We can say with certainty that antidepressants are effective drugs. But don’t be disheartened if they’re not for you
A man taking his prescribed antidepressants Photograph: ljubaphoto/Getty Images/iStockphoto
In my first year of university, just after I had been prescribed fluoxetine for depression, I had an argument about it with a close friend. He told me that taking antidepressants would make my feelings false, my emotions manufactured. I wouldn’t be able to tell if what I was feeling was real – and that was wrong.
At the time I did not know how to articulate that all of our feelings are linked to chemicals: that even eating a chocolate bar can give me a blood-sugar spike and alter my behaviour, that feeling the sunshine on my skin can give me hope and energy.
Furthermore, that the contraceptive pills his girlfriends took were liable to make them angry, not to mention less horny. I did not know how to say that the antidepressant I took in order to cope with my life was not that different to the ketamine and cocaine he used to cope with his. In any case, it was a pretentious argument of the kind one has at university, and both of us lacked the scientific knowledge to really underpin our views. It was all posturing.
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Hazel’s comment:
I have said before, and reiterate, you can take my antidepressants away from me on the day I die, not before. Yes, I have tried the alternatives but for me they are less reliable than staying on the pills.
I found the right way to learn my times tables and I've found the right way for me to control my mood swings by leveling out the pits and the heights with medication.
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