Anti-depressants are depressing me
The other day I read of a scientific study that has discovered that drugs such as Ritalin do not, in fact, have any long-term effect on children’s behavior, and could actually be causing them developmental harm. The companies churning out “cures for childhood” to the tune of millions of dollars have made these drugs omnipresent in schools, with parents shopping for doctors who will write a scrip to fix what (in most cases) is the result of a lack of good parenting, and teachers, who have no business prescribing medicine, suggesting the parents do so. I taught for many years, and heard many teachers suggest to parents that they should medicate their kids for behavioral issues. I was appalled; I still am.
It seems, though, that the kids are not the only ones suffering from the pervasive drug culture. The push for antidepressants for adults mirrors the same kind of problem. Half the people I know, people who are not actively grieving, are on anti-depressants, though they don’t seem any happier or able to cope than those who are not. A disease that affects half the population is not a disease at all; it is an alarm that something is very, very wrong, and we’d better start with checking the water, and broaden the inquiry to determine at what point we decided that we could only survive life with emotional dampers firmly in place. Maybe that seems an extreme statement, but everywhere I go in the grief-support world, everybody and their uncle is recommending people get on antidepressants, most of them folks without an M.D. after their name.
It pisses me off, frankly. It is clueless and dangerous and misguided and not a little presumptuous to suggest to people that an antidepressant is going to fix the gaping hole in their soul caused by losing their loved one. While grief and depression may be concurrent or sequential, they are not the same things. They just aren’t. An antidepressant is not going to cure your grief anymore than insulin will cure your diabetes; the condition remains regardless of any ameliorating effect of medication. Grief will wait, decades if necessary, but it will wait. The only way through it is to actually go through it. There is no easy way. There really isn’t. It’s going to be sad and it’s going to hurt a lot and it’s going to take its time and that’s just the way of it. The grieving IS the healing, not an obstacle to the healing.
What people don’t seem to realize when they suggest to their grieving friends and family members after a few months that perhaps they need chemical help is that they are rushing them as surely and as insensitively as if they were asking, “So, you should be ready to date by now, right?” or saying “You need to get over it.” It is about their timetable, their expectations, their needs, not yours. What they’re saying with their medical opinions is, “It is too painful for me to watch you go through this, so for god’s sake, could you please take a pill and get better so you can relieve MY suffering?”
For non-medical personnel to be suggesting drugs is ALWAYS questionable. And yet I am stunned at how commonly the suggestion is bandied about. If my neighbor would not suggest I look into taking lithium, why are antidepressants fair game, to be recommended by all and sundry as a panacea to the perils of modern life and personal tragedy? Because they are constantly advertised on TV? It frightens me that as a society we feel so conversant about something we know so little about. I don’t even assume someone I know can take an ibuprofen, let alone prescription drugs. But one of the major things you learn as a result of bereavement is that everyone thinks they know better than you do what’s right for you.
A dear friend of mine decided to stage a one-woman tough-love intervention a mere month after A died. And this is a woman who has known loss, although not the same kind as mine. She basically chewed me out, told me to get it together, that I was not allowed to die of a broken heart, and that I had to get better, NOW, oh, and that A was “frantic” seeing me like this (as if she knew?) and I probably needed professional help. My own opinion is that any such suggestion to a person within the first year of grief is completely premature and absolutely out of line. But I got a month. One lousy month. I didn’t speak to her the next day. I hardly knew what I’d say. Her using my dead beloved’s imagined emotional state in an attempt to guilt me into wellness infuriated me, both in its awfulness and its absolute futility. I told her that if he didn’t want me sad, he should’ve damn well stayed here, and that he lost his vote when he left. I’d been shaken, and hurt, and baffled as to where all that came from, and when she asked if I was upset with her, I told her so. She apologized, and said she felt she had to do it because she was scared for me. It was about her, not about me, or the current reality; at one month, I thought I was doing as well as could be expected, all things considered. Sure, I could barely fake a smile and I was a zombie at work every day, but I was a bathed and dressed zombie, at work every day. Seemed like a triumph of will to me. I expected better from her; but I have seen that those who have known grief intimately are as likely to start prescribing as anyone else.
It seems sadness is banned these days, and I don’t know how that happened. Are we not allowed to have an authentic emotional response to a difficult and painful reality? Somehow, we’ve got it into our collective head that happiness is the default human condition, and if you’re not happy, then there is something wrong with you. We judge ourselves by the same unrealistic standard: If I can’t find my way to instant happiness in any situation, I must be sick. I must be abnormal. I must be doing it wrong; clearly, everybody else must be doing it better than I.
Bullshit.
If “happy” were really the default, why are there so many unhappy people in the world? Are we ALL abnormal? Or is the standard, bizarrely unquestioned as it is, what is abnormal? You know what I think; but most people think it’s us who need to be fixed, and while my drug of choice is always chocolate, plenty of folks think something stronger is called for.
People who would be appalled if someone suggested that you drink or smoke dope to take the edge off of your grief seem to have no trouble recommending a person look into getting on serious psychotropic drugs to do the same. It boggles the mind. No one says, “Have you tried a couple of shots of whiskey twice daily to steady your nerves?” But they frequently say, “Have you talked to your doctor about antidepressants? I hate to see you so sad.” As if, because it comes ordered on a doctor’s prescription pad, it’s perfectly safe and free of potential side effects.
Am I sad? Of course. Are some days really hard? You bet. Has his death changed me? Without question. I lost my beloved and I miss him terribly; I would not expect otherwise. But people can keep their medicines. I am not sick; I’m grieving.
We have become a society that wants happy pills. Kid can’t behave? Drug ‘em. Have a bad day? Drug yourself. And if we’re already drugging ourselves on just bad days, what is left when our worlds literally come apart at the seams, and we sit dazed in the rubble? More drugs, even as we declare “war” on the potheads as degenerate junkies, when in reality they are only trying to do the same thing—bring a little mellowness to a life that is often harsh, and sometimes devastating. The irony in this case is only bitterly amusing. It is out of control, and what’s more, it isn’t doing any good. Half the people I know are on antidepressants, and they don’t seem any less depressed than anyone else I know. Everyone I know who has taken them for grief has been anxious to get off them. And yet, their well-meaning friends and relatives suggest that if only they would take a few pills, things would be so much better. That doesn’t even make logical sense. No matter how many pills I take, it won’t bring A back. It won’t fill my empty hours or my empty arms. The only way that happens is if I take enough of them that I join him wherever he is, and I can guarantee he would be unimpressed by my early arrival at my own hand.
This is not to say that drugs have not helped people; of course they have. Psychotropic drugs unquestionably have saved lives. But when EVERYBODY is on drugs just to get through their time in this planet, I really think we have to wonder why, and we have to wonder if it’s right. I cannot believe it is.