I recently stumbled across a Facebook status that caught my attention. An acquaintance of mine was proudly proclaiming that this particular day marked one whole month since they had stopped taking anti-depressants, and was ecstatic.
Normally, I would have barely batted an eyelid… if it hadn’t been the third time this year I had seen a status of this sort on my newsfeed. And if I hadn’t recently had a friend very firmly tell me that although she was incredibly depressed, there was no way in hell she would consider taking anti-depressants.
All of this has left me feeling a little, well… shit, to be honest. I have been taking anti-depressants for over two years, after my brain basically threw up its’ hands and yelled ‘I’m done!’. Since then, I’ve become quite familiar with the world of serotonin inhibiting pills. I also have a tendency to start my sentences with ‘well, when I was talking to my psychologist…’, which is an excellent indication of where my life is at.
The point is, it seems to me that lately, I’m talking to more and more people who are determined to stay away from anti-depressants or cut them from their lives completely. They talk about feeling pathetic for being ‘reliant’ on medication, or they refuse to become one of ‘those people’ who just uses medication to avoid their problems.
For a while, this started to make me feel extremely self-conscious about my own prescription. I felt a bit like a sad old blob fish. Why was I so afraid of not taking my medication? I heard people around me saying they desperately wanted to stop taking their anti-depressants, and I wished I had the strength to just live a ‘normal’, medication-free life.
I decided to take a good look at my situation. When I considered slowly weaning myself off my anti-depressants, the only positive I could think of was that I would save a good eighty-odd dollars per month, which would mean getting my hair done more than once a year, thus leaving me looking a lot less like Hagrid’s cousin (possibly one of my many underlying issues). Basically, my life at the moment is a bit of a mess.
Top Comments
This article made me feel so much better, thank you! I've been on and off antidepressants for 10 years now with CBT not working for me and no one to comfortably vent my problems to. My doctor prescribed me a new kind of medication that I haven't had before, and I was talking to a friend of mine about it who insisted I shouldn't take it because I should just face my problems and that will make me feel better. Sadly life doesn't really work that way when you clearly have a mental illness, but he made me think which led to me googling for help. I'm so glad I did, the way people feel about relying on medication to feel ok is so negative, but this article made me feel like it is ok to be on medication again, to want to feel happy. Thank you so much! You genuinely helped me feel that it's ok not to be ok.
Yes I don't think it should be called mental illness, it should be called brain illness because it is a illness of the brain. The fact it can be helped with medication is good so many illnesses still have no real treatment. It should be treated like any other illness if you need medication you need it. I am on Antidepressants for Anxiety related to another brain illness epilepsy. Medication is there to help people suffering illness. Depression is a real illness not something you can just ignore. Glad you have decided not to worry about others attitude to the medication.