On taking antidepressants
A few years ago, I read a wonderful article by a lady who cleaned homes in California. She noted that the bigger the home, the more cluttered the medicine cabinet. I can no longer find the article, but the point is clear in my mind: big homes = emptiness = overmedicated. The idea of the modern world relying too heavily on medication is so prevalent, I didn’t realize how much it contributes to the stigma of mental illness.
It describes exactly why I battled against taking drugs for so long. I didn’t want to be one more person taking the easy way out.
I suffer from Pre-menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), a debilitating mental illness that renders me mentally and emotionally out of control for up to two weeks every month — sometimes in a rage so bad I feel I could literally kill, other times so low I don’t know how to make it through the day. Although a normally high strung person, I felt so anxious during these times I could barely function. As soon as my period came, I was fine — making it tough to figure out what was wrong when I was only ‘crazy’ for a limited time (clinical depression quizzes that I took online always said I had to be depressed more than two weeks in a row).
A visit to a temporary doctor while my regular GP was vacationing saved me. Perhaps it was that she was a young female that loosened my tongue that day, but free from my older, fatherly male doctor, talk I did. I was there to discuss heavy period bleeding, not my emotional health, but before long I couldn’t stop telling her how I was in a pit of despair, surrounded by darkness. I felt lost, like nothing mattered, and that I didn’t always feel that way, only sometimes. She prescribed me Cipralex and set me up with a specialist appointment (where five months later during that meeting I would first hear the term PMDD). I stared at the prescription, and later file it away, knowing I would never fill it — I simply wasn’t some who needed antidepressants.
Instead, I went off sugar. Exercised. Drank water. Took a birth control pill that supposedly helped PMDD. Saw a naturopath. Did everything in my power so I would not be one more middle-aged woman taking antidepressants. Two and a half years later I found myself back at my doctor’s office in tears, debating checking myself into a hospital. Nothing was working, and I was worse than ever.
PMDD wasn’t my fault, I was told. My doctor gently scolded that I had somehow believed I had this disease and there wasn’t much I could do about it. After all, I hadn’t even tried the main treatment of medium to severe PMDD — Sertraline (Zoloft).
Out of options, I began taking the pills. Within weeks, everything changed. I felt like me, but a better version of me. My brain opened up. I started reading. I began writing. I started a master’s program. I started a journal. I learned how to meditate. Life’s delicious possibilities stared at me — a potluck of delectables in front of my very nose, for me to savour as I liked.
Here’s the thing. I wasted a lot of time not taking drugs. I was subscribing to a narrative with no actual evidence — that antidepressants were nothing more than over prescribed shortcuts to wellness, which doctors dish out by the truckload. Despite knowing hardly anyone on antidepressants (no one in my family was taking them, or my close friends, and while I did know coworkers who had taken them over the years, we’re hardly talking about a majority here), I was convinced they were everywhere — weren’t they?
Jonathan Haidt’s describes an anecdote in his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, where he took Paxil for 10 weeks. He found it incredibly helpful in dealing with his anxiety but gave it up due to side effects. In an effort to defend the use of Prozac, he states, “It’s more like giving contact lens to a person with poor but functional eyesight who has learned of ways of coping with her limitations. Far from being a betrayal of that person’s true self, contact lenses can be a reasonable shortcut to proper functioning.”
Medication, for me, is not a choice. If I were a diabetic, I wouldn’t deny myself insulin because it made me weak. I wouldn’t refuse chemo for my cancer treatments just because of millions of others taking it. Yet, for mental illnesses, this is how we see our treatments. The stigma of mental illness is too ingrained.
Step one was taking the medication. Step two is admitting it.
