Antidepressants II: The Truth
If they worked too
well, they would be illegal.
Yes, I said it.
Unless a substance is a key product produced by extremely wealthy men,
somehow it seems to be sinful, wrong and
its use a character flaw. And, one can rightly assume that those
extremely wealthy men control its market.
After all, an accepted measure of a person’s significance (read status) is the wealth they possess.
I am writing here, dear reader, about antidepressant medication. First
of all does antidepressant medication actually work? Yes, yes – I am not a Doctor!!! I have no medical certification, well that’s
not totally true; when I was a National Ski Patroller I was certified in EMT
(and Winter Emergency Medical Response,
as an additional bit of training). But,
I have let all that lapse years ago.
(Another story). Other than a shitload of reading and research and actually living with this condition, I
am in no way qualified to say anything about the medical treatment of depression or other mental aberrations.
My answer – YES
– ANTIDRESSANT MEDICATION DOES WORK – for
me. The medication I am prescribed
by my licensed Psychiatrist, does work. BUT,
always a modifier, but, what, we as persons diagnosed with depression or bipolar disorder
has neural processing cross-wiring, hormonal issues, that are remediated by
certain chemical re-balancing agents. In other words, if you try to put a big corrective wedge in the shoe of a person
who does not have a leg length
issue, they are going to walk really funny, if they can walk at all with that correction.
In the sports world
it is known as “handicapping”. The calculation of a sports handicap can be
really complex, so we won’t get into that too much. But the principle is that in order to keep a
competitive sport truly competitive, or actually interesting, a certain number of points (or some other element) are
automatically added to the score, time,
distance –whatever – of a participant.
An example would be if I average 150 points every game I bowl, and I am
in a Senior Citizen Bowling League and I am a male and the best bowler in my
category averages 200, my handicap would
be 50 points. If I was female, it might be 60 points. And so on.
Now it is up to me to try and bring my handicap to the lowest number I can because all my stupid buddies are more concerned with
my handicap than my actual average.
Enough of that. It all just
means, in an effort to be fair, some people need an edge to be even near
with the others against whom they compete.
What this means is – an extreme example – if you are not diabetic and
you are given the same amount of insulin a diabetic person needs to be nearly normal, it can kill you.
Again, in other words, ALL antidepressant medications do –
and this is very carefully calculated – is bring the brain neural tissue
hormonal balance of the affected person just
a bit closer to “bubble level” (read: normal). They are not
made to get you high. I repeat;
they are not made to get you high,
or bring on some wonderful world of butter and butterflies and “Sgt.
Pepper’s Yellow Submarine” world.
Just calculated to help a person not feel like they have buckets of
concrete on each foot and have dark dark gray glasses somehow welded to their
faces. Antidepressants do not make you feel wonderful,
they just balance the brain chemistry so a person can cope on a level near what most everyone else has to cope with.
GOT IT?
My eyeglasses, corrective
lenses, don’t give me super-vision. They just, basically, allow me to pass my
driver’s license vision test. When you
take over-the-counter aspiring to get rid of a headache, you just forget you
have a headache – you don’t become Einstein.
Taking a medication that just simply will allow you a few hours when you don’t feel like jumping off a high
bridge, is not getting high.
The underlying causes, be they life experiences, genetic
issues or whatever else might be responsible for setting a particular brain to wobble, are far more complex than is
socially and culturally understood – at this time in human history. I have said for many years, “Just because
somebody invents a better microscope doesn’t mean that all of a sudden there are more small
things.” The human life experience
is, at present, many factors more complex than ever in our evolutionary
history. Right from the instant of
birth, the human life experience is totally different than ever before – I mean
totally.
It can take months for long-term
trained and schooled experts to properly match a program of
medication, or combination of medications, to alleviate severe neurological
issues a person may be experiencing. Months!!! And then!
Out of the blue that person’s body adapts and that program of medication stops working!
So, when I say this is complex,
I mean we are dealing with the most powerful tool all knowledge, evolution and
accumulated human experience and history has EVER determined to exist. And, that is, of course, the human brain.
… to be continued …
dalepeterson.us
Just published “Twelve
Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar
disorder”
No comments:
Post a Comment