Posted by linkadge on May 7, 2005, at 21:11:15
An SSRI Story: For the commoner, the sanely sick.
--------------The story begins on a bla, grey day. You havn't been sleeping that well, and you're feeling down.
The story continues for a little while in the same manner. In a flash of self pitty inspired by the pain/pleasure axis you remember the concept of depression from a zoloft commercial. The idea jumps into your head but at first your sence of self repect, and desire for self controll pushes it out of the way.Slowly, however, for whatever reasons in your life, your sence of self controll slowly deminishes. You find yourself entertaining the notion of depression even more. The concept becomes more vivid, and more and more your brain makes the connections in attempts to fit you into that framework. The relief it provides is intreguing. You've seen the commercials, and quite frankly almost every billboard or pop up on the internet seems to instate the validity of this disease as an illness. More and more you toy with the idea.
It provides relif because perhaps the light is just popping a pill away.As the days go buy, often you feel guilty about entertaining the notion, because you remember good things that have happened, quite recently, that have seemed to push the notion of depression out of your mind.
But the mind plays a more powerful game than you can imagine. The sence of relif it provides is almost a placebo effect in itself! I mean even the time you spend *imaginging* being on an antidepressant brings relief. What would I be like on Zoloft? How can this relief be so? True depression doesn't respond to a fantasy.
But again another knock hits you down in life. And as the pain/pleasure axis woud have it, the image of depression becomes more vivid, more real. It has been a self serving fantasy that has sustained you for the last couple of months, but in order for it's magic to continue you must delve deeper.
On the internet, you click to take a test for depression, you fill out the results honsetly. The results come back. Borderline score. So you're not failing, but again you're not passing. That was a setback you think. I'm depressed !!!! Thats what I want isn't it?? Or wait, do I want to be well ?? Now I can't really remember.
The fantasy leaves for another little while. Again, something stressfull hits you at work, and you find yourself having trouble sleeping.
On the bus home, you hear a story of a friend of a friend feeling GREAT on prozac. You internalize, and become bitter. Why can't I feel that way? you ruminate. But on the other side of the coin, this is a good thing isn't it. A pill can do something. A drug *can* make somebody happy. This feeds the fantasy. It's true. Happiness *is* perhaps just a pill away.
You work up the gumption to take the test again, this time you make a few small adjustments. You don't feel terrably guitly since your brain can come up with a few empathetic ways justify the more liberal leaning towards a depression diagonisis.
Again another throw at work, and a death in the family causes pain/pleasure axis to rebound in the motivation to take the only slightlty skewed results into your doctor.
But goodness! you think. I've got to act depressed, don't I. How do depressed people act??
I mean, if he tells a joke I have to make sure I don't laugh, and well I supposed I have to talk in a monotone voice. In the waiting room, the guilt sets it. Wait a second, If I have to *act* depressed then there's something wrong here isn't there? But again you lapse. I need a change. The idea that it's all in your mind has crossed your mind, but the symptom are real arn't they?? I mean the jitteryness is real! I am anxious here, now in the waiting room am I not?? The guilt quicky vanishes. I guess that's enough truth to hold you for now. But then again that resolution brought some improvement in your anxitey. The paradox left you thinking long enough for your name to be called.Well, my name has been called. I HAVE to go now. I have no choice. The thought frenzied hypercholinergic state causes you to breifly think that you might have some other disorder.
You enter the doctors office. After a few questions, and some exceedinly rudimentaty and not so evidenty inacurate pharmachological babble you are convinced, (at least temporarily), that you have some sort chemical imballance, the likes of which paxil will completely cure. The only drawback is it may take 4+ weeks to work.
You take the piece of paper to the pharmacy and pick up your pills. But on the way out you also see a pamphlet on alternative treatments for mood disorders.
The pamphet lists some things that may help, but they seem akward. I mean exercise? Goodness I don't have any time for that. St. John's wort? Well it says there that its only effective for mild-moderate depression. Well I'm not severely depressed. Maybe I should give it a try.
But goodnss! What am I going to do about the doctor? Should I tell him? No, he won't like that.
You give him a call, and he insists that the herb is no good. You are left completely befuttled, and decide to sleep on it. Well, you don't really sleep too well, which of course gets you thinking about yourself again. You figure that you better take the medication. I mean what happens if this gets worse? I will need the doctor's help won't I?
He can't help me if I go behind his back and take this herb. Again the thought frenzied hyper-cholinergic state leaves you a little bit bitter
at God for the predicament, and the indecision.But again, on the bus, that darned lady talking about the friend of a friend. Now you're bitter and jealous again. The jealously gets you in that dopamine "wanting" mode again. Sometimes when you're in one of these snitty moods you just wish you were dead!!
AHA!!! you say. I suppose I *have* been thinking about suicide !! Perhaps I am severly depressed. I mean "moderatly" depressed people don't think about suicide do they?? I think not.
