Thanks for writing this, someone really really had to.
I wouldn't necessarily agree that ADs allow a normal range of emotion, at least all the time - they certainly didn't for me. The anti-depressant part worked a charm, but as I put it to my doctor: "I'd rather have the lows and the highs, than not have any highs at all." - that was after two years of trying different meds and eventually finding one that worked on the lows, but meant I never felt like smiling... and life without smiles is no life at all, for me.
I have been known to call them happy pills, in an odd mix of affection and cynicism - they didn't work for me, but I know they work for others, and for that I'm glad, because I have so many friends and acquaintances who literally depend on antidepressants to make it possible for them to get up in the morning. As another commenter said, they're "happy pills" in that they make it possible to be happy, so I see them as a bloody good thing, because what's a world without happiness?
So, yeah, it fucks me off something chronic when I see ADs dismissed so readily, especially "because so many people take them" and "depression is the nation's illness". Here's an idea, maybe people are depressed 'cos this world is full of fucked up people who dismiss anti-depressants and criticise the mentally ill, as if they have some kind of choice about their brains playing silly buggers. Maybe what we need to do is stop dismissing people's illnesses, and make the world a happier place to be in. Depression and anxiety can be genetic, but they're environmental too; for a lot of sufferers, mental illness a product of the stress we place on ourselves every day, and that sucks.
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I wouldn't necessarily agree that ADs allow a normal range of emotion, at least all the time - they certainly didn't for me. The anti-depressant part worked a charm, but as I put it to my doctor: "I'd rather have the lows and the highs, than not have any highs at all." - that was after two years of trying different meds and eventually finding one that worked on the lows, but meant I never felt like smiling... and life without smiles is no life at all, for me.
I have been known to call them happy pills, in an odd mix of affection and cynicism - they didn't work for me, but I know they work for others, and for that I'm glad, because I have so many friends and acquaintances who literally depend on antidepressants to make it possible for them to get up in the morning. As another commenter said, they're "happy pills" in that they make it possible to be happy, so I see them as a bloody good thing, because what's a world without happiness?
So, yeah, it fucks me off something chronic when I see ADs dismissed so readily, especially "because so many people take them" and "depression is the nation's illness". Here's an idea, maybe people are depressed 'cos this world is full of fucked up people who dismiss anti-depressants and criticise the mentally ill, as if they have some kind of choice about their brains playing silly buggers. Maybe what we need to do is stop dismissing people's illnesses, and make the world a happier place to be in. Depression and anxiety can be genetic, but they're environmental too; for a lot of sufferers, mental illness a product of the stress we place on ourselves every day, and that sucks.
(Can you tell this is a bugbear of mine?)