Anti-Depressants: Liberator or Jailer?
Written November 2004
Anti-depressants are one of those dichotomies that will undoubtedly pervade one’s life experiences. Are anti-depressants really good for a person or are they detrimental to a person’s state of mind, evolution and growth, and their ability to learn to deal with their own problems? Are anti-depressants in fact a liberator liberating the person from their negative views about themselves or do they merely create barriers and cages that hinder and obstruct the healing we so desire?
To use an apt line from the Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here, ‘Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage’. For many, this type of medication will eventually become our jailer, unable as we are to rid ourselves of its effects. Some become hooked, unable to function in normal life without them, not physically addicted but emotionally, which is probably a more powerful and damming dependence.
Some sufferers become physically addicted to drugs from pharmaceutical companies more interested in making huge profits than the well being of the very people they serve. These companies lie about the effectiveness of their drugs, and the side effects, publishing only the data from trials that show good results. These side effects undermine further the persons ability to cope with an already difficult and debilitating illness.
This article is about my experience with anti-depressants and how they have affected me, my life and ultimately, my evolution as a person and as a human being. For me, they were initially my saviour, then just as quickly, became my jailer. They alternated between these two states as and when I succumbed to their influence due to life’s difficulties.
I started to follow the road of medication in 1980 and have been on and off them ever since with just a few short years free of their impact. In general, they have been ineffective as a solution to my many angst ridden and tumultuous periods as they have not been followed by or used in conjunction with talking therapy. The times I have made my biggest recoveries are when I sort out a counsellor myself rather than waiting for the system to do it for me. These are the times when I took control of it rather than allowing it to take control of me. And we all know that the National Health Service is stirred only reluctantly and when it does, it moves slower than the proverbial snail.
Anti-depressants are only effective when used with individual or group therapies, for it is during this time that the keys to a persons psyche can be turned and the doors opened to their mind set and perception about their problems and difficulties. It is the talking, the communication with the counsellor, that proffers the greatest shift in a person’s growth and understanding. We, as patients, talk to them, not for the their understanding but for our own. It is in the words we find from our own vocabulary, from our own dictionary, that garners our solutions.
It is essential for the counsellor to have knowledge of our predicament, so they simply ask the questions to gain an insight, and in doing so, we have to vocalise in any way we can, what we are experiencing. They do this so they can hone the questions more finely to direct us toward finding our own answers and possibly, finding a resolution.
The key to this endeavour however, is that we must first be willing to look at our own fear, must be willing to go though the torture and agony of viewing our perceived limitations and phobias, and the very traumatic events that may have triggered them. Without this willingness, this purpose, this impetus, we will not find any solutions, any conclusion, or any clarification of our situation. Until then, we will not move from the place we are.
Our healing as always, is very much in our own hands. It can only be from our own volition that we break the chrysalis that is protecting us from the unknown. We must journey until the fear of where we are exceeds the fear of the unknown should we break the shell of the chrysalis. Until we reach that point, we will not move forward. I have been in this place many, many times.
When starting a new period of anti-depressants, after a considerable time without them, I have noticed there is a phase that lasts several weeks between no effect at all and full anaesthesia. This is always to be expected as it will take this long to build enough of the active ingredient in the body and brain.
It is however, only during this short period, during this cusp stage, that it is possible to grasp the problem and find the keys to a solution. It is almost as if I have a foot in both camps. I can remember the feelings of despair and the inability to function, but can also begin to see the reasons for my predicament and the solutions about how to pull myself out of the quagmire and into the light once again. I can no longer feel the debilitating emotions and fear but can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And this light is not just a train coming the other way.
On achieving the full anaesthetic effect, I no longer feel the depression, the emotions and the sadness, but also, will not be able to find the solutions as I have forgotten why I was depressed, forgotten the feelings, thoughts and emotions that were dragging me down. In this state, I no longer have the right impetus to go foraging for solutions and answers. I no longer care enough to stare my fear in the face. I have to force myself to search through the crap, my innermost being, for the events and situations that I spent so much time and energy suppressing, dragging them to the surface, staring at the very things I am fearful of seeing.
Anti-depressants give a false sense of calm and of serenity. The anaesthesia impedes us from learning the process of us taking charge of our illness instead of it exerting control over us. Unless we deal with the underlying cause that prompted our dis-ease, we will never be free from its debilitating symptoms.
The ultimate cause for some may be that there is a chemical imbalance in the brain. For these people, the solution is to take some form of anti-depressant or other type of medication for the rest of their life so that this imbalance can be corrected. I believe that this condition is rare in the general population but would postulate that many schizophrenics are in this category. However, I have seen several such individuals that are simply using the label to hide from what they cannot or are unwilling to face.
For most people though, the causes are deeply buried childhood memories of situations and events that set in motion a belief system that effectively undermined the person’s ability to deal with everyday circumstances that for many would be second nature. A smack here, a wrong word there, a bully tormenting us and stealing our dinner money somewhere else, so called intelligent work colleagues ganging up to make you their fall guy and scapegoat, all contribute to our eventual downfall and our view of ourselves as a worthless individual. If, like me, you have gender confusion added as an ingredient into the simmering cauldron of fear and self judgement, life can become very difficult to handle.
I believe that it is these experiences that colour our view, our picture of who we are, that turn us into fear ridden human beings, always wondering what other people think of us and questioning if we are doing and being what they want us to be. We are all unique individuals that have unique gifts to bring to this world. The world would be a lesser place without us. And so would the people we would come into contact as they would be lesser people too, for it is in the interaction with the people we meet that we grow and evolve. We cannot do so otherwise.
At this very moment, while writing this article, I think of anti-depressants as my liberator. But if I am not careful, I can become dependent upon the emotional fix thinking that life is all fine and dandy when in fact the problems still exist. It’s just that I am viewing them through rose tinted glasses.
I need to change my perception of my experiences before I can truly grow and transform into a more stable human being who enjoys life. I need to clear them from my psyche, to disassociate the trauma and guilt and fear from the memory of the event. The memory has to stay but the way we perceive it changes and transforms. We cannot change what happened to us because it is those experiences that make us who we are. We can however, change the way we see those experiences and change our feelings about those experiences.
We can only do this by staring intently at those events, letting the feelings surface in a safe environment with a counsellor. Sometimes, it may be necessary to feel the pain of an event in order to clear the emotions about that event. It was the unwillingness to feel that placed them there so deeply in the first place. Use anti-depressants to assist this process.
Use them as a tool, not a crutch.
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