Comments

19 responses to “depression comix #6”

1. 

   Stephany Cuellar

   August 30, 2013

   this scares me….its why i don’t like taking anything….I don’t want to live in static

   Reply
   1. 

      Emma Rayward (@afinedeadsound)

      September 11, 2013

      Don’t take this as a blanket experience for medication. It can be a challenging thing to get right, and you have to make sure you’re informed, but they can be incredibly helpful in managing day to day symptoms. In my personal experience, meds have never made me feel like what is described.

      Reply
      1. 

         clay

         September 12, 2013

         http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/psychiatry-prozac-ssri-mental-health-theory-discredited.html

         The reason they are a challenging thing to get right is because the drugs are poorly understood — what they do, why they appear to solve specific problems, and what the long term consequences of using them are. They should only be used if it is the only way to make life manageable, and treated with utmost caution.

         Reply
   2. 

      katrikah

      August 31, 2014

      It’s really not a blanket experience. The thing about medication and depression is that everyone’s brain chemistry is a little bit different, so doctors might need to try several things before they hit upon something that works for you. It’s entirely possible that the first few tries will be things that make you feel staticky, or that even you out too much so you can’t feel lows, but also can’t feel highs, or even things that improve your energy and motivation without improving your mood, which is an intensely dangerous combination!

      However, that’s not how those things are /supposed/ to work. My current medication regimen boosts my energy and mood enough that I can start coping with my depression. It doesn’t make it go away entirely, and some days are worse than others, but I can get things done, enjoy talking with other people, and have enough willpower to do things I enjoy as a form of self-care. It’s not perfect, but it makes a huge difference.

      It’s totally understandable to be scared of getting medicated, but something to keep in mind is that depression really is an illness with physical roots. Yes, it’s a mental illness, but the brain is physical and part of the body. It really isn’t something you can fix all by yourself, and while therapy helps for some people, finding the right medication can also be an essential part of treatment.

      Reply
2. 

   George

   September 25, 2013

   I don’t like taking meds because they make me feel fake. like the mask he is wearing.

   Reply
3. 

   thatryanguy

   December 9, 2013

   I feel quite normal with the meds I’m on, personally. The same thought-patterns that normally would have led me into a spiral of depression still pop up, but rather than being all-consuming and impossible to ignore, they help me just brush those thoughts aside and carry on with my day.

   Reply
4. 

   XtinaS

   December 19, 2013

   What a bucket of not-me this is. Like the real me is depressed, and somehow only the fake me can, say, get work done.

   Reply
5. 

   Lanika (@lanika)

   January 9, 2014

   This is interesting. Some of the older meds like Prozac made me feel this way: I was still very depressed but I couldn’t touch the depression. They put a glass wall between me and my (bad) feelings. I could function but it sucked and the sensation was scary.

   The meds that worked for me (and still do) are the ones that make me feel my normal average non depressed self (that I took years to recognize under layers of accumulated entire life depression). I *can* feel sadness, even despair at despairing situations, the meds just don’t let these situations devolve into a depression crisis. I have to fight the depression, of course, every day of my life, but they help me in the fight. Finding *this* kind of medication took years of taking a lot of the wrong ones.

   I think I’m lucky because I finally found something that works, but still live in fear of what will be when it doesn’t work anymore (10 years in, unfortunately I’m taking double what worked at the start. Why do we have to build tolerance for medication? *sigh*)

   Reply
6. 

   Yana

   January 9, 2014

   Well, meds were (and still are) a life saver for me. Anxiety is gone (weirdly, nothing even can “make me jump” anymore), social anxiety non-existent, my mind is quieter and “flatter” in a way which is a good thing for me. Criticism or nasty remarks – they really don’t bother me anymore. I don’t think my emotional response spectrum is as it should be, but I’d rather be like this than go back to depression… I can’t compare meds to group therapy (which I believe would have been very beneficial for me) because I had no access to it, sadly.

