If you are not a medical professional, please stop spreading unscientific memes and try to keep your opinion on mental diseases to yourself. The question of whether the drugs work is better left to the actual scientists and not be allowed to cloud the basic fact that one should always seek medical attention if they feel they have a problem. Unlike most physical diseases, the mental ones often impair your judgement and all this tinfoil hat bullshit really isn't helping. So please, just don't.
Thanks.
Discouraging the general dissemination of experience seems generally counterproductive unless of course someone is making claims that would discourage sound medical advice.
Here's an idea, focus on the actual evidence. It seems it's because the evidence is murkier than the stance the author wanted to take, which makes for a garbage article and yet more nonsense spewed into a debate that affects a lot of people.
But every drug has side effects and you're not actually changing anything permanently - the minute you're off the drug you're right back where you started. Psychotherapy actually changes the brain, and there are no negative side effects. That's why I prefer the later and not the former (for any issue).
Antidepressants can cause real and permanent changes to the human body. Like any drug, some of the side effects cannot always be reversed when you come off them. For example, there is thought to be a link between some antidepressants and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
And if you stop taking some anti-depressants without weaning down the dose you can have severe psychological side effects that can result in self harm, suicide, etc.
It is good that psychotherapy is working for you, but it doesn't work for all. The same is true of the drugs: some people respond very well, others not so much. One of the issues, particularly in the UK where I come from, is that the former (drugs) are both cheaper and more readily available than the latter. Ideally people should be able to choose the treatment that works best for them. This sadly isn't always possible.
That said, I have seen people put on meds that were pretty clearly not needed (both anti-depressant and ADHD/ADD meds). These meds were added as either a form of insurance policy against some form of academic failure, or generally in high school, a way to dampen off-median behavior.
The big issue I have is the scale at which these medicines are distributed, as well as the early age of the target audience. It does seem odd that there are more than 1/10 over the age of 12 in the US (2011 numbers, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/19/us-usa-antidepress...) taking antidepressants.
I have no religious or economic reasons to discourage adoption of any medication (if it works it works).
My primary objection to any given medication is based on my consideration of how I might have turned out differently had I been put on every med suggested.
People are strange screwy creatures. I know some people really need help, and to them: get it, it really does help. My fear is that an 8 year old version of me (or you) somewhere is being told that something is wrong with them because they're a bit spazzy in class and that they need to be medicated because of it.
The psychologist didn't want to even start treatment til the meds kicked in so I, being naive and trusting, said OK, went to the croaker he recommended I go to and started taking them.
The anxiety went away as did the depression. So did any semblance of self-control I had. I can definitely see how someone could fly off the handle on these things kill a bunch of people if s/he had even the remotest inclination to do so beforehand. I started dressing crazy. I started basically talking at people, trying to blow their minds and confuse them and play with them. I lost any desire to really connect with anybody, any empathy or sympathy. My ability to introspect totally disappeared so I was unable to see what was happening to me. Maybe the idea was that depression or anxiety is related to overthinking/over-introspection or something like. Maybe I had an anomalous experience but I'm pretty sure if I continued with them I'd be in prison or suffering in some other way for the unanalyzed extremes I let myself get to.
I have other friends who have taken them or are still on them and I see/saw the same thing with them, a complete inability to self-judge causing them to make the same mistakes over and over and over and a tendency towards unfulfilling behavior. The pill they take to be happy hijacks the ability to ever create the circumstances to be happy without it.
I was unable to see what had happened to me when I was on them. I had to be told by someone who I hadn't seen in a long time how much I'd changed. It was a person I deeply respected. She told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn't the same person I had been and that I had changed for the worse. I finally tried looking inward and I realized she was right. Then I had to deal with the hallucinations and electric shock sensations of withdrawal but I'm glad I did
I may not be happy all the time, or even most of the time. I may be full of irrational fears but I believe I am becoming less so.
Meditation and Qigong help me.
Everyone is entitle to their own opinions and has their own experiences, and that's mine. So to me, the quacks are many of the ones prescribing the meds.
Victorian Britain?
In the end, the only thing that can fix you is you.
So you look to antidepressants. That's still you trying to fix you. And perhaps the changes it induces to the psyche don't outweigh the benefits of depression, even in the face of its monumental drawbacks that urged you into trying the pills in the first place. Now, I can hardly say I've been on everything that can be prescribed. It's exaggerating to say that I even dabbled in SSRIs. But for the few months I spent on them, I wouldn't say they made me into somebody I wasn't. I'd say that I made me into something different. Of course, I might not have liked that different somebody. I might have pondered whether this was all still in my head and I was swallowing sugar pills and what would that say about me if the mere suggestion that I was taking magic pills made me better but wouldn't that put me back at square one... And so on.
But I can't in good conscience begrudge anyone trying to muddle their way through life. If pills work for them then by all means take them. If they're happier with that different someone then I'd say they've embraced their new identity, not morphed into something they aren't.
I don't really know why I typed all this up. I'm tempted to Ctrl-A/Backspace it. But hey, when's the next time the ramblings of the inner conscience will be topical in HN?
I suppose we could take this further, for the sake of making a point, and ask if one receives a lobotomy, is one his or her self?
I'm glad you typed it up, it made me think.
Think his point is that heroin is generally not considered a good thing, although it can obviously have some nice effects.
The point is that drugs are not inherently evil. Some drugs might be more harmful than beneficial, but that can only be determined by trials and evidence. Demonizing the things is the exact opposite of helpful.
In fact, I'll amplify the point: Injecting morality into things without a moral dimension is very harmful. It prevents people from looking at things rationally, by clouding the issue with emotional noise.
To amplify, there is nothing morally wrong with anti-depressants either. However morality is not the issue of my concern, the deadening of true self is.
