[g3e0]

I find it very disheartening to see antidepressants described as "happy pills" that "numb your senses". Comments like this only serve to reinforce the stigma around these medications. This stigma is the part of the reason why I held out from seeking help for years.

My experience taking Mirtazapine has been the exact opposite. At the deepest point of my depression, that is when I was "numb". Like many people I would listen to sad music when I was depressed, but eventually sad music didn't make me feel sad anymore, I literally just felt nothing.

Since being on Mirtazapine, my depression is gone for the first time in 13 years and it's completely changed my life. I still have the full human emotional range - I have good/bad moods (mostly good), days where I feel bored/meh, I cry at the sad parts in films. The antidepressants cured my depression, they haven't given me a false sense of inflated happiness. The question of "am I actually happy?" doesn't even really cross my mind. I'm just content.

The only side effects I experienced were 3 days of extreme tiredness when I first started taking them, which then subsided. And my appetite increased, so I have gained a few pounds, but since I was already quite skinny and had started lifting weights, this has been a net plus.

I found this lecture by Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky highly insightful - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc - We all get depressed, it's a normal part of life, but depression is a disease which causes you to stay depressed for no reason, and it's as real of a disease as diabetes (we know this because the brains of people with depression look different, even when they're sleeping)

What's weird is that, when I was depressed, I already knew everything that he says in that video. I doubt this will make sense, but it was as if I knew it, without really "knowing" it. I knew I had depression. I knew how depression affected the brain. I knew how antidepressants worked. But if you'd asked me if I wanted them, I would have said no.

One thing that I have come to realise, is that I had to unlearn all the negative preconceptions I had about "happy pills", and be ready to accept that the medication had the _potential_ to work, in order for it to work.

During the 13 years that I was depressed, there were still lengthy periods of time when I felt relatively happy. Unfortunately, this led me to the (incorrect) conclusion that I could cure my depression myself if I just found the right combination of lifestyle choices. I started exercising, eating better and trying to get enough sleep. I tried to maintain good relationships with my family and friends, and explore my hobbies. The depression always came back.

Ironically, all this time spent trying to get better without medical help, probably extended the years of suffering, yet it was absolutely necessary to create the conditions that were needed for me to actually get better. The final pieces of the puzzle were: to truly accept that I had a disease, caused by unresolved trauma in my childhood, to seek counselling to resolve those issues, to lose the preconceptions about antidepressants, and to start the medication.

This process alone took around 2 years. I am one of the lucky ones, I genuinely count myself as lucky that I "only" wasted 13 years. Depression is an insidious disease.

The final thing I will say is that I often felt at the time that the therapy sessions weren't achieving much - it is only looking back that the impact becomes clear. (Also, you don't have to be depressed to benefit from counselling.)

Talking to friends and family can have just as big an impact, but therapists are trained listeners, you don't have to explain "why" something was traumatic, they just get it.