I have been taking medication for my depression and anxiety since I was a sophomore in high school. The decision to get on them was a hard one. So many people around me said that taking drugs that affected my mental health meant I would lose "myself." In other words, I would become a numb, emotionless human being, tricking my brain with drugs when in reality I should just learn to control my mental illness on my own.
What changed my mind?
Well, I couldn't control it on my own anymore. I talked to my doctor, and she prescribed me Zoloft, which I've been taking (with varying dosages-- I'm hovering around 100mg right now) ever since.
In the months after I started taking medication, my life has drastically improved. I was motivated again. I could do things again, which in all honesty was something I had forgotten how to do. I don't know how long I have been depressed, but I'm guessing it's been since I was about 12 or 13, maybe even earlier than that. I lost half of my adolescence due to depression and anxiety. Medication helped me get it back. With the clarity I achieved from a brain that actually reuptakes serotonin correctly, I was able to work a lot out by myself. And now, I'm still on meds, still depressed and anxious, but I am no longer defined by those things. I no longer feel suicidal. You hear me? I no longer want to die.
As you can imagine, I feel very apprehensive when people start talking about how wrong drugs like Zoloft are. Depression and anxiety are diagnosable mental illnesses. Illnesses that I have, illnesses diagnosed by my doctor. They are an illness of the brain, and for that reason the idea of taking in any mind-altering substance sounds blasphemous to some people.
But I ask you this, reader: Would you tell a person with cancer to stop their treatment? After all, it's their body. Cancer is something the body does to itself. Sometimes it seems to happen randomly, without explanation, and other times the body has been affected by something else. But if you apply the logic of people who are against drugs for mental illnesses, a person with cancer should be able to just fight the illness off themselves. The human body, they'll say, is very good at righting itself.
Except when that body is trying to kill you.
And to add, if someone is taking medication for their mental illness, they can't just go cold turkey or decide to stop randomly. When one wants to go off medication, it needs to be weaned off. Otherwise, the brain doesn't learn how to function without it properly, and that can cause things to go especially badly, especially in the case of depression. Telling us to just go cold turkey does not work.
In the rare event that I do not have access to my medication, my life is a living hell. I go through withdrawal. That manifests in a lot of different ways. I am suddenly incredibly anxious; every sound I hear puts me on edge. I also have what I call jolts; Essentially, I can't see and I feel like I'm being shocked for about half a second. This can happen multiple times a minute. It's terrifying, and the first time it happened (probably in combination with increased anxiety) I thought I had a brain tumor.
But a lot of people get suicidal, even if they hadn't been previously.
The decision to take or not take medication to deal with mental health issues is up to the individual. And, medication does not work for everyone. I happen to be lucky that it works for me. But do not try and tell me that I am losing myself, or that I would be better off without it. The only people with that authority are my doctor and myself. Neither of us plan on taking me off medication any time soon. Because, to be frank: if I did not have my medication, like the hypothetical cancer patient above, I have a pretty clear idea of where I would be right now.
I would be dead.
