Let's talk about SSRIs - anti-depressants
And the consequences of just shutting it all down without other options
SSRI stands for serotonin re-uptake inhibitor - this is a medication often administered to those with depression, anxiety, so that they are better able to manage their systems.
I started taking them at age 19 because I was in college and I stopped sleeping. I wasn’t depressed, nor did I think I was anxious. I was happy to be in college; I sure as hell didn’t want to go back to Panama.
But- I couldn’t sleep. I felt like I was losing my mind.
My mother was my lifesaver and talked me down many nights when I thought that I was legitimately losing my mind. Because what sort of weirdo can’t sleep?
My mother ‘got it’ in a very intimate way, because that was her experience after having my brother and having post-partum depression. She resisted taking medication for over a year after his birth to help her because in her words “it didn’t help Julie” (her sister who took her own life in her early 20’s).
She started taking them and it helped her.
Anti-depressants - these SSRIs felt like they gave me my life back. They didn’t come without consequences. The first one eventually caused rapid weight gain - like 20 pounds in 2 weeks.
Another one proscribed later made me feel like I legitimately was crawling out of my skin and not helping me, but further driving me further and more quickly to insanity.
They can really help people; unfortunately, they can also have the complete opposite effect - it can exacerbate and make the situation worse within someone’s body.
Therefore, for my 20s and well into my 30's, I just simply believed I needed to take them because—like my mother—I had the same genetic predisposition to depression.
I am thankful for anti-depressants. At that point in time, with what I knew and what resources/information/education I had at my disposal - they were what I had to manage my mental health.
Now, 20 years later, I have a lot more understanding of their limitations and tools in my toolbelt to manage my mental health.
But - it took that long. A lot of education. A lot of voluntarily reading and trying to learn how to manage my mental health.
I remember one of the most jaw-dropping moments came to me around 2020 -
I read:
“90% of the serotonin is produced in your gut.”
WTF?
I thought. I had been under the impression that all serotonin production and “absorption” as it were just was in the brain. And because my brain was obviously broken, I just couldn’t produce and absorb it -
Not entirely.
It can help you absorb the serotonin with a boost to those neuro-transmitters.
But - you are also able to produce your own serotonin.
How?-
Through your lifestyle choices:
diet, exercise, vagus nerve stimulation -the connector from your gut/microbiome. (This is your second brain as it’s called - responsible for good and bad bacteria in your gut and the levels of both. More and more current research is tying certain levels of some bacteria to a greater likelihood of anxiety, sleep problems, mood disorders, depression, etc. So - It’s not all in your brain, but perhaps in your gut that is a huge indicator of mental illnesses or mental health conditions as we’ve come to know them as..)
I learned also that you can carry intergenerational trauma - both in learned behaviors and right down to your DNA - epigenetics. This means that if your ancestors underwent trauma that changed their brains and stress-hormone responses and didn’t address it - which many didn’t due to lack of resources- that would also have an affect on your own brain and neurochemicals and hormones as they process or fail to.
I learned that bodies can hold traumas and body healing work is important - again for the person and sometimes you’re healing your line.
I learned that your aura/your energy receptors/chakras can also be blocked and have an impact on your mental health and overall wellness and being.
I know that we—as a society—over-prescribe anti-depressants. This adds money to doctors, pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies. It’s a quick fix and easier than to treat the human as a whole being - mind, body, spirit.
They may not be everyone’s ultimate survival tool, but sometimes we take the resources we have at the time that we have them to survive.
I heard the other day - the tools you used for survival may not be the ones that will aid you for the rest of your journey, or perhaps help you the most for the rest of your journey in being your most healthy, towards wellness.
But really - we’re all working with what we’ve got at our disposal.
Anti-depressants were my life line at one point.
Alcohol was my tool to manage and survive that grew to no longer serve me and only to hurt me. It developed into abuse and alcoholism. But to admit it - I don’t know what would have happened to me if I didn’t use and abuse it for years while trying to manage my mother and finish my doctorate. Maybe I would have been able to still power through. Maybe it would have directed me toward more medications or therapies that would have helped me. Maybe I would have been chronically sleep deprived and dropped out. I don’t know. At that time, it worked for me. It works until it doesn’t - abusing alcohol and managing anxiety with it can work for some temporarily. But then for many it develops chronic abuse and then you tend to rush more quickly towards alcoholism. Or - abusing speed for those with ADHD or whatever it is - if you don’t have proper therapy and medications prescribed - you abuse or manage however you know best.
I’m thankful to have had my rock bottom and spiritual awakening to yank and demand me toward a different way of life. That has improved my mental and physical health so much so that I am able to exist now and manage a life without anti-depressants.
And that’s for now - I have no idea if it’ll remain stagnant. But even temporarily, I never thought it was something I would ever be able to do.
I have dove deep in a lot of areas to learn how to survive.
I’ve been privileged to have the reading material, the stamina, the interest, and the abilities to grasp/learn and try new things. It’s economic privilege; it’s intelligence privilege. It’s because I don’t have babies to raise. It’s a lot of things.
It’s been a part time job at points. One I dove into hungrily because it meant survival for me. Not turning out like my dad and brother, or even my beloved mother.
But—again, I recognize not everyone has that option for a number of different reasons.
This is why—though I understand the need to investigate the overuse of SSRIs—unless you are willing to also provide what people need in its place - accessible therapies—mind and body, spiritual forms of healing, substance abuse education prevention, more training or education on lifestyle/diet/exercise and how it contributes to serotonin production or deficit, etc, etc -
And that’s very expensive. It’s time-consuming. It’s a lot of work. You have to go searching for all of that all on your own.
After all, no one presents it to you in a nice folder to understand your diagnosis when you’re told you have major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder.
We don’t get a folder of research articles: Here are the potential reasons why you may have these conditions - here are all the different areas of your life you should look into and ways you could consider treating this condition.
No - at best, they say
1- “We’d encourage you to talk to somebody” or “You should get therapy” (which one? What kind? There are so many different types and some really shitty therapists out there).
And -2- “Here’s your medication. Which is your nearest pharmacy? Which one do you use?”
I know it may not be this simple for everyone. I hope you had a better experience. I did not and had these conversations many many times with different PAs, nurses, doctors, and psychiatrists over the years.
If we can’t offer more by default than “get therapy” or “take this med,” then -
We really ought not to just say ‘you’re over-prescribed” and fuck around with people’s lives in this way.
Especially considering what mental health crisis and illness stats are nowadays.
The numbers aren’t good; and they are only worsening.
Then -
What happens when we do restrict SSRIs and so many individual peoples’ mental health gets worse? If medications are restricted without other FREE or financially supported avenues?
Substance abuse will increase. Alcohol and drugs of so many kinds.
Suicidal ideation and plans and attempts will increase.
Suicides will happen.
It’s a recipe for disaster.
Yes. SSRIs are a tylenol when we need antibiotics and full body scans to understand where the infection comes from.
But - unless you’re willing to do a comprehensive exam and find the source and treat it -
Don’t mess with the triage/damage control.
Because that could easily unravel and people who are barely holding on WITH medication support could easily bleed out. ‘
SSRIs may be abused but so are so many things in our society.
If we’re unwilling to treat the causes, I think we ought to consider SSRIs as better than inevitable addictions and suicides that will result.
Or - get to researching and looking for medication cures rather than bandaid fixes.
Let’s change the conversation so that we talk about ending/curing neurochemical depression and neurochemical anxiety rather than simply managing their symptoms.
