When Your Neurotransmitters Are Flawed, Store Bought Are Fine

I recently chose to go on antidepressants for the first time since I was 17. I fought long and hard to avoid going back on them, but I forgot one major thing during that fight. That medication to help your mental health isn’t a mark of failure. Let me repeat that for those in the back…Medication to help your mental health isn’t a mark of failure. Psychiatric medication is nothing but a tool that is sometimes needed for some people.

Image from: lkab/istock/Getty Images Plus

There’s No Magic Happy Pill

Anyone who has been on them already knows this. But no anti-depressant or anti-anxiety or personal cocktail of psychiatric meds are going to fix everything. You don’t go on them and all of a sudden everything in your head is better. So what do they do? There’s a lot of science involved and I’ll add some links at the bottom if you’re really interested in the geek part. But for the average Joe, clinical depression and anxiety disorders are caused by your neurons not firing right, producing the right chemicals, or reabsorbing the chemicals they already shot out. Now, that’s HUGELY over simplified, but that’s the reason that you can’t just think your way out. It quite literally is like trying to think away an itch from poison ivy or the pain from a burn. There are things to help soothe, but just hoping if you believe hard enough it’ll go away…isn’t one of them. Have you ever tried to ignore an itch that was so strong it was mind numbing? How did that work out for you?

So just like an anti-histimine can get your body to stop producing the things that are causing the itch to be so bad, psychiatric medication can get your neurotransmitters and your neurons to behave in a way that’s more conducive to functional cognitive thought. It’s all still YOUR head though. It doesn’t change the core of your being or make all the things that concern you go away. It doesn’t make you super social or happy. What it does do, is help your brain process the information you already have in more productive ways. They help. That’s it, ta-da, the end.

There’s No One-Size-Fits-All

Okay, so this can be the part that sucks. Everyone works different and as much as we’ve come lightyears in understanding how the brain works…there’s a lot we still don’t quite understand. That’s part of the reason we have so many different types of medication out there. So there is totally a trial and error period where you try and find the medication that works for you. It’s not a bad doctor if you get put on a pill that doesn’t agree with you, or that all psychiatric medicines are terrible. My first was Paxil and that played absolute hell with my system. I couldn’t produce artwork, which is my passion, I had no verbal filters for what was going on in my head, apathy was through the roof (I know, odd choice of wording there), I gained weight. It was terrible. But I’ve had friends that do wonders on it and that’s fantastic! Right now we’re trying out Lexapro and it seems to be working so far, but knowing that it might change in the future will keep me from being shocked and depressed when the subject comes up.

The Before and After

So, what’s it like? If it doesn’t make everything all better…why take it? How does it make that much of a difference? For an example, as I told my doctor when I first went in, thinking about what I needed was like my head was full of static…but…more than that. It was like there was a snow storm in my brain that had weight like a beaded curtains of tiny beads. Enough weight you had to push through it, but not so much it was easy to see where you were headed when you did.

“Ah,”he said, “that’s your neurotransmitters going into overdrive.”

Yeah…I know. That’s why I’m here. I’ve tried meditation, diet, I can’t exercise much because of the hEDS, herbal supplements, so I no longer trust my own judgement as to what I need. I know it’s bad, I know I need help, and you’ve been through enough of the zebra things that I trust your judgement till I can get my own head working enough again.

As of right now, I’ve only been on them a week. Which although Lexapro is a relatively fast acting medication, is still early in the trial and error phase. Already, the static is clear enough that I can think and plan better. I’m not as caught up in an illogical, emotional whirlwind every time I interact with people…no matter how positive the interaction. I am more able to employ all the coping skills that I’ve learned over the years of dealing with these illnesses than I was just a few months ago. I’m able to recognize just how far down the rabbit hole I fell and make steps to come out of it. It gives me to tools to be able to work with what I have, to get things done. I was able to do some basic artwork for the first time in a year for the sheer enjoyment of doing it.

All of that…is more important than anything in the world to me.

An opportunity to feel like a real person and not a husk stuck in an invisible snow storm.

And if it means that I have to buy my neurotransmitters rather than rely solely on my own brain? I’m fine with that.