about the necessity of a mental health professional, GPs are simply not the right people to be prescribing psychopharmaceuticals). She took them for about 6 years. The side effects eventually overran the usefulness of the drug – she had insomnia prior to taking Citalopram, and it was worsened by the drug. To counteract the insomnia they prescribed Zopiclone, which she took occasionally, but she was really… Read more »
That all sounds really horrible. It’s awful that you all ended up going through that. I’ve been really fortunate overall with the health care I’ve received (in Australia). My GP started me off on trying a couple of different medications, which were having varying degrees of success but were never really quite “doing it”. At the point where he reached the end of his expertise he referred me to a psychologist he had faith in, and he was able to get me better sorted out. I still needed therapy as well for a while to deal with everything. After several… Read more »
I feel you completely brother. When I first got onto meds that worked for me (Wellbutrin, at the time), and was doing just fine, I made the mistake of asking my doctor how much longer he expected me to need them. His reply was “the rest of your life”. I asked him what was know of the long-term use of these medications. “Not a thing”, he responded. Shortly thereafter I moved to a different city, and decided I would try to give up on medication, because that second answer scared me, badly. It took me something closer to two years… Read more »
Thank you for sharing your story. I am afraid to go off of my antidepressants. I do both drugs and therapy and when I think I finally can be ok, depression rears its ugly head again. As someone who writes about it, I have to say that sometimes writing about my troubles trumps both pills and therapy.