So, as an offshoot of this thread, I wanted to present a brief argument that occurred in the Jarbaby household yesterday evening as a result of me starting in on anti-depressant medication.
Mr. Jar says he’s pleased that this is the case “because now you’ll be back to your old self. I can’t wait to see you happy again”
to which I shrugged and said, “I guess, but it won’t be a real happiness, it will be a pill happiness. It’s the celexa you’ll like.”
The way I’m seeing it is that this medication is like going bottle blonde. It looks nice to everyone else, but I know deep down it’s false.
So what is the purpose of all of this? (and I’m sorry if I’m rambling, I just don’t know what I’m getting into) If I go off this medication do I head right back down to hell? Or will I be able to conjure up this false joy after the fact?
And how much of this is psychosomatic? “I’m on anti-depressants, so I must not be depressed”
I guess this might be in the wrong forum, but we’ll see.
I don’t think the pill makes you happy. It just makes you not sad, so that you can be happy about things that would have normally made you happy when you were not depressed.
It doesn’t even really do that, horhay. It simply corrects the chemical imbalances going on so that you don’t let little things bog you down, so that you’re more able to cope.
I started on antidepressants back in April, jarbaby, and I had the exact same concerns. “Is this going to change who I am? Will I still be me? Do I want the blue pill or the red pill?” Well, OK, not that last one, but you see what I mean. It doesn’t really alter your personality–it makes your real personality more available, rather than what it was while your brain chemistry was all screwed up.
I’m glad to hear that pldennison. Although it just seems hard to reconcile. A tiny little peach colored pill will stop me from worrying about whether sun is going to explode today? (I mean, really, sometimes that reduces me to tears)
Fears the sun is going to explode? Given the choice, I’d take the pill, even if it did change me a little bit.
And speaking for us alternative blondes (it’s natural - I naturally wanted it and I naturally paid for it!), it’s not a false joy at all. I look better as a blond, ergo I feel better about my presentation, and that naturally leads into a better feeling about myself. Who cares if it’s not “real?” I don’t. We have more fun!
Well said, PLD, but I would suggest that it makes your whole personality more available, including the bits that have been obscured by the chemical wonkiness in the brain.
j-babe, I think the hair color analogy fails to hold up for that reason. If it your hair were purple due to a wierd mix of chemicals, you wouldn’t hesitate to dye it, or to alter the wierd mix. But I think there’s a difference between dying hair for vanity or pleasure and fundamentally repairing it.
Sorry if that’s obscure, I haven’t had enough coffee yet.
Hey! I’ve dyed my hair every color under the sun, and I love it. I’m just always quick to assure people that it’s not my real haircolor. I had a roomate in college who accused me of being “deceptive” because I wore tinted contacts.
And I think Auburns have the most fun!
Andros, thanks for the explanation. I guess what I’m really wondering is, what if just from getting older and becoming ‘an adult’ I’m supposed to be a little more subdued and introspective, and if this depression really is my real personality.
I don’t know. I just hope that counselling referal gets here today
Yeesh. That’s a tough one, and one I don’t have any facile answers for. I guess I don’t see that there really is such a thing as one’s “real” personality–at least not in the sense of “it’s what it’s supposed to be so I’d better just deal with it.” We’re constantly changing, hopefully for the better, after all. Ghod knows I’m a different person from the one I was ten years ago.
:shrug: Not very helpful, I know. But while you will undoubtedly change while taking antidepressants, I definitely do not think the drugs will create a zombie out of you, or forge a completely different jarbabyj. It’s gonna be you he loves, not the pills. And it’s gonna be a you who is better able to be happy, and better able to understand and cope with fears. And I cannot think that’s anything but a good thing.
I object to the haircolor analogy, too. Let me offer one, from my point of view.
Depression is an illness, just as strep throat is an illness. Perhaps a person with strep should let his own immune system do all the work because taking antibiotics gives a “false cure”. If he goes it alone, there is a small chance that the strep will kill him, a better chance that he’ll have longlasting negative consequences like rheumatic heart disease, and a good chance that he’ll kick the illness altogether (though not as quickly as he would if he’d taken the antibiotics).
Depression is not the same as feeling sad or introspective. It’s an abnormal condition that interferes with your daily functioning. It makes you miserable and steals your ability to cope. It can even be fatal.
I’m kind of in an opposite situation from you, jar. I’ve been depressed so long and severely that I can no longer remember what it was like to be “normal”. I’ve had a few short breaks from the depression, but those times were more like vacations from real life. If you judge a person’s personality by the way he feels and behaves the majority of the time over a certain percentage of his life, then my natural personality is depression.
