I have been living with depression since a teenager and after so many years, I recently finally started receiving psychotherapy (CBT). While I’m already seeing some modest changes in my thinking patterns, my therapist noted that in the last few weeks the severity of the condition is worsening and it might be a good time to talk with my primary care provider about antidepressants as a combination therapy.
This got a reaction out of me, specifically that I don’t like the idea of chemically altering my mental state and losing access to what “I really feel” (as I perceive it).
I know that the logic behind this sentiment is not very solid, but we can’t reason ourselves out of our feelings that easily. For me this is also challenging because I don’t take any recreational substances that affect my mental state, so I can’t tell to myself that it’s like e.g. smoking weed only more targeted and supervised.
I’m curious if this sentiment is familiar to anyone else, and how you dealt with it (whether you decided for or against medication).
First, I just don’t have very good experience with drugs in general. As a kid I waa being stuffed with useless pills against allergy and whatnot that just kept making things worse, and my problems basically stopped when I rejected them as a teen.
Second as a result of the above and other similar things, I had to learn to be very aware of how my body and mind function, what I can do and when and how. Considering drugs have known mechanics how they achieve the effects, it’s often not too hard to predict how they’ll affect you.
It’s not 100% reliable tho… Lots of people report better results than they expected. It’s probably worth a shot, if you ask me.
Btw would you consider crossposting to !health@lemmy.world too? You might get more varied opinions and get people to think. (Disclosure: it’s “my” community.)
Assuming you’re talking about depression or anxiety: while we don’t know exactly how SSRIs work, one predominant theory is that they increase neural plasticity, allowing you to make new connections and get out of ruts in thinking and feeling that constitute your depression.
If that’s true, taking SSRIs doesn’t prevent you from feeling reality, it helps you break out of the mental prison you’ve built for yourself. Psychedelics do the same thing, just far more dramatically.
This is definitely something to find out more about. My current level of understanding of their mechanism is “they dull all emotions, you don’t feel anything too strongly but that’s good because you also don’t feel too depressed”. That seems to be quite wrong.
