Antidepressants: you're doing it wrong

[azurelunatic]

Every last one of you peeps who have never been on an antidepressant: the next time you are tempted (whether out of ignorance, fear, or some other non- evidence-based reason) to dismiss the entire category as "happy pills", pipe the fuck down.

Of course some people have shitty reactions to antidepressants, either a specific one or entire categories. This includes shitty emotional reactions. Also, a health provider who pushes pills without other treatments is an utter shithole of a system.

However, for the people for whom it works right (with or without other treatments), this is what it does:

Stops the self-reinforcing cycle of shitty life events bringing down brain chemistry and shitty brain chemistry hindering recovery.
Makes it possible for other brain tinkering to work.
Allows a normal range of emotion while preventing the deepest lows from sticking. (Me off St. John's Wort looks a lot like me on, until I get in a shitty mood and don't recover.)
Saves people's goddamn lives, jobs, relationships.

"Happy pills," my ass.

Comments

[mmegaera]

I was utterly terrified off anti-depressants when Paxil started producing migraine auras on an almost-hourly basis (it was given to me once upon a time by one of those horrible pill pushers sans other treatment -- as it turned out, it was purely situational depression and went away when the situation did), but I just don't get why anyone would say anything disparaging about someone's medication. I'm a lot more ticked off at medication commercials where the drug companies try to make people go tell their doctors they need a particular pill under the guise of "let your doctor do what s/he does best, and you do what you do best" -- as one particular drug company is doing right now.

But then I think I live a pretty sheltered life -- to the best of my knowledge, I've never met anyone who abused prescription medication, either, so I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, as I hope they do me.