Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 February 2006 22:14:09
Seriously hoping to sleep in until alarm goes off tomorrow, so posting this now. (So is actually tomorrows snapshot). This is, I think, the final rant before I move onto something more positive. It's another dark snap shot which is somewhat blurred and most of the detail is missing.
This snapshot relates to the late 90's / turn of the millenium. The causes have been alluded to in previous snapshots, but here the picture relates to the effects or one effect in particular - depression and anti-depressants. Before I start I want to stress that I value the medical profession and think anti-depressants are important medication, which when prescribed appropriately and honestly described by drug companies are highly useful. Also what I am about to say purely repesents my personal opinion and experience and nothing else (think I have covered my back enough that no one is about to get sued ).
Anyway this period of my life is a pretty lost time in many ways. I could try and pass the blame onto circumstances and those who contributed to those circumstances or go down the road of saying I chose to be a victim, but the truth was neither, I was ill (plain and simple) with depression. So I was perscribed, as so were many of my generation, the second wave of anti-depressants. I wasn't part of the Prozac nation, they put me on the one that I think, from what I can work out, was number 2 on the list.
This generation of drugs, according to the manufacturers, were non-addictive. As far as I am aware they still make this claim. I disagree and in our quest to discover the ways modern women are/ have been oppressed and the issues contempory feminism should be addressing I would argue that we should hold the drug companies to account for misinformation.
I took this particular medication for almost five years, and was able to come off effectively after basically working out my own withdrawl programme - in consultation with my doctor. Earlier in the process though when I had moved and not sorted out a new doctor I had the bright idea of just not taking them when I ran out, after all I was sane again. That day is one I will remember for the physical effects of extreme nausia and slight shaking (a problem I had not experienced before or since). Later when I recounted this to somebody they explained this was what addicts experience when they seek to go through cold turkey - yet still we are told these anti-depressants are non-addictive.
This makes me particularly angry as, from what I have read, the whole point of this second wave of anti-depressants was they were meant to have learnt from the mistakes of the first type and have been designed to ensure that another generation did not become addicts, struggling to come off the happy pills.
Again I was lucky because I benefitted from having some wonderful supportive people around me who encouraged me to rebuild my world,and recover from my depression but what about those who didn't / who don't understand the power of these supposed wonder drugs - what have we done / are we doing to them?