It’s this whole notion of recovery. The ‘No more down days, No more pills’ recovery. Rarely in articles and interviews about mental illness is medication mentioned. In many ways, medication remains one of the most stigmatised aspects surrounding mental illness.
More often than not this is to do with misunderstandings around the anti-depressant industry.
Recurring questions include; How many anti-depressants are in circulation? Do doctors just prescribe rather than treat mental illness?
Then there’s also a holistic approach favoured by the media. You see it all the time that you probably don’t even notice how one sided it is. ‘Running for sanity.’ ‘Eat your mind better.’ ‘Cure mental illness with mindfulness.’ ‘How Yoga changed my life.’
Recovery is portrayed as ditching the medication in favour of lifestyle changes. And recovery is often defined as the point in which you ditch the pills.
But that’s not my story. I don’t believe that recovery is consigned to those who are medication free.
Often, they go hand in hand. For me, medication was the foundation that allowed me to begin building my recovery.
I’m sick of hearing about recovery from an anti-medication perspective. Why can’t they go hand-in-hand? They have for me.
Since April 2011 I’ve been taking anti-depressants. I was first prescribed them while visiting my college GP. The visit lasted half an hour and included a second opinion. I was sent for an immediate emergency counselling session and a psychiatrist’s appointment the following week. A few months later, my dosage was upped and I was taking two types of medication.
A couple of months later, it decreased slightly. It hasn’t changed since then. For over four years I’ve been taking the same medication daily and my experience has been largely positive.
Yes, there are side-effects for me such as drowsiness, dry mouth, appetite stimulant and dilated pupils.
But anti-depressants provide a balance for me; they place me back on the equilibrium. Rather than being constantly down, I am in a neutral state and react to sad things by feeling down, and react to positive things by feeling happy. Before my tablets I could have been told I had won the Lotto or that my grandmother had died and my feelings would have been the same; I would have remained numb and yet miserable.
I don’t get lost in the thoughts and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness since I’ve been taking my tablets. They clear the fog; it’s up to me then to navigate the way ahead.
And when on that equilibrium, steps towards recovery can finally be made.
But it hasn’t always been plain sailing. I wanted a quick-fix for my depression after I was first diagnosed. But quick-fixes, be it lifestyle changes or medication, aren’t the reality when treating any illness. Without an immediate effect I decided to quit my medication just six months after I’d started. I felt that they weren’t making a difference. I didn’t feel suicidal anymore, but I put that victory down as a personal one rather than a pharmaceutical one.
I just stopped taking them one day and waited to see what would happen. It was hell. I fell right back to the darkness I’d thought was behind me. The suicidal ideation returned, and my self-harming took on a more aggressive streak.
I never want to go back to that place again, and so ceasing my medication has never come up between me and my GP despite the passage of time.
For me, recovery is a balance of positive life changes and medication. Everything from exercise to CBT to mindfulness has been tried, practiced and, more often than not, later abandoned. And in five years I have come a long way. Yet none of it would have been possible without first being on medication.
Please don’t judge those on medication, those on medication for a long time, or those will always be on medication. It is nothing to be ashamed of. For many of us, it’s a natural part of the healing process. And for some of us, it’s a support that allows life to continue.