At this point you really don't care. You're just so tired about thinking about it all. You feel you should be honest and take the pill. Especially since the curiosity is makeing you wild. The excitement gets you thinking again about how something so small could change your mood so fast, it crosses your mind that this kind of thinking is profoundly dangerous. But its who I AM you say. I can't change that. I was born this way, it's in my GENES, God made me like this. I must intervene. This kind of thing doesn't get better on its own. The pamphlet says its true. And GOD KNOWS if we can't trust the PAMPHLET what can we trust ??
You get home and the gas bill is *so* high, that you get feeling down again. SCREW IT ALL!!!!! SCREW IT ALL!!!
You pop a paxil.
For the first few hours you do feel calmer. You lie down to sleep, but don't really sleep that well.After a day, you say to yourself, that wasn't so bad. I can tolerate that. It seemed to do something. And "something" is enought to keep the imagination floating.
You restle with the fact that it does seem awefully powerfull. You worry about how it will affect your job. But the neurogenesis is one step ahead of your rumination. THis leads to to remember how the pharmacist told you to mention all the side effects to your doctor, as a different antidepressant may be required.
Four weeks later the drug is changed to wellbutrin.
That calm feeling is replaced by a more harsh, activation. But wow!!, I am alert.
*
*The medication cult has your soul now. It has the depths of your soul. At this point you are gone, and you don't even realize it.
*
*You've started to realize how the system works!! You can take the wellbutrin and get the power you want, and just when you start to feel really guilty about using medications you can simply take another medication - zyprexa. "Guarenteed to remove all guilt withing 2 hours of popping the 5+ mg pill"
You've learned how the paxil can make you less angry at your boss, and how the wellbutrin can make you get your work done faster. The clonazepam makes the crowed ride home on the bus easier, and the zyprexa can always defunk it all if things get problematic.
You worry about your liver, but then realize how the worry about your liver can be nullified by taking more anxiety medications, and the guilt about taking more medications can be nullified by the zyprexa, and how the wellbutrin can nullify the sedation of the zyprexa, and how the coffee (which you never touched before) can augment the wellbutrin, and how if things get really bad you're "set" because being on all this medication
clearly indicates how crazy you are, which entitles you to special benifits at work. The zyprexa nullifies the guilt about screwing the system into extra benifits.*
*I said before how they stole your soul. But it that concept doesn't really exist anymore at this point. Not to mention the way they shut down lower brainstem activity which probably promoted
amnesia to the fact that your were a mortal being. In some ways they made you feel as If you had trensended all of your problems. You know, that hallucinogenic objectivity which almost makes you feel that you have more of a right to do whatever the heck you want.*
*
The meds have depleted your lifeforce, which isn't really scientific but its true. Sounds kind of like something a tall skinny bald wholistic healer would tell you.The problem is that no matter how far you go, there always seems to be something pulling you back which your mind chalks up to "An extremely disturbing side effect, that doesn't seem to get better" The way that you don't really think much about other people. Or how your mind is obsessivly preocupied with the next drug.
The diversity of things that once brought pleasure has become exceedinly narrow. Which you attribute to low dopamine. Of course you don't really notice how you miss hugging your dog, or how a talk with a good friend could really raise your spirits but that you can't help.
You don't really know how you miss the power and intensity of a really sincere prayer. You also don't know how much you miss the divine sence of redemption, warmth, and forgivness you got from a good cry. That is because you don't cry, you *can't* cry. Alas, its not that the symbolism of this fact is beyond you, but more to do with the fact that being more machiene now than man effectivy buffers all humanity.
You don't really miss it because the brain works hard to relieve itself of the guilt of such inadvertently willfull destruction self.
At this point you would never know how, a job at Mc'donnalds, a best friend, and a phonecall from your mom every evening would have lead to a much more fufilling life.
The years of avoiding the real problem plus a general disregard for the sensitivity of such a profoundly precious gift have left your brain (to be honest) fried.
The brain knows itself better that you know it. When it tells you something is wrong, even profoundly wrong as in the case of depression
is generally a sign that your brain knows better than to trust the quick and easy route that life advertieses. Its litterally a life or death message that is squelched for a variety of reasons. This message, which was only in its infacy when you decided to abort it, was perhaps the last chance you had to thrive. And surely, the greatest lie (which deep down you always knew to be a lie) was some money craving drug company's notion that this message was an abnormality. Clearly it is "want" creating "want"
Your hippocampus is a messed up, and your prefrontal cortex is withered. The few 5-ht1a receptors that you had have been profoundly corkscrewed.It is kind of paradoxical that throughout all of this journey, your brain was really trying
to tell you something, and that all "you" really wanted was for it to not tell you anything.You always wanted the truth to be transformed into something simpler, something more "controllable". But in your search for controll you have lost all controll.
The greatest function of the *mind* is its ability to forgive itself BUT The greatest curse of the *brain* is its ability to excuse itself.
Linkadge
P.S. Sorry for being so temporal lobe.
poster:linkadge
thread:495012
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050504/msgs/495012.html