My drugged life: Ive been on

antidepressants since 10
My physician dad didn't want me to struggle like he did. Now I wonder: Can I ever
live without these pills?

(Cre
dit: 4Max, Smileus via Shutterstock/Salon)
SATURDAY, DEC 6, 2014

Its a Monday morning. Ive just locked the door to leave for work. Then I
think, is the coffeemaker turned off? I unlock the door, go back and check. And as I
head out the door again, I stop. I remember seeing that the little red light on the
coffeemaker was dark. That means its off. But I dont trust the evidence of my own
senses. Or perhaps I dont trust my own memory. And I go back and look at the
coffeemaker again. Its futile, really, because if I didnt trust my sight and memory 30
seconds ago, why should I trust them now?

Ive missed some doses. Not many, but enough to matter. I fell asleep reading one
night, simply forgot another night because I had an unexpected phone call. Those
lapses add up.
I know because OCD symptoms are the first problems to surface when Im not taking
enough medication. (Depression and OCD frequently occur together in adults and the
same medication is often used to treat both.)
I will resume taking my prescribed dose tonight, but it will take some time for the
meds to take effect. So there will be other alarm bells over the next few days: I will be
more easily irritated; loud noises will bother me much more intensely than usual.
But worrying about the coffeepot. Unsure if the front door is locked even though I saw
my hand turn the key. Those are the canaries in my pharmacological mineshaft.
So is having what doctors call psychomotor restlessness. Last week I was lying on my
couch falling asleep. At the same time, my right foot was twitching.
Theres a note on the bathroom mirror now: Pop your pills?
*
I was 10 when I first started taking them. My mother handed me a small prescription
bottle full of yellow, triangular tablets.
Your father wants you to take these, she said matter-of-factly. One just before bed.
Every night.
I didnt think anything of it. I was always taking something: for allergies, stomach
bugs, migraines. I could effortlessly recite the names of a dozen medications. I still
remember the name of this one: Triavil. Other men remember their first home run,
first touchdown, first date. I remember my first psychiatric medication. My father, a
physician, had informally prescribed me antidepressants. And Ive been taking them
ever since.
At this point, I cant imagine being functional without them.
To think too much about life on brain-altering drugs is to imagine oneself with the
chemical equivalent of a prosthesis that merges seamlessly with your body in unknown

places, to view the accumulation of moods, thoughts and physical states that make up
daily life, and wonder: Whats me? Whats the medication?

But to the few people who know my pharmaceutical history the more pressing question
is why I began taking such medications when I was so young. My father told me later
in my teensthat at the time I was exhibiting obvious symptoms of depression. I dont
doubt it: I was not a happy child. And I think I know the answeror answers.
My father was a member of the World War II generation. When he was a medical
student, there was little emphasis on psychology. An M.D. in those days came away
with an understanding of the human body as an interacting set of chemical equations.
If somethings wrong with a person, whether its cancer, the flu or depression, you
need to change one or more of the variables.
But why didnt my father talk to me? Why didnt he send me to a child psychologist?
I cant imagine talking to my father would have solved anything. My most vivid
memories of paternal conversation involve him approaching me on a significant
subject and saying exactly the wrong thing. When I was a National Merit Scholarship
Finalist in high school, his only words to me on the subject were, Competitions like
that are based on financial need, so you wont win anything. I think his intention was
to shield me from disappointment.
As for the option of a psychologist: I lived in an isolated rural area, two hours drive
from the nearest newsstand that sold a copy of the New York Times, which made easy
access to a capable therapist unlikely.
And finally, my father was of a generation that still viewed therapy, if they thought of it
at all, as a desperate resort. To send his own child to therapy would have been to him
an admission of utter failure as a parent, an admission that something was very wrong
in our familyand we werent that sort of family.
But the idea that whatever troubled me could be resolved by taking pills shifted my
depression (if thats what it was) from the nebulous world of mental illness, of personal
dysfunction, to the comparatively clear and defined world of physical illness. I could
take a pill for depression just like I would for a stuffy nose. Triavil: right on the shelf
next to childrens Tylenol and pediatric decongestants.
I dont doubt, as my father believed, that theres a strong genetic component to
depression; he himself suffered from it. I remember the sadness that took over his
face; the days when even as a child I knew not to approach him or speak to him; the
evenings when he went to the bedroom he shared with my mother right after dinner

and shut the door. I can imagine him looking at me, the one who of all their children
looked the most like him, and wondering if he had passed on to me his own sadness.
I also dont doubt that changes in my environment would have made a substantial
difference. Looking back on the child I was and where I was growing up, it makes
complete sense that I was depressed. I was living in a small Bible Belt town that even
then I hated. I had no real friends and I was bored in school. But the changes that
might have alleviated my depressionnew town, new schoolsimply werent going to
happen.
In reality, my father simply wasnt suited for dealing with many of the messy
complexities of humans. He couldnt understand why some of his patients kept
smoking after he told them they should stop. He thought the foothills of the
Appalachians would be an idyllic place to live and raise a family, but was horrified that
my older brother grew up to be a total redneckjust like his high school classmates.
Before my father decided to go to medical school, he studied chemistry and
mathematics. He loved the elegance he found in both, particularly chemistry: the
poetry in the patterns and groupings of the periodic tablethose elements that
variously combine in ways to produce everything in the universethe invisible
communion of electrons that could form the wetness of water or the symmetry of salt.
Furthermore, during his teens and twenties he witnessed an explosion of medical
triumphs. Polio, whooping cough, staph infectionspotential death sentences of his
childhood all rendered toothless by the time he began medical school. And the
proliferation of treatments for incurable diseases continued throughout his life. He
was not a religious man in any orthodox sense, but he felt himself surrounded by
miracles.
He loved chemistry, and he loved me. Surely, he must have thought, the endless
possibilities of one could fix the other.
But I dont know what, if anything, the Triavil fixed. Its difficult for me to chart my
pharmaceutical history, because I was so young. The switch to Elavil was probably
around seventh grade. By junior year of high school I am fairly sure I was on Desyrel
(one of the earliest of the family of antidepressants known as serotonin reuptake
inhibitors, the most famous of which is Prozac).
The changes from drug to drug suggest that none of them were working very well. Its
quite probable that the medication did nothing to me except induce side effects. Dry
mouth is the only side effect I remember experiencing frequently. I do remember days

