Anti-Depressants

Never in my life have I seen anything more effective for the elimination of depression—and often many other mental health disorders—than the consistent implementation of unconditional love.

On occasion, however, I see one of two conditions where medications—like anti-depressants—are effective:

1. A person really tries Real Love—really trusts, studies, and connects with the love of others—but it’s just not quite enough to produce happiness.
2. A person is so depressed or anxious, that they simply cannot feel the love that is offered to them by others. They are so distracted by their distorted thoughts and feelings that there is no room for loving feelings.

Most people seek a chemical “cure” for their depression or anxiety, because (1) it’s just easy, involving the simple swallowing of a pill; (2) many of the people around them are using anti-depressants; and (3) traditional medicine—how could all those doctors be wrong?—tends to prescribe these medications.

But I’ve seen anti-depressants (ADs) used with so many people that a general pattern has emerged. Yes, there are many exceptions, but the pattern tends to look like this:
The initial anti-depressant (AD1) is prescribed, and the patient does feel somewhat better.
The initial beneficial effect wears off, so the dose of AD1 is doubled.
The dose of AD1 is tripled.
AD2 is added to the regimen, while the triple-dose of AD1 is maintained.
The dose of AD2 is doubled, sometimes tripled.
AD3 is used to replace the use of AD1.
AD3 is doubled.
Medications are prescribed to counteract the side effects—and there are many—of the ADs.
Eventually there is quite a carnival of medications, and nobody knows what is causing which effects.

I could not begin to count how many people I know who have gone through this cycle of medications, but they are not happy. Or they stop their medications completely, and they’re not happy. A great many books have been written on the subject of anti-depressants being ineffective and even harmful overall. Most important, those who use ADs have done nothing to address the primary reason for their depression in nearly every case—the lack of Real Love from childhood.

There is no accusation here of those who prescribe these medications. They really do tend to have a salutary effect in the beginning, however brief. And the doubling and changing of medications is entirely understandable, because no physician can know how an individual person will react to a given AD. Some people become undeniably happy for a time, while others are actually driven to suicidal thoughts. And, as though all this needed to be complicated further, the drug industry spends uncounted millions of dollars every year wooing physicians and new patients—in television advertisements every day—that pretty much everybody needs to be taking something.

In short, medications sometimes do have a beneficial effect in treating mental health disorders—with our discussion centered on depression—but the potential negative effects are not to be disregarded.