Pills

And here I thought my anger at pharmeceutical companies couldn't get any worse.

I feel incredibly lucky that years ago, when I went through a 2-year bout of severe depression, it wasn't fashionable to dump pills on the problem. My therapist held out pills as the stick, not the carrot -- as in, "if you don't improve, I will put you on anti-depressants". It was a powerful motivator to deal with my problems through talk therapy. I think the current trend towards prescribing medication so easily and quickly means that many people never get to the root cause of their depression and learn to fix with it. Any coping skills I have I learned in that time of my life, would I have tackled the hard issues if I was medicated? I don't think I would.

I know dozens of people on Prozac, literally dozens. It's a shortcut panacea. We have pathologized pain to the point that no one wants to deal with having any, but nothing good in life comes without a little pain. The hardest thing is watching people struggle with these medications instead of the real issues causing their depression. B. wanted off the pills, and struggled with finding a balance between a level of pain he could tolerate and the level of medication he could handle, for as long as I knew him. Would the outcome have been different if he had been encouraged to feel his emotions and struggle through unencumbered by mood-altering substances? I wonder.