The Antidepressant Epidemic
I spoke to an old friend today.
It wasn’t hard to see she wasn’t very happy. I could actually feel the pain and desperation in her. It was so familiar…because it’s how I felt for so many years. Within the 45 minutes we chatted she had made mention of her unhappiness about her body, her marriage, the career path she was on, her home.
At one point she told me she feels like a total failure.
The solution? Her doctor put her on antidepressants just last week. End of story.
This makes me sad. If she feels she is a failure how the heck are antidepressants going to help her?
Are antidepressants going to help her love herself more? No.
Are antidepressants going to help her take a look at the way she perceives herself and the way she talks to herself? No.
Will they help her look at her life and her past differently so she can feel better about this life she has created?
Will they help her feel grateful for all she has?
Will they help her look at her marriage and her job and truly ask herself whether she needs to either commit to them and put more love into them…or leave?
And then when she decides…will they help her do this?
No, no, no and no.
In fact antidepressants will more likely keep everything exactly the same and probably ensure she changes very little, if anything. All they will do is turn the volume down on her emotions so she doesn’t fully feel what she is currently feeling. They will stop her from being aware of quite how unhappy, unsatisfied, and empty she feels. They will simply numb the symptoms. The same way you could pop a painkiller when you have a physical pain, without bothering to figure out where it is, why it’s there, and what it’s trying to tell you.
How on earth is this a solution?
(Now I’m thinking it would be wise to add in a disclaimer at this point: I’m not a doctor. You know that. These are simply my opinions, not medical advice. You can, of course, take or leave my opinions. And if at any point you did decide you no longer wished to stay on antidepressants, it isn’t wise to just stop taking them cold turkey. You need to do so under the guidance of your doctor.)
Now, I understand the need to introduce medication when someone is in immediate danger i.e. they may hurt themselves or hurt others. But outside of that I have big questions about the use of antidepressants, whether for short or long term use.
A great many of us are pain motivated. This means that if we get off our bums to change something in our lives it is far more likely that we do it because we want to move away from pain, rather than because we move towards pleasure. This is me through and through. If it hurts enough and long enough I’ll eventually do something about it.
I spent much of my 20’s in psychologist (psychotherapists) offices talking…and talking and talking…about my problems, the ‘depression’ I had been diagnosed with, my fears and worries, my unhappiness, loneliness, and profound emptiness. I was asked repeatedly about my feelings, my childhood, what my parents said or didn’t say, what kids at school did or didn’t do, and then in my late 20’s about all the deaths in my life. And many more than one of the people I saw talked to me about taking antidepressants. I always refused point blank. I think it was mostly to do with my misguided attempt to be ‘strong’ and just ‘deal’ with everything on my own…and I can be very stubborn.
Whatever it was, I am very glad I didn’t go down that path.
Because I had to feel my pain and feel it and feel it…and my god, how it hurt…to finally do something about it.
The pain I was in was a gift. It was a message. It was a constant reminder that something was wrong, that something needed to be different.
It was the extreme pain of the 6 deaths in my life in 4 months that pushed me finally away from the psychologists and the medical model in search of something more…and into the coaching/spirituality/personal development/change field, where I found the type of healing that I had been told was impossible, and moved in to doing this wonderful work I am so fortunate to do.
Antidepressants would have numbed the pain enough so I could have coped and managed, as many people do, and probably stayed right where I was. Instead the pain drove me here…and I am so very grateful for that.
It was pain that led me in the past couple of years to truly understand the profound importance of self-love (and how lacking I was in it) and to do something about it.
It was pain that led me to finally understand something I had heard (and said) for years…that happiness is an inside job.
Pain pushed me so hard until just this year I finally got that there is nothing more painful in this world than the cumulative effect of not living your truth, than the slow suicide of not being who you really are…and to start doing just that.
It has become so normal in our society to live ‘lives of quiet desperation’ as Thoreau said. It has become so perfectly regular to be miserable, to be living in a way that makes us feel empty and unhappy…and the only possible solution is often seen to be a pill to stop you feeling those feelings.
