Let me start off by making it clear that this article is completely based on personal experience. I am not a doctor, though that would be cool, and this article is by no means considered professional medical advice. If you are struggling with depression or any other mental disorder, contact your doctor as soon as possible. Also, I'd like to say that not every person reacts to any given medicine the same way as anyone else. My experience may be entirely different from your experience.

So, long story short, in October of last year, I was sent to the hospital. I had just been less-than-gracefully dismissed from a mentally abusive relationship, I was having a difficult time adapting to my new life as a first-year college student, I wasn't eating, and, perhaps worst of all, I had been struggling with what would soon be diagnosed as depression since approximately the sixth grade. Cool.

So, all of the aforementioned situations came to a head all at once last October, and I was sent to the hospital, where I was diagnosed as clinically depressed. My doctor suggested that I start taking an antidepressant, Effexor. I had heard somewhere that antidepressants "turn you into a zombie," but at the time, I just wanted all the bad feelings to finally stop, and so I basically told my doctor to "give me the juice." More politely, of course.

I was released after five days. Fast forward ten months; here we are now, and I have a lot to say about antidepressants.

I knew that they would turn me into a "zombie." What I mean by that is this: "normal" people usually feel neutral, with bursts of happiness and sadness throughout the day, due to external stimuli. I, a depressed person, would feel sad or "down" most of the time, with bursts of neutral on any given day if the stars aligned, the chemicals in my brain decided not to be total jerks, Mercury was in retrograde... You get the idea. So, the medicine got rid of the "bad" feelings, but then my brain couldn't figure out how to feel. The medicine brought me from the "down" feelings to feeling absolutely nothing at all.

In fact, I haven't cried (like, actually cried, not just tear up when someone yells at me, etc.) in probably ten months.

Here's the thing about antidepressants (from my personal experience): yes, they do turn you into a "zombie," but they also trap you. Let me explain:

Since taking Effexor, I feel like a fraction of my former self. Like that lyric from a Hozier song, "I'm somewhere outside my life. I keep on scratching, but somehow I can't get in." Sometimes I get tiny glimpses of the way my life used to be before I became an Effexor zombie, but it goes away as quickly and unexpectedly as it arrives. I'm left trying to remember who I was before I slept for 15 hours a day and binge-ate plain tortilla chips while watching the same re-runs over and over and over again. The days run together.

So, why not just stop taking the Effexor? For two reasons, it isn't that simple. First, if I stopped taking the medicine, I would revert back to my old depressive state, but likely even worse than it was before. Second, my body has developed a dependency on the medicine, where, if I miss even one dose, I get painful withdrawal headaches. Once, I didn't take them for about four days, and I passed out while trying to walk to my apartment. So, I'm trapped between feeling like the living dead or having a head-splitting migraine. It's one or the other.

What am I trying to say? What do I want you to take away from this seemingly pointless personal anecdote? If you and your doctor are considering placing you on an antidepressant, please get all the facts. Please weigh the pros and cons. Please realize that you definitely will not feel the same afterwards, once the right medicine for you is found. Is my personal experience the same as everyone else's? Absolutely not. But it is not rare for people to feel like zombies after beginning antidepressants.

All in all, if I could go back in time and choose not to start the Effexor, I wouldn't. I may not feel the same as I used to feel, but, honestly, that's good. I used to cry multiple times every day. I don't get caught up in trivial things that used to upset me, meaning that I can better focus on my work now. I think that, once I finally become accustomed to the medicine, I can learn to feel again.

So basically, just please please please learn about how the medicine is going to affect you once you start taking it. No one told me any of what I've just told you, so maybe this article can serve as a way to help you weigh your options.

Thanks for listening.