I am not a doctor. I cannot prescribe drugs. But what I can do is describe my individual and very personal relationship with medication – my initial hesitancy to take it, my fear of becoming dependent on it, and why for me, it was a crucial part of my recovery.
I’ve taken one pill every morning for 18 years. It used to be a contraceptive pill, it’s now an anti-anxiety pill.
The cultural credibility of these pills is dramatically different. My teenage contraceptive pill taking came with matter-of-fact street-cred. It was a celebration of sexuality and freedom. As teenage girls we may have felt ashamed of our periods and would hide tampons up our sleeves to go to the loo, but we could openly compare which contraceptive pill we were taking, accompany each other on visits to the clinic, or borrow them openly from one other when we’d forgotten.
Antidepressants don’t carry the same cultural currency. The fact we might take or have taken antidepressants in the past is often hidden from even our closest friends – a guilty secret.
“The fact we might take or have taken antidepressants in the past is often hidden from even our closest friends – a guilty secret.”
Did I want to take medication when it was first offered to me? No.
What if someone was to find out? Would it make me unemployable? Am I a failure? Are people going to think I’m weak? What if they don’t help and I don’t get better? Will they change my personality? Will they make me numb? Will I have to take medication for the rest of my life? What about the side effects?
When I was first unwell, I started small with a GP prescribed antidepressant, but it didn’t touch the sides. As I got sicker, my psychiatrist ramped things up. At the height of my illness, I was scoffing handfuls of colourful pills twice a day, sometimes with a lunchtime top up. Now five years later, I still take a daily maintenance dose of the initially-too-weak-to-help, antidepressant. The circle of (pill) life.
Five years on, I look at my daily pill so very differently.
I liken my pill taking to my husband’s need for antihistamine. For a few months every summer he takes tablets and snorts nose spray like his life depends on it. Because it does. Without it he is uncomfortable, blocked up, and wheezy. He isn’t the only one. When the pollen count surges in early summer, my WhatsApp groups flare up at the same rate as my friends’ eyes. Sympathetic messages, pollen counts, and medication recommendations fly backwards and forwards. Shit gets real for many people in pollen season. They need something to take the edge off.
The same is true for me and my brain.
I’ve always been a thinker and an analyser. As a strategist I’ve made a career in it. What is a helpful skill for my creative satisfaction and bank balance isn’t always conducive to making life decisions and controlling rushing thoughts at night.
Dr Sanah Ahsan’s article for the Guardian highlights how we need to rethink mental health. Rather than locating the problem inside the person, we should look at the politics of their distress. She uses a clear metaphor of a plant. If it were wilting, we wouldn’t diagnose it with “wilting-plant-syndrome” – we would change its conditions.
I was critically unwell when my life was most uncertain. Figures published by NHS Business Services Authority (BSA) show an increase in the number of people prescribed antidepressants from 7.87 million people in 2020/2021 to 8.32 million people in 2021/2022.
The year-on-year increase of these figures is hardly surprising when you consider we have lived through a global pandemic and are now having to manage dramatic increases in the cost of living, the climate is in crisis and there have been relentless outbreaks of war and social unrest across the world. Added to this, the communication revolution means we hear about the very worst global news within minutes of it happening.
“We need to start looking seriously at the environments that cause our anguish.”
Recent research concluded that depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance of the brain, as has long been assumed. This age-old focus on the person as the problem has caused increased stigma and disempowerment. We need to start looking seriously at the environments that cause our anguish.
When the world gets more pollen, more people take antihistamine. When the world gets scarier, more people take antidepressants.
“Rather than surviving, I am now able to live.”
I’m glad I took medication back in 2017, it saved my life. My maintenance dose now means I don’t have to be anxious all the time, and if circumstances change, my psychiatrist can dial them up and or down more easily. Rather than surviving, I’m now able to live.
If you’d be happy to share your thoughts or experiences of medication, please do so in the comments.
As a GP and decade long medication user, I was looking forward to this newsletter.
Medication is often essential for so many people who are experiencing prolonged difficulty. What I always say to people is that it is not a ‘happy pill’- it alone will not make you better. However it, along with all of your coping strategies to help your mental health, the foundations of good health, will. As this newsletter has always been such an advocate for, foundations of health include exercise, socialising, moderation and doing things that make you happy.
Medication is a stepping stone, it is the step up that allows you to be able to carry out those foundations of health. Sometimes they are needed as that step is too big and if so, never feel shame in recognising it.