Who you really are is who you believe yourself to be. You’re the only one who has to live inside your skin, and no one (not even your husband!) can tell you who the real jarbaby really is.
Don’t feel guilty or embarrassed or whatever about taking the antidepressants. If you are depressed, they will help you to conquer your illness. You could probably survive without the drug, but you would have wasted a good chunk of your life that you didn’t have to lose.
Thanks for that story Holly. I’d like to think that this really isn’t my personality, as just six months ago I was very active in theatre and writing and cooking and now I hate doing all of it. I just lay in bed and worry.
But I DO sort of feel guilty about the pills. I mean, I called my mom and she said “is this REALLY what you need to do? I mean, we just went through this with your sister”. And my dad says, “when was the last time you went to church???” And i love them to death, and I know they mean very well and they’re worried, but that sort of stuff makes me think I should just get up in the morning and say “DON’T let headlines bother you. DON’T start crying on the train. DON’T go to bed at seven o’clock”. If I had enough willpower, I seem to think I could do it.
But again, I’m sorry for the initial haircolor analogy
It’s not false, but it’s temporary. The aspirin doesn’t take away a headache forever, and it’s only because of the aspirin that it’s gone. It’s not something I did on my own volition to better my headache.
The bottom line is, I keep telling myself “You couldn’t even snap yourself out of this, you needed a pill to do it.”
I don’t know. I just know that I took a pill this morning that my doctor told me yesterday I’ll be taking for at least a year, and now I read that I could gain up to 65 pounds while on it and I’ll have increased sweating.
Just to be the resident astronomy pedant: the Sun can’t explode. It doesn’t have the right characteristics. The best it can do is puff up into a red giant, then collapse back down to a white dwarf, and that won’t happen for billions of years.
I have friends who worry about immediate cosmic catastrophes. It’s okay to worry about some (like asteroid impacts, since we can prevent them), but look at it this way: they don’t happen often. If some natural galactic disaster happened often enough to affect us in our lifetimes, it would (statistically) happen so often life would never have arisen on this planet! So they don’t happen often.
The only real one that’s good to think about at this point is the asteroid/comet problem, and the things to remember are 1) they don’t happen very often, and 2) smart people are worrying about them in a realistic manner, and already have ideas on how to work this stuff out.
I know that depression can be illogical, and make you react on an emotional level, but I hope that maybe this’ll make you feel better, at least a little.
This bothers me. This implies that you feel that a cry for help equals failure. Nonsense. There are lots of things we can’t do all on our own. This doesn’t mean we’re failures. It means we have natural limitations.
I need strong glasses to be able to see. Is this because I haven’t got the willpower to focus my eyes properly? No. It means I have a physical limitation that requires correction through external means. Would I act differently if I didn’t have glasses? Yeah, I’d effectively be blind. I wouldn’t be able to drive, read, do my job, watch tv or even get around in an unfamiliar environment without difficulty. Whould that make me a different person? Heck no.
Well, like I said Kamandi, I just started this pill this morning after reading the brochure I was handed, and to be honest, when I walked into the doctor yesterday I had no idea I’d be walking out with an eight week supply of anti-depressants.
I don’t exactly understand what’s wrong with me. I have a set of symptoms, and the doctor prescribed pills to fix them.
But to me, a headache or strep throat or bad eyesight are…tangible to some degree, or actual physical symptoms. Whereas, me saying “I just feel like laying on the couch all day.” Or “I don’t feel like writing anymore” is sort of ephemeral (is that the word?)
I don’t get it. I’m just scared. I’m really scared. All day I’ve been reading about the side effects, and how long I’m going to have to be on it, and how I could get tremors and nightmares and weight gain an restless leg syndrome.
It just makes me wonder if I should have kept my mouth shut. I don’t know.
[QUOTE
Just to be the resident astronomy pedant: the Sun can’t explode. It doesn’t have the right characteristics. The best it can do is puff up into a red giant, then collapse back down to a white dwarf, and that won’t happen for billions of years.
I have friends who worry about immediate cosmic catastrophes. [/QUOTE]
Then I won’t mention GRBs.
Jarbaby, I was on anti-depressants for about a year in the mid-90’s. I was so down, I think I must have been bursting into tears about every 15 minutes. I felt like I was trying to think/worry about a zillion things at once. The pills helped me calm down, step back and view things objectivly.
About the weight gain: your doctor has told you this up front, now you can plan. At first the medication will give you the munchies. (Hmm, also some time distortion and a general feeling of lethargy. Sounds like my college days) Anyway, knowing this you can rid your house of junk food, if you have any, and stock up on the carrots and celery. Start a food diary. You don’t have to put the pounds on, the meds will just make it easy to do.
Good Luck
Lisa
