Thursday 27 June 2013

m-m-m-medication?!

   that was pretty much my reaction when my GP suggested putting me onto anti-depressants. i'd never been on any form of long term medication before. usually it was the odd paracetamol here and there for when i had a headache, or the horrible time i had hayfever so bad i had to have eye drops prescribed to me. whoever thought it would be a good idea to drip what feels like hydrochloric acid into a soft, squishy part of my face to help me see better during the summer months is a total arse! 



   anyway, meds for depression. i have been on citalopram and am currently taking fluoxitine. now i am pretty sure they have helped me and at least made me feel better for a little while. that may be a placebo effect and the idea that im taking medication to stop me feeling like shit may actually be helping me more than the medication itself. strange.


   there has been a lot of talk about whether or not anti-depressants work or not. the fact is that they may work for some people, but wont work for others. ive actually had one person say to me a while back "you're taking anti-depressants, why arent you alright now?" not only did this piss me off but it upset me as well. maybe that person had a point. if im taking pills specifically designed to stop me from feeling like cow shit then why do i still feel like a bovine turd?



   in my opinion i think that tablets alone arent enough. ive mentioned in earlier posts that it is important to have a support system around you. all the anti-depressants in the world arent going to stop you from thinking about things that make you feel crappy. they may stop a general feeling of "crappiness" but if its something specific that is getting to you then tablets do sweet F A. getting things off your chest and opening up to people is what can alleviate those things that are making you feel shitty. i wont go into details as i will save it for another post, but counselling helped a lot with those specific things that got me down. tablets dont deal with the problems. they just seem to slightly suppress the bad feelings and emotions those problems give you

   now i want to talk about the part of taking medication that affects my mental health which hits me the hardest. it is also a question i ask myself every time i have an ok day: "do i actually feel better or is it just the tablets?" the simple answer is that i dont know. i guess the only way i would be able to find out would be to stop taking the tablets and see how i feel after the chemicals are out of my system. hopefully i'll do that in the future, but for now im scared to do it. i dont know if thats a fear of change, or the fear that im not in control of my own emotions. whatever it is, it terrifies me, but i hope that in the future i will be able to come off the meds.

   it is odd that when i decided to write this post i was expecting it to be ridiculously long. i dont know if thats because my views on mental health related medication are fairly small or if its just because theres not a lot in my life regarding meds that i can talk about.  i'd really like to hear from others who are currently taking meds for mental health issues or have done. so please get in touch.



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