Along with music and memories, I’ve chosen the third “M” word for Monday’s themed posts to be medication. It’s the largest reason I am still alive today, still breathing, and functioning enough to write here.
I have to spend a chunk of this week making sure I have enough medication to take with me on my upcoming travels. My psychiatrist wrote me a note this morning to explain my many bottles of pills (they all have to be in their original containers) in case they get me held up at the airport.
Medication is a huge topic which I would like to introduce merely with a quote today. It is from The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon, the very best book I’ve read on depression.
“Since I am writing a book about depression, I am often asked in social situations to describe my own experiences, and I usually end by saying that I am on medication.
“Still?” people ask. “But you seem fine!” To which I invariably reply that I seem fine because I am fine, and that I am fine in part because of medication.
“So how long do you expect to go on taking this stuff?” people ask. When I say that I will be on medication indefinitely, people who have dealt calmly and sympathetically with the news of suicide attempts, catatonia, missed years of work, significant loss of body weight, and so on stare at me with alarm.
“But it’s really bad to be on medicine that way,” they say. “Surely now you are strong enough to be able to phase out some of these drugs!” If you say to them that this is like phasing the carburetor out of your car or the buttresses out of Notre Dame, they laugh.
“So maybe you’ll stay on a really low maintenance dose?” They ask. You explain that the level of medication you take was chosen because it normalizes the systems that can go haywire, and that a low dose of medication would be like removing half of your carburetor. You add that you have experienced almost no side effects from the medication you are taking, and that there is no evidence of negative effects of long-term medication. You say that you really don’t want to get sick again. But wellness is still, in this area, associated not with achieving control of your problem, but with discontinuation of medication.
“Well, I sure hope you get off it sometime soon,” they say.
So as I travel to visit family and a best friend over the next two weeks, I will take my medications with me. I will take them everywhere with me until the day I die because they simply keep me alive. I am very grateful.
Aug 27, 2012 @ 13:58:58
This quote sounds all too familiar. I am about to see my doc tomorrow for a check in, and we’ve been bouncing around options if I should (if ever) come off my medication. It’s not a simple answer, for anyone who takes medication for mental illnesses. But, I do feel the same, the reason I am functioning the way I do today, is because I found a medication that works for me (thank heavens!). I know many folks aren’t as lucky, but that one little pill I take each morning, makes a WORLD of difference! It is a pain to travel with lots of legal pharmaceuticals I’ll admit. Good luck with security check-in Erin!
Aug 29, 2012 @ 16:08:14
I’ve had the same conversation many times before. It’s amazing the stigma that mental illness carries. If I were taking medicine for blood pressure, cholesterol, or asthma, I doubt anyone would feel comfortable asking those same questions.
Thanks for writing about this topic and enjoy your travels!
Aug 29, 2012 @ 22:50:51
Hooray for medication! The quote you provided was perfect. I so often have people tell me that now that I’m doing better, I should go off my medication or lower the dose. It never occurs to them that I’m doing better at least in part BECAUSE of my medication, and that mental illnesses are actual, y’know, ILLNESSES, and often require medical treatment. Like any illness, depression means that something in my body isn’t working properly. In this case, it’s chemicals in my brain. Medication helps my body to do what it’s supposed to do. Somehow, people never recommend that diabetics stop taking their insulin or that people with asthma stop using their inhaler… Mental illnesses need to be seen the same way.
In fact (wow this is turning out to be a long rant, sorry, haha), I think those are both particularly apt analogies. Diabetes can be controlled without insulin in some cases if the person monitors their intake and watches their symptoms carefully. The same is true of asthma, especially allergy-induced asthma. But those illnesses sometimes do require medication, and sometimes that medication needs to be permanent. Similarly, some people with mental illnesses don’t need medication as long as they are diligent in keeping up with other treatments that help them manage their symptoms, like counselling and self-care. Other people need medication to help them be in a place where other treatments can do their job properly. And it doesn’t mean that someone who doesn’t need medication is stronger or better than someone who does, it just means that their bodies and their illnesses and their lives are different and individual.
Wow, that was long, but to sum up: you’re the best person to know what YOU need.
And hooray for medication for getting us to a healthy place so we can work on other aspects (like therapy and self-case) effectively.