I've found that the idea that depression and anxiety medications don't change who you are is a bit of a half truth. Sure, if you get put on the right ones, they tell you they won't. Heck, Web MD even subscribes to this notion - and if it's on the internet, it *HAS* to be true. But I can personally attest to the fact that the road to the right medication(s) can be an exceptionally long one. And when you're not on the right meds, they can absolutely change your personality. It's scary, really. Over the past few years, depression and anxiety medications have made me extremely suicidal, ragey, stabby, aloof, numb, hateful, pessimistic, rebellious, needy - in pretty much every combination - and I'd like to think I'm not any of these things. If you met me in the last few years and I was a raging bitch, I'm going to have to go ahead and blame my psychiatrist for that.
Sometimes I honestly feel like I don't even know who I am anymore. Most times, actually. I've been through so many trials of medications and combinations of medications - depression meds, anxiety meds, PTSD meds - a little bit of everything. If I weren't already a little mad, the medication roller coaster would have certainly gotten me there. I honestly can't even remember all of the meds I've tried. It's kind of embarrassing, though I do feel like I deserve dive bragging rights for the impressive ability of my body to say "fuck you - I do what I want" to such a large number of medications in such dramatic fashion. Apparently I'm a bit of a special snowflake that way. Some people have brilliant minds, others are gifted with amazing creativity. My super power? Treatment resistant depression! Woohoo! It's the gift that keeps on giving!
Somewhere amidst all of the failed drugs ("holy crap, that's enough Xanax to render a normal adult catatonic!") and ups and downs of adjusting and weaning (all of the joys of feeling like you have the flu without the legitimate claim to actual sickness), I lost myself. They say that the right medications help uncover the real you. What they don't tell you is that if you have to go through ten or twenty medications to get to the right medication, you very well might not even recognize the real you when you get there. Your brain may have been stretched and zapped and redirected a few too many times to even recognize the person you once were.
I tried weaning from all of my psych medications once, just to try to remember what things were like without any "extras." I couldn't tell whether any of the depression meds were working because the constant barrage of assorted medications had me pretty much all over the place. I remember talking to my psychiatrist about wanting to go off my meds for a while. She laughed in my face. "Going off your meds isn't going to make your depression better." No shit, Sherlock. I tried to explain to her that I just wanted to make sure there was still a person in there, even if it was a just a sad, depressed person. More laughter. Awesome. It takes a pretty badass person to get laughed out of a psychiatrist's office. It's okay to be jealous. I mean, not everyone can achieve that level of humiliation so handily. It's a gift that I'm happy to share with the world.
Don't get me wrong, anxiety and depression medications are great. They're a wonderful tool in the fight against mental illness, and it's a shame there still such a stigma surrounding them and the field of psychiatry in general (it's why it took me nearly completely self-destructing to get help). That being said, sometimes these medications can be an identity crisis in a bottle, and in my experience, doctors do very little to prepare patients for that possibility - and that, in my opinion, is a very irresponsible and dangerous approach to take. It's sad that a lot of doctors don't seem to take their professional responsibility very seriously.
At least I knew what I was getting into. Some others haven't been as fortunate.
<stepping off soapbox>
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