Mental Wellbeing - Do Antidepressants work?
Mental Wellbeing - Do Antidepressants work?
Taking antidepressants is a big step, they are a powerful pharmaceutical medicine. So it is really important to make a considered decision on whether antidepressants will work for you. This is my story, where I share my insights and recommendations for natural alternatives to antidepressants.
Lost my confidence in my GP
This week I stopped my intake of antidepressants, sort of in the correct way… just a slightly speeded up version and without the advice of my GP – in whom I’ve lost what confidence I did have over the past 5 years. Given my accumulated negative or short sighted experiences with the western medical profession, I prefer to rely on my own health wisdom and medical intuitive abilities.
Don’t want to be a pill head
Taking the view that I shouldn’t need antidepressants now I’ve calmed my bi-monthly ovarian hissy fit and started Hormone Replacement Therapy. And besides, the combination of both of these medications plus my monthly hormonal stomach injections is turning me into a fatty bumbum. This is detrimental to my mental wellbeing. Plus, I don’t relish feeling like a mid-life junkie!
Acceptable crying
Stopping my antidepressants has created an unexpected tidal wave of unspent grief, which has cascaded down upon me in full technicolour. This is the grief caused by both my remaining grandparents shifting from their mortal coils during my stint on antidepressants. Weirdly, I’m in a sort of calm, clear, surprisingly don’t give a fuck space about my torrentential tears – perhaps courtesy of my menopause’? If this is the menopausal silver lining, I’m liking it!
Open grief
Having spent a lifetime sucking up my sadness, embarrassed by my vulnerability, (often to my cost), this is a new state of affairs to find myself – okay with open grief. Freely crying when I need too.
Plastic wrapped heart
This has given me proof of how much plastic coating antidepressants wrapped around my heart. I’m not sure that’s a worthwhile price to pay for taking a ride on their gentle but steady Ferris wheel. It appears that grief needs an out, however much you maybe living, ‘okay with it’, antidepressants just numb and suspend it.
Everyone’s on antidepressants
I have to say, it freaks me out when I see news articles discussing how many women are now taking antidepressants. Not only does it makes me feel far too ‘Stepford wives’ for my own comfort, it’s a serious sign that this world is not okay.
What is this mass need for cellophane wrapped emotions?
Why is no one asking what is wrong and missing in our daily lives to warrant such mass consumption of ‘happy pills’? Which really should be renamed, ‘give very little fuck’ pills, you do get to keep some element of emotions but nothing too high or too low, all a bit cellophane wrapped…
Life survival candy
Don’t get me wrong, for some not taking antidepressants is not an option. They have a very real need for antidepressants to smooth unmanageable, spiking highs and lows. For prolonged depression effects the mind, body and spirit and you reach the point where return is impossible unless jump started with medication.
Modern life catchall
But for far too many people, antidepressants are handed out like candy, as a catchall for suppressing the challenges of surviving modern life. There is very little monitoring and lackadaisical time frames.
Taking antidepressants safely
You need to take antidepressants for six months for them to be able to do their job, seems an incredibly long time, and for no longer than two years. During this time, you need to establish what is causing your depression, insomnia, mental collapse and treat that.
Antidepressants put difficult emotions on pause
Antidepressants are like an emotional pause button…Sorry, no I’m not going to able to cope with processing that right now… give me a few months to recover. They are certainly not for putting things off forever, which continual taking can do. I liken taking antidepressants to putting a floor in to the bottom of the well, stopping you fall further and giving you something to climb up onto whilst you recover enough to climb up and out again.
Side effect from stopping antidepressants
My stopping taking antidepressants brings on an annoying side effect, the return of the aggravating relationship between my tear ducts and my bladder. Antidepressants put an impressive embargo on their usual irritating communication, so now every time I cry I leak like a colander of piss.
Time for antidepressants to leave the body
According to my local pharmacist, whom I do trust and regularly consult, it will take me about two weeks to clear these antidepressants from my system. So, I’m facing at least another week of uncensored grief and the complimentary sensation of skinned nerve endings. Every time I’ve stopped antidepressants, I get a couple of weeks with regular mini electrical shocks in my brain. I imagine this is either the reawakening neural synapses or maybe them misfiring. It’s not very pleasant and always scares me a little.
Thin prize of “craziness”
My husband says he is enjoying my return to full throttle behaviour, finding my slightly irrational outbursts amusing, so far. We both know what he’s really hoping for is that I stop being a fatty bumbum and return to svelte – a place I haven’t been in for the last five years. And a bit of craziness is the price he’s prepared to pay for that.
Final word
Taking antidepressants is a big step, one you should not take lightly, no matter how easily you’ve been handed them. I hope this blog has shed some light on where taking antidepressants can help and how to use them safely.
If you are not currently at the bottom of the well, collapsed in mind, body and soul, then there are lots of natural ways to support your return to or achievement of mental wellbeing.
There is lots of medical research available on the restorative impact of Vitamin B on mental health. For this you need managed mega vitamin dosing therapy.
There are lots of essential oils that have a very transformative effect on depression and mental wellbeing. These are very safe and easy to use.
And of course, there are herbs that can help you to harmonise your mental wellbeing.
The important take home is that you need to establish the cause of your depression.
Next steps
If you’d like to try natural ways to manage and improve your mental wellbeing, as in natural antidepressants, book yourself in for a Bespoke Wellbeing Consultation and let me make you well.
Bespoke Wellbeing Consultations