Re-considering anti-depressants

a new turn on my healing journey

I have been on anti-depressants since I was 19 years old. I was in my second year of college and I stopped sleeping. My mind was unable to turn off and I couldn’t relax to let my body sleep. I wasn’t overly stressed or depressed. There was nothing wrong; nothing catastrophic had happened. I just couldn’t sleep.

I would lay there all night. And be a zombie the next day.

Chronic insomnia of that kind is torturous; it’s truly hell. I am thankful that this has only been for brief periods of my life and not for years, as my mother and best friend have experienced.

It was terrible because I wanted to be at college and when you can’t sleep like a normal person then you really feel that you’re going mad. It turns into a vicious cycle, the more you’re anxious about not sleeping, the more sleep eludes you.

I took a medical leave. The only thing that helped me sleep was after I got some anti-depressants in my system.

Since then, other than a brief period of about 8 months, I’ve consistently been on anti-depressants since then.

I don’t have shame about this. I was always tremendously thankful that they helped to correct my ‘imbalance’ or whatever was going on within my system to be able to calm my mind and rest and sleep.

Not that they don’t come with side effects—I’ve had nausea, lethargy, low-libido, and the worst—some intense weight gain. All common side effects of anti-depressants. I’ve also had periods of being on the wrong anti-depressant/not a right fit for my body and that was awful. My heart felt like it was pounding and my feet and hands tingly. My depression grew worse and I had suicide ideation, simply because I felt so terrible that I couldn’t imagine continuing to live like this for the rest of my life.

The point—anti-depressants are not entirely a picnic. It’s why it enrages me when people refer to them as ‘happy pills’. Rather, I think of them as ‘managing to cope and survive’ pills. Happy pills implies that they make you happy or that we all start from the same place of homeostasis/neutrality as our norm. That is simply not the case and the reason why many people need to be on anti-depressants.

I have friends and know many who simply accept the fact that they will always be on anti-depressants for the rest of their lives, as well as other medications. I understand that. When you’re finally stable and functioning, it’s such a relief and I also have felt like you don’t want to go messing with that. Experimenting with not having it anymore.

And yet, I am starting to rethink my own position on anti-depressants. I am thankful they exist. I still take them. But with my journey with gut health, EMDR and bio fork tuning, as well as newer treatments always evolving, the more I learn, the more I read, the more I question whether the same is true for me—that anti-depressants are the only path for me and that I will continue to have to take them indefinitely, for the rest of my life.

There are several reasons for this. One of which is that I am keenly aware that pharmaceutical companies benefit/make money from our dependence on meds such as anti-depressants and anti-anxiety ones. There is a vested, selifsh/capitalist interest there in specifically minimizing the other options, natural ones, with perhaps with less side effects and benefits of more natural remedies—supplements, homeopathic options, etc.

I do think that anti-depressants, while wonderful, also continue to allow us to exist in this place where we’re simply managing the symptoms rather than working towards a permanent cure. I realize that it’s exhausting to do that work, especially if you’re depressed, but unlike research in cancer, AIDS, etc, you don’t hear of cures for depression and mental illness. Yes, some of it is because it’s hard to treat and there is much the we still don’t know, many types of depression and anxiety, etc. But let’s be real, there is also the very obvious one that if you keep people dependent on the meds, then they will continue to buy it. Again, capitalism.

It’s hard for me to even admit or consider that there may ever be a cure for me or other options beyond meds. Part of that is because I don’t want to minimize how they have kept me sane and able to sleep, and how they’ve kept many other people alive and functioning, when they otherwise may not have.

I also have been an advocate for mental health and the de-stigmatization of mental health. And a great part of this involves the treatment for mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety. And anti-depressants, of course, are the most readily available treatment for it.

I do think we’re over-prescribed as a nation. And I do think that not everyone with depression requires chemical help. Others, through therapy, diet, exercise, and lifestyle change can manage depression. There are so many different kinds.

I hold space for all of this.

And yet, for my own journey, I reconsider how I have always believed anti-depressants to be a part of my life. Now, in taking better care of my gut health, and the therapy and healing of bio fork tuning, I reconsider that it may not be.

That very thought is both potentially liberating and it’s terrifying, mainly because I think back to and remember the points in my life when I was not properly medicated and how challenging those time periods were. Still, I got through them.

Having hope for a better future with depression is all well and good, but often times, many of us get resigned. We don’t want to feel so disappointed and risk instability; we build up walls or limitations of expectations that our situation could be any different—that I could possible function and thrive, after treatments, without regularly taking anti-depressants.

I know I have. Such is the story of my adult life.

For years, I have accepted that the depression, sleep disorder and anxiety that I have is simply a genetic hand dealt to me/that I’ve inherited from my mother. I never really questioned or considered that while yes, I was/am genetically predisposed to that, that perhaps, there are treatments and things out there for me to do to address this. Like gut health, like addressing intergenerational trauma/epigenetic hands through bio fork tuning.

Now that I’m even allowing myself to think this way, to consider other possibilities, it’s mind-boggling. I think precisely because when you have a mental illness in a time in space and society where it is still stigmatized, you work hard to own and accept that. I have. Now I am re-negotiating that.

Could my depression come back? Of course. It has ebbed and flowed over the years. But for now, I would not categorize/self-label myself as depressed or enduring depression. That is a huge shift for me.

Anxiety still? Yes. Learning to live with trauma/PTSD? yes. But not depression.

Also considering that, with these other two, that I am treating them in ways that may specifically address them, from childhood and ancestry/emotional inheritance.

That is huge for me. A deep renegotiation of who I am, the genetic hand I’ve been dealt. It is owning my own embodied experiences while pausing to consider the possible that it may not always be like this, for me.

That statement, right there, is huge for me. It may not be for everyone, but it is for me.

Because of my depression and anxiety, because of my trauma/PTSD, and because of my life experiences with my family members’ deaths, that have often gotten worse and worse, beyond which than I could have imagined.

Again, it is tragic and sad and of course, it is lonely to be the only one left and without immediate family. But it does often carry with it a deep sense of relief; with how dysfunctional my family members were, how wounded and mentally ill and damaged, and unable or unwilling to change, it was a huge burden that I carried for my whole life…

So, I *do* often feel freedom, liberated, released from their bad choices to pursue healing and to have hope in a way that I could never full embrace until they were all deceased. That is heart-wrenching; I feel guilty writing that, but it is also incredibly honest and true.

Did I need anti-depressants to cope? Yes. Do I still need them? I don’t know. But I am considering possibilities that other options, treatment, healing and therapy may be enough and take me on a new path of managing my body, mind, experiences. It’s mind-boggling to me to even think that.

Then again, I am thankful to have had healing and therapy and life-changing experiences within the last few years that have given me more hope than I ever thought possible. Even presenting ideas that my life and state of being may one day be vastly differently than I could’ve imagined.

That is huge for me. And it is evidence of how much I have healed and evolved, to even consider hope, from a state of negativity and pessimism and fear. I even feel willingness to consider options beyond neutrality, which often, was the most/best that I could ever hope for, as I discussed with my EMDR therapist.

Having hope is scary and feel like unfamiliar territory, at points. But it is also deeply refreshing and liberating. I welcome possibilities. I surrender to however the universe chooses to direct me on my healing journey. But I am open to options and that is huge. And it has proven to be life-changing and a total game-changer for me, on this journey.

In further reflection, I realize the issue of anti-depressant usage is just symbolic, or one small part of this journey, a microcosm of the whole.