It isn’t.
Everything can change. You can change. The way you feel, about yourself and about your life, can change. The grief you are in can change. And it may very well be that the ongoing pain is your very best friend…because it is your life talking to you. It is your soul talking to you. It is YOU talking to you. It may be the only language you have to get yourself to listen. So stop trying to block it out. Listen to it.
If the pain tells you you hate yourself…..then it’s time to start figuring out how to love yourself. (I think the best book I’ve read on this recently and that helped me the most is Robert Holden’s Loveability)
If the pain tells you that your life sucks…then it’s time to figure out how you can feel better about your life as it is – this is a very important first step. (I’d start with John Demartini’s The Gratitude Effect ). And once you’ve done that, start thinking about what changes you may need to make in the life you are living…but do the first bit first.
If you feel that the best of your life is behind you and you miss being young and carefree…then turn off the bloody tv and get up and dance like you did when you were a child. You don’t have to go anywhere, see anybody, or pay anything to do this.
You will not find the answer to your problems in a packet of pills…and your problems are not caused by a lack of manmade chemicals in your body. You don’t have an anti-depressant deficiency that you need to correct, like when you don’t enough iron or B12. Your grief is not a diagnosable illness remedied by medication. You won’t find love, connection, self-worth, laughter, freedom, or wealth of any kind in a pill bottle.
But you already know this.
I’m not saying quit your antidepressants or don’t go on them…that’s your choice and not something I can advise you on (yup, that was another disclaimer), but please please please stop thinking they are the solution, the answer, that they are the only thing you can do to feel better. They may be part of your solution….but only that – a part. The real solution will be your journey to love yourself, to love your life, to live your truth out loud, to be who you are, to listen to your heart, your soul, your intuition and to let those be your guide.
I get that all that can sound totally foreign. So is Guatemala or Timbuktu or The Himalayas…until you save your money, take time off work, get your visa, book your flight, pack your bags……. What I am saying is that it is a journey and it has to start somewhere. Take a step.
As someone who has come from pain, misery, emptiness, feeling like life was crap (and that I was crap)…please believe me that life can be so much better.
Just do one thing today. One thing you love. Even just for 2 minutes. Sing, dance, read, write, sit with a cup of tea looking up at the clouds, cuddle your hamster/partner/teddybear/favourite pair of shoes….I don’t know what it is for you. Only you do.
Listen to yourself. Listen to your life. Listen to your pain.
You are worth it. You deserve it.
Don’t ever give up on you.
Kristie
xx
{ 2 comments }
Hey Kristie,
Yet again I agree with everything you write. And I would include all drugs – including that socially approved drug called alcohol, which trashes more lives than all the illegal drugs put together – in this description of the negative effects of anti-depressants.
During my therapy training we were taught about the effects of these products whose major purpose is to fuel the profits of big pharma. All they do is dull the pain. And when we stop taking them (and yes, this MUST be done under the guidance of a doctor because the effects of too rapid withdrawl can be extremely nasty. Worse than coming off heroin.) – all that pain returns just the way it was before. Nothing whatever gained.
Another effect of many of those products is to make it very difficult for the person taking them to do the deep healing work that would free them permanently from their pain. They block our emotional response and some even change the molecular structure of the brain so that the new neurological connections that are part of permanent healing cannot take place. At the very least they make true healing very difficult.
It takes a certain courage to face our pain, to tell ourselves the truth about our lives and our relationships. It’s a hard road to take sometimes.
But the far, far harder road is to do nothing except take these drugs and pretend that everything is okay …
blessings to you dear friend,
Leo
Shocking isn’t it Leo.
“But the far, far harder road is to do nothing except take these drugs and pretend that everything is okay …” Ne’er a truer word. It seems hard to many to do the work it takes to heal and grow…and yes it’s hard, but holy shit it is a lot easier than suffering from the same things your entire life with no idea how to truly feel better.
xx