in the refill and then I have to find the bottle with the phone number for the base pharmacy and whoops, I’m out of refills and I have to make an appointment to
see a doctor who doesn’t know me so they can have me fill out the
“how depressed are you?” form which shows that I’m clearly not
depressed at all because, guess what? The medicine works! Then the
doctor inputs the magic permission to keep me stocked up for another
few months. Five minutes in the office in exchange for another 6 months of sanity. God Bless the rare breed of doctor who gives me more than
6 months (refilled 30 days at a time) in-between visits. I’ve been
taking it for 9 years, you’d think I could get a break.
I started thinking about all this because a friend recently asked me, “Do you have to be on it for the rest of your life?”
Do I have to be? No.
Could I? Sure.
Will I? I’m undecided . . .
map? I’m in a reading group with other writers where we read books about writing and discuss them. In one book the author, talking about antidepressants, said, “when we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call . . .” meaning that that a true artist/writer/creative is most effective only in an unaltered state. You know, the old myth that the tortured artist creates the most beautiful work out of his or her pain. My friend disagreed with his assessment citing several
people she knew who wouldn’t be functional in any practical way,
not to mention creative way if not for medication. (Yes ma’am! That’s me.) I would be one of those people. In those days I could barely scribble prayers on scraps of paper. Stringing together thoughts and ideas for an audience would be unimaginable, partly because I couldn’t sit down for more than 5 minutes at a time without feeling like I was going to jump out of my skin and partly because I couldn’t think about anything beyond the racing thoughts inside my head. Taking medicine, to use the words of the author, gave my soul its voice.
I’m doing great right now so technically I could stop taking medicine (gradually decreasing my dosage until it’s out of my system completely). That’s where the map analogy comes in. I don’t have a
good natural sense of direction. If I’m in familiar territory, I can
navigate with ease, never getting lost, and never think about looking at a map. But drop me into a strange neighborhood and I get so turned around I
might never find my way out. It’s the same thing with my brain. When
things are good and all is normal I can cruise along medication free,
but if I hit a few bumps in the road, my brain gets lost and can’t
find its way back to normal.
The decision for me to continue medication is like traveling with a GPS system. I don’t always need it, but it keeps me
on track so I don’t get lost. Not everyone needs a GPS. I clearly do, both literally and figuratively. Sure, I could wait until I get lost and then pull out the map to try and get back on track, but usually by that time I’m pretty far off course and it takes much longer to get back on the right roads. I save my entire family a lot of time, sorrow, and frustration by not getting lost in the first place.
I talk about my brain on drugs (any questions?) as often as I can because I know the horror of being lost and not having a map and not knowing a map even existed for the places I found myself. Even today, 10 years later, I hear things every now and then from other Christians that might make me second guess my decision to take “happy pills” if I didn’t know better and hadn’t experienced it for myself. I’m thankful that I’m confident and I’ll keep talking about my experience even when I’m sick of hearing myself talk about the subject because some people out there need maps and think there’s something wrong with them because other people don’t need maps. Well, there is something wrong with us, but with a map to get back on track, you’ll hardly remember you were ever lost.