I recently had a conversation with someone about happy pills. Grant it, I did call them "happy pills" to begin the conversation, which gave them a tone of light-hearted, unnecessary, candy-like items.
That didn't keep me from being completely pissed about the opinion my friend shared regarding anti-depressants. This is a common opinion and, even more frustratingly, a fairly valid one: anti-depressants are an over-used medicine that is thrown at anyone who is having a bad day. Instead of experiencing life, including the difficult times, we use unnatural drugs to keep ourselves from feeling anything but happiness. "Happiness" is our new version of health and it is not actually healthy.
Okay, that may be true in some cases, maybe even many cases. I see what formed my friend's opinions (damn you, Tom Cruise).
Here is the problem: when someone who has never experienced mental disorders judges people who use a psychiatric medicine, it is automatically translated as bullshit. It is the same kind of pious rhetoric that comes from skinny people with awesome metabolisms who say that over-weight people are just lazy. Um, if you were the kid in the 3rd grade who gained 5 pounds every time you ate an extra cookie, the challenge is not that simple.
Those of us on anti-depressants who face these pious bull-shit spewing people are left with a tough decision. In my conversation, I could either simply say "I disagree" and leave my friend feeling like he won OR I could describe the experience of depression with and then without medication...exposing my most personal and vulnerable life experiences.
If you are one of those pious bull-shit spewing people, read the following: Medication does not take away depression all-together. What it does is make life bearable. Instead of spending weeks on end locked in a dark room plotting my suicide, I now spend most days simply dreading the process of waking up and beginning another day. "Dread" is not like normal people dread- a bad feeling that you push past. Depression "dread" is a sense of darkness that presses on all of your skin, sits on your back, screws with your heart, makes you sleepy, turns your stomach, and makes all of the world beyond your skin seem dull and unreachable. That dread is, for me, an inherited chemical imbalance that is not always strong, but always there. Medicine makes it simply a part of my life instead of being my entire experience of existence.
Like normal people, I get sad and miserable when bad things happen and then happy when great things happen. Those bad feelings are good for me. They feel different than the feelings of depression, although really rough patches of life can sometimes trigger the depression.
Once last spring, I was mowing my grass and realized that I was fully happy. I was enjoying chores, enjoying the day, and there was no trace of the "dread" in my heart. It made me angry. I realized that other people probably feel that way more often than once a year. That is part of my inheritance, just like a lousy metabolism, a great mind, a good sense of humor, and a lot of brown hair. It is my life and my journey.
PART of success in my journey is the use of happy pills. I went 25 years without them and did well in life. I also spent of lot of those years feeling quite miserable...as if every day was a punishment that we must endure.
Yes, many doctors misuse anti-depressants. Many doctors perscribe them to patients instead of really listening to them describe their sickness. A lot of people ask for anti-depressants because they don't want to face life.
Those truths do not mean that it is okay to walk around spewing bullshit about the weak minds of people on happy pills. Fuck you.
(okay, the last phrase was violent. Sorry)
That didn't keep me from being completely pissed about the opinion my friend shared regarding anti-depressants. This is a common opinion and, even more frustratingly, a fairly valid one: anti-depressants are an over-used medicine that is thrown at anyone who is having a bad day. Instead of experiencing life, including the difficult times, we use unnatural drugs to keep ourselves from feeling anything but happiness. "Happiness" is our new version of health and it is not actually healthy.
Okay, that may be true in some cases, maybe even many cases. I see what formed my friend's opinions (damn you, Tom Cruise).
Here is the problem: when someone who has never experienced mental disorders judges people who use a psychiatric medicine, it is automatically translated as bullshit. It is the same kind of pious rhetoric that comes from skinny people with awesome metabolisms who say that over-weight people are just lazy. Um, if you were the kid in the 3rd grade who gained 5 pounds every time you ate an extra cookie, the challenge is not that simple.
Those of us on anti-depressants who face these pious bull-shit spewing people are left with a tough decision. In my conversation, I could either simply say "I disagree" and leave my friend feeling like he won OR I could describe the experience of depression with and then without medication...exposing my most personal and vulnerable life experiences.
If you are one of those pious bull-shit spewing people, read the following: Medication does not take away depression all-together. What it does is make life bearable. Instead of spending weeks on end locked in a dark room plotting my suicide, I now spend most days simply dreading the process of waking up and beginning another day. "Dread" is not like normal people dread- a bad feeling that you push past. Depression "dread" is a sense of darkness that presses on all of your skin, sits on your back, screws with your heart, makes you sleepy, turns your stomach, and makes all of the world beyond your skin seem dull and unreachable. That dread is, for me, an inherited chemical imbalance that is not always strong, but always there. Medicine makes it simply a part of my life instead of being my entire experience of existence.
Like normal people, I get sad and miserable when bad things happen and then happy when great things happen. Those bad feelings are good for me. They feel different than the feelings of depression, although really rough patches of life can sometimes trigger the depression.
Once last spring, I was mowing my grass and realized that I was fully happy. I was enjoying chores, enjoying the day, and there was no trace of the "dread" in my heart. It made me angry. I realized that other people probably feel that way more often than once a year. That is part of my inheritance, just like a lousy metabolism, a great mind, a good sense of humor, and a lot of brown hair. It is my life and my journey.
PART of success in my journey is the use of happy pills. I went 25 years without them and did well in life. I also spent of lot of those years feeling quite miserable...as if every day was a punishment that we must endure.
Yes, many doctors misuse anti-depressants. Many doctors perscribe them to patients instead of really listening to them describe their sickness. A lot of people ask for anti-depressants because they don't want to face life.
Those truths do not mean that it is okay to walk around spewing bullshit about the weak minds of people on happy pills. Fuck you.
(okay, the last phrase was violent. Sorry)
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