just went through the article at the end of this blog and it touches on many points on why antidepressants were never for me (and i speak from experience, they gave me 9 hellish months, an additional suicide attempt and the only time in my life where i actually thought i was losing my mind and a full disconnect with my self!) ... and i suspect that they are not for anybody else who is haunted by the grand questions in life ...
what they remove from self is far greater than most people realize, and for those who want to be comfortably numb that is by and large acceptable from what i witness on a regular basis, for others - like me - though it is the one thing that is not negotiable in the wave of a very complicated and frail state of mental health ...
3 years into therapy i finally went into an issue that due to its magnitude i avoided dealing until i had a bigger grasp on my feet. eventually i went there and whatever hell i thought i was going to unleash it palled in comparison to the actual time. in some ways, it was probably even harder than the beginning precisely because i had already achieved some balance. the blow i received was so brutal that it landed me squarely on my knees again and on suicide mode again. my therapist was so scared for my safety for a few months that she brought up calling a psychiatrist friend of hers and putting me back on antidepressants for awhile because i was, and i will quote her, 'in pure agony' ... my reply was simple and unflinching «i'd rather be in pain, i'd rather feel all that i am feeling, i'd rather - for better for for worse - go through my emotions, i know what it is like to not feel anything when on the meds, doesn't work for me, i'll take the pain» ... and so i did, and i spiraled hard, and i bottomed out, and i was reminded once again of what a living hell was. and i also overcame ... slowly and surely, a millimeter at a time, i reclaimed my footing once again.
that time in therapy ended up being a major turning point for me, at the end of those months, i finally went from having appointments twice a week for 3 and a half years to having appointments once a week ... was it rough?? yes. was it one of the lowest moments in my life?? yes. would it have been better if i had gone through it without getting hit with the full blast of all that seemingly unending pain, grief and sorrow?? no. that moment showed me who i could become in the face of my depression and my personal history. it was as life defining as my decision to finally call the woman who would go on to become my therapist and who taught me all about trusting another person. that was the moment when i finally became a survivor ...
antidepressants might be necessary in some situations (they are a must in specific scenarios of mental disease, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) but they should always be taken with great care and preferably alongside with proper therapy and not as a standalone therapy as they so often are and people are left to their own devices for years on end, when by design antidepressants shouldn't be taken for long periods of time (except in specific conditions and part of a drug regimen) ... there are no real answers found inside a pill bottle, but if you dare to face yourself and all your emotions you might just find out who you truly are ... but sadly too often there aren't enough conversations with people who have been to hell and back and can give proper insight into the experience, so that people can make truly informed decisions about the treatment of their mental illness ...
«This book won’t settle those debates, but it does speak to them. Twenty-five years after the introduction of Prozac, we are still collectively attempting to figure out what an appropriate use of medication would look like, in our culture and in our individual lives. We are trying to figure out what our sadness and pain mean — if they mean anything at all — and when they attain the status of illness. We’re trying to figure out when to turn to pills, when to go another route, and how we might be able to tell. … Good answers to the big questions about medication are likely to proceed from careful attention to the actual experiences of the people who have faced them.»
please read: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/11/coming-of-age-on-zoloft/
