Anti-Depressants

So I recently found out that a friend of a friend committed suicide while taking Paxil. It's horrible and tragic, and I feel for anyone who has to lose someone like that. My friend is rightfully up-in-arms about Paxil, and judging by the lawsuits that come up when googling the drug, she is not alone.

And I'm glad I'm not taking Paxil.

HOWEVER, I am taking another anti-depressant (Venlafaxine, the generic form of Effexor), and have been for several years. What bothers me are the articles I have seen that tend to lump all anti-depressant drugs together, to try to make the claim that because there have been horrific side-effects up to and including suicide, any and all anti-depressants should never be prescribed.

Paxil seems to be one of the worst when it comes to adverse reactions, and I am surprised that it has not been taken off the market. However, discounting Paxil, I think the problem is less the drugs themselves, or even the greedy pharmaceutical industry (severe side-effects are actually very rare), and more how often doctors just hand them out and then fail to monitor the patient.

I've had mild-to-moderate bouts of depression and anxiety since high school, but for a long time I was resistant to going on anti-depressants. Even when it worsened in college, and I was having random crying spells multiple times a week, I didn't want to go the med-route. Part of it was the stigma that says you are weak if you can't handle things without a "crutch," but a larger part was the scare stories I heard about side-effects. But I knew I needed some kind of help, and that a large part of my issues was biochemical.

First I was put on birth control pills to try to even out my premenstrual moods. When that didn't work, and seeing that my depression was not just confined to "that time of the month," the gyno put me on Zoloft. NOTE: I DO NOT think that non-psychiatrists should be prescribing psychiatric meds. This is a big part of the problem I see with the way these medicines are prescribed. For a gynecologist, since they are dealing with womanly issues like  postpartum depression that overlap with psychiatric issues, it's a different story, but general practitioners shouldn't just be able to hand out Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, etc. But anyway, back to the Zoloft.

It gave me wicked insomnia for two nights in a row. On the third day, I decided enough and stopped taking it.

After college I started therapy, which helped me work through a lot of issues and counter-productive mindsets, but eventually the question of medication came up again. That's when I decided that feeling normal and having my brain and neurotransmitters work the way they are supposed to was worth the risk of the side effects.  I wasn't going to do Zoloft again, but I found a psychiatrist who is extremely competent and knowledgeable in addition to being personable, and eventually we found that Effexor/Venlafaxine works for me to the point where my emotions are steady and manageable and I can work through my issues.

So I hate what I see as all the scare stories out there. The ones that play up the tragedies that are actually rare occurrences. The ones that may cause people to avoid getting the help they need.

One article was talking about how anti-depressants literally rewire your brain. Actually, what they do is treat bio-chemical mis-wiring of the brain. They are not "happy pills," they won't (if working correctly) make you into a zombie, they just treat your brain so it's working as it should be.

Anti-depressants should only be carefully prescribed and monitored, and generally taken along with some type of talk therapy.  However, they are just like any other drug, because biochemical depression is just like any physical health issue.

"Natural" treatments are not always better. As Stephen Colbert pointed out in a recent interview, hemlock is natural too.

The suicides that have been committed by people on anti-depressants are tragic, but this is why careful monitoring by a clinical psychiatrist, not taking all such drugs of the market, is necessary. Because while my own mood issues have always been fairly mild, for some anti-depressants are actually a life-saver.