when I couldnt go to school because I was too hung over from the previous nights
dose, but I cant remember if that was Triavil, or if we had moved on to Elavil at that
point.
At any rate, by the time I was 20, definitely by the time I turned 21, I had spent more of
my life on medication than off.
A close friend whom Ive always considered a natural candidate for antidepressants
(cancer, fraught relationship with family, multiple career disappointments) has serious
ontological issues with antidepressants: If I were in a good mood or more functional
because of pills, what would that mean? Where would the pills stop and I begin?
Would it really be me living this better life?
For me these philosophical questions have an extra dimension because I was so young
when this all began. If my friend started taking antidepressants now, she would be
doing so as an adult, making a somewhat informed decision. She would at least know
who that person was deciding to take the medication. I, on the other hand, began
taking medication intended to alter my personality before I became a person.
Four years ago I did go completely off my medication. Just to see. My rationale was:
Im better off now than Ive been at any earlier time in my life. I have a meaningful,
satisfying job. I have more self-confidence. Im emotionally healthier. So lets find out.
Whats it like being me, without chemical additives? And if youre wondering: yes, I did
this without medical supervision.
I slept a lot more. OCD symptoms (predictably) surfaced. My memory suffered: I
forgot to pay bills. At one point I actually forgot how much my rent was. I felt like I was
working with half a mind. A freelance writing assignment fell due during that time. I
had to pry each sentence out of myself. I re-read my work, sensing ideas and phrases
just beyond my grasp.
At some pointas always when Im really depressedthe mental home movies started.
An endlessly playing documentary of every mistake I had ever made or cruel thing I
had ever said. Widescreen edition of course. With critics comments. What were you
thinking? (well, you werent, obviously) You actually said that? Jesus. Do you think she
still remembers? And when she and her women friends are trading stories about
asshole guys, does she trot out that night at Columbia Street? Even the longest home
movie has to end. But my mind always managed to find the Bonus Features DVD at the
back of the box.
For the record, I usually made it to work on time.

After six weeks of this I went to see a nurse practitioner and came home with a bottle
of Celexa, which is now my primary antidepressant. My nurse later added a morning
dose of Wellbutrin to the mix, to blunt the side effects of the Celexa.
All I learned from my ill-judged experiment was that I need the medication now. I
dont know if I needed it then. And I dont know why I need it now. Do other peoples
brains just process certain signals, secrete certain chemicals naturally that keep them
okay? Could my brain do that at one time, but its just forgotten how because pills have
being doing all the work for the past 30 years?
I recently read a 2004 article from The Journal of Ethical Human Psychology and
Psychiatry, The Ethics and Science of Medicating Children, that suggests this might
be the case: There is evidence that the use of psychotropics makes long-term
changes in brain structure.
I know, both from my experiment in drug-free living and also from trying different
dosages recommended by doctors and nurses, some of the effects my current
medication has on me. In addition to making me less gloomy, I am calmer, less tense. I
am much less irritable. I monitor actions, events and my relative lack of reaction to
them. Its as if Im under the emotional equivalent of a local anesthetic. I still have
feelings, but there are certain emotions I feel less intensely. Or its as if I know the
feelings are there, but theyre on the other of a pane of glass so they cant touch me. If
my blood level werent just right, that confrontation at work with R. would really have
gotten to me. That driver who just cut me offhow angry would I be about that without
Celexa coursing through my bloodstream?
At times I am more or less untroubled by the fact that I chemically alter my
personality. People do it all the time, albeit in more mundane ways. If I eat a lunch
high in carbohydrates or fat, Im going to feel relaxed in the afternoon because my
blood levels of tryptophan will increase. Im feeling better than usual right now
because I went to the gym and my hypothalamus is producing polypeptides that induce
a feeling of well-being.
And at other times I ask myself, whos really at home?
I often get complimented on the way I conduct myself: stoicism in difficult
circumstances, composure with difficult people. And I wonder, who are they
complimentingme or my Celexa-Wellbutrin cocktail?
Would I be able to have my regular, dutiful, labored phone conversations with my
family without chemical assistance?
These are the sorts of questions that I confront daily.

Every morning when I shave I see a face thats a lot like my fathers: the sharp nose and
chin, the eyes that other people have called piercing. And theres another way he looks
back at me from the mirror: hes still affecting whats happening in my brain more
than two decades after his death.
If that evening when my mother showed me a handful of yellow pills had never
happened, I have no idea who would be looking back.
Will Barrett is the pseudonym of a writer living in Eastern Massachusetts.
Posted by Thavam