How many people here are on some kind of an antidepressant?

Me. I was prescribed after my mother’s death and other shitty things that happened to our family. The meds have been a tremendous help.

In the past and they may have helped. Once I was on them and felt the effects I was able to understand the situations that allowed me to get pulled down into depression. I can literally feel myself slipping into it now and can usually stop it dead by removing stress and stepping up exercise and proper nutrition. My trigger was stress and drinking a few yes just a few shots routinely to self medicate. Once depression started it would self perpetuate. The meds helped me understand how I was being pulled down by stress and bad eating habits. I was a workaholic to the point I was harming my health. I have not needed any meds for close to a decade now. Some people are open about it but most are not. It’s a very common thing and my doc told me that like a quarter of his patients are on something I currently don’t need any medications of any kind so I’d say I’m incredibly fortunate.

I am not and I hope I am not ever, but I am grateful that they are available if I ever need to be.

I’m not. Unless you count beer.

I have Bipolar Depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have been on anti-depressants amoungst other medications for almost 20 years. They have helped very very much. I’m pretty sure I would no longer be here without them.

865

I don’t know, but count me in.

Have been, am not now. could possibly be again.

My mind (or brain if you will) is like every other thing that I own.

In other words it is mine to know and adjust. Just like my body, my cars, by bicycles, my clothes, my home audio, my cooking, etc. etc.

Test and modify, test and modify, test and modify.

GA @ARE_you_kidding_me

Used to, two years ago, but my story sounds like a comedy. When I was in high school I suffered from depression due to lots of crazy things around me. I don’t know if my parents noticed my behavior or not, but they never acknowledged my depression. They just thought that was all just stupid highschooler’s spontaneous feeling and it could go away as fast as when it came. Yeah, I was left miserable for years.

But two years ago, I finally got over my depression. At one point I got some pressure at school due to some projects. And I panicked while working on one of them and my friends noticed that. One of them reported it to my parents because she was concerned about my health. This time my parents went beserck. They quickly concluded that I had some kind of depression and needed help fast. I went to see some doctor and he handed me some anti-depressant, which was pretty much useless to me since I didn’t have any problem at all. I wished I could travel back in time and gave all the drug to my high school self.

I am on an SSRI for anxiety. It helps. I went off it at one point, decided I still needed it, went back on and stayed on. Been about 5 years now minus that blip.

I was on Prozac for a year between ages 17 and 18, until I tried to overdose on it, and found out the hard way that the worst thing that can happen to you if you overdose on SSRI’s is kidney and liver damage and getting kicked out of university housing and losing all your friends.

Now I self-medicate with illegal recreational drugs and am unable to be any happier!

Years ago, following my mother’s suicide, one of the doctors I was seeing tried several different types of antidepressants to help me cope.

But, my system tends to react to side effects of quite a lot of different medications very badly.

The extreme dry mouth was bad enough but when I began missing door handles by six inches and tripping over my own feet, I decided that could make driving rather dangerous and stopped taking anything.

Looking back on it now, I think everyone else was more concerned than I was about the possibility of suicide for me.

So, I just had to muddle through somehow. And now I’ve read that in studies they’ve done that talk therapy and antidepressants are about equally effective for most people.

I was very fortunate to have an excellent rapport with a shrink who really really knew what he was doing. That can be very difficult to find , so I was lucky.

So, even tho these meds had too many side effects to be workable for me personally, I’m a pragmatist. If it’s working for someone and improving the quality of their life, I think that’s terrific.

One of my best friends from college is severely bi polar (clearly inherited from his father since two out of his three other siblings share the same diagnosis) and these meds have so much improved the quality of life for him as well as his family. So I’ve seen firsthand how restoring proper brain chemistry affects ones life in a very positive way.

So, I’m clearly in the mindset of “If it works, don’t knock it.”