   I managed to rebuild my life and escape from a bad relationship. Pre-meds, I was almost unable to make my daughter scrambled eggs for breakfast, I slept 2-3 hours a night 🙁 AND everything was going downhill pretty fast with anxiety forcing me to bite my own fingers around 4am every morning.
   Antidepressants can truly take the edge of things and then build up some stability and silence inside – that’s just a starting point on a way to recovery, but it may be the most important. First 4 weeks on them can be like a ride to hell though :/

   Reply
7. 

   Aviel

   February 2, 2014

   If that’s how you feel on medication, talk to your doctor and hopefully you can get better medication. My anti-depressents never made me feel like that. They just prevented depression from getting really bad.

   Reply
8. 

   llirium

   February 4, 2014

   I gradually stopped SSRIs, soon as I realized they weren’t doing anything good for me. At first, yes, they were a respite from all the inner turmoil. But, then, I noticed my memory was practically non-existent for the years when I was on them.

   There’s just one thing I still don’t understand, how does medication help (especially in therapy) if it brings you further out of touch with the feelings that brought you down in the first place?

   Reply
   1. 

      katrikah

      August 31, 2014

      Because that’s not what the ideal outcome of taking medication is! Muting your feelings when they’re already muted because of depression is only ‘helpful’ if it’s a life or death situation, and even that’s only a stopgap measure, not a solution, I agree. But ideally you should be able to find a medication that keeps you from slipping into a full-on depressive spiral while giving you the energy to cope with day to day symptoms. Not a mask, but a safety line.

      The reason people can have such bad reactions to antidepressants basically comes down to the chemistry of depression not being very well understood yet, and the fact that not everyone’s brain has the exact same quirks of brain chemistry causing depression. Basically, all doctors can do these days is keep throwing medications at your brain to try to find something that works.

      It really sucks, and unfortunately the result is that being medicated is not always better than not being medicated. I’ve heard part of the reason that new antidepressants can lead to suicide attempts is that sometimes they can improve your energy and motivation without improving your mood, which is… a really bad combination.

      Reply
9. 6 | depression comix | Memoirs of Melancholia

   February 13, 2014

   […] 6 | depression comix. […]

   Reply
10. 

    Casey Steinmetz

    February 16, 2014

    When I was put on Zoloft it actually made me much worse. It made me suicidal and wanting to cut again. I even wrote a note and gave it to a friend, I guess an acquaintance now, I was put on a bit of a suicide watch for a while, then I was told to stop my medications. My head became much clearer withing 2 months. I didn’t like it, still don’t, sometimes everything gets to much and I just want to scream, to cut, to do something to mute it all, but the new anti-depressants keep me from getting too low, and they help with my pain. So I guess things are getting better. I’m just sad I lost a friend because of it all.

    Reply
11. 46 | asyraf-i

    October 27, 2015

    […] http://www.depressioncomix.com/posts/006/ […]

    Reply
12. 

    Fenris Kitsune

    June 12, 2018

    I don’t take meds for this..I have really negative feelings about them. Once I was told by someone “we need to fix how you are” and that just kinda ruined the idea of taking meds, as well as the idea where I’m taking drugs to change how I fucking think. That seems a bit fucked to me.

    Reply
13. 

    Indrajeet

    February 23, 2021

    Man idont have depression but I can feel pain in this image

    Reply
14. 

    Sekio Hunter (@SekioHunter)

    March 29, 2022

    That’s kinda how i felt when i would take meds but i ended up sleeping 22 hours a day….

    Reply
15. 

    Surenity

    February 18, 2023

    I stopped taking my meds in September because I slipped into a deep, dark depression even with them. This was about when a chiropractor ruined my spine. Stayed off them for several months despite being deeply depressed, wanting to face reality instead of run from it, until January where a certain event led me to become deeply suicidal. From there, the pills were pretty much my only alternative. I might stay on them at least until summer. I am pretty sure I have seasonal affective disorder.

    Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.