Today must be depression day (clarification: the subject, not my mood) …here’s a great post on Follow Me Here about antidepressants, and their use. I left a (ridiculously) long comment, which follows:

In 1997, I first experienced a major depression — but didn’t recognize what had happened until I got out of it by the extreme method of uprooting myself and moving out of state. I was so afraid that I’d lost my mind that I didn’t want to talk to anyone about how I was feeling.

After reading literature that described depression, I realized where I’d been, and swore that if I were ever there again, I’d see a doctor. That happened in 2001, and I notified one of my closest confidants of what was up, and that I’d made an appointment to see a doctor. Other than that, I didn’t tell anyone; I was too embarassed. I saw the doctor (P.A., actually), and he was so understanding and compassionate that I cried through the entire appointment…not that it took much for me to cry.

After starting a trial on Effexor, I was stunned at the effects. While the conventional wisdom is “six weeks for drugs to work,” I felt relief within an *hour*. Placebo effect? Possibly. I didn’t care; the change in my brain was stunning — I no longer felt invaded by a sensation of tightness. Feelings of hopelessness were replaced with relief of finding myself again. I became the poster child for a/d meds, and told anyone who’d listen how much they’d helped me.

In time (perhaps a year later), the Effexor seemed to not do the trick anymore — or at least not as effectively. This terrified me, because I’d been so convinced that my “chemical imbalance” had been relieved by medication. If I were relapsing, did that mean there was something permanently wrong with me? In my case, I was very lucky/blessed/whatever you care to call it to have a skilled counselor appear in my life. Over the course of a several months of work, we found many of the underlying emotional issues.

These days, it’s been about 1-1/2 years since I was last on Effexor. I still feel the symptoms of depression and anxiety (GAD was a big part of my depression), but I’ve learned to manage my life to help alleviate those.

Does this mean that it was wrong for me to take antidepressants? Absolutely not.

While my depression/anxiety episodes had emotional roots, there were genuine *physical* results that came from those emotions. In time, the physical symptoms took on a life of their own. In order to eventually treat the emotional issues, I needed the medication — which stabilized me enough to do the hard work of therapy.

All of this is to present my opinion on antidepressants — an opinion that conveniently happens to agree with yours:

• Yes, depression is a physical/biological illness.
• That said, doctors do their patients a disservice if they attempt to treat depression with medication alone.
• Real transformation is only possible with some hard mental work on the part of the patient.
• Sometimes, a/d meds are necessary to help the patient do this work!

Been reading you for a while, but I believe I’ve never commented. Thanks for continuing to present great info.