The Myth of Over-Medication
Let’s get my thesis out of the way first: anyone who says that today’s children are over-medicated is either ignorant or dishonest.
Let’s rewind a little. Make yourself comfortable, because this is one of those Tiresomely Cathartic Blog Entries.
My childhood was a strange experience. Having learned to read before preschool (thanks, Mom, for not allowing a TV in the house!), I was perfectly content to sit at home and read books all day. But it was expected of me that I go to school, so I did.
Sometimes school was fun – reading books, singing songs, making art, learning about science and history, and especially the times when I got to play with computers. But most of my schooling consisted of people explaining things that I had figured out on my own. And sometimes it was a thoroughly miserable experience, especially when I observed how cruel my peers were to each other. I didn’t like them, and they generally didn’t like me.
Due to the pressures of my father’s job, we moved around a lot. But no matter the class, teacher, or school district, I couldn’t escape the constant refrain of “pay attention”. At first, I didn’t understand what it meant: I was paying attention, not just to what people were saying to me, but also to the world around me. Eventually the phrase began to seem meaningless, and the only thing it produced in me was a deep sense of shame. The fact that nearly every teacher I had said “Patrick, if only you applied yourself, you could be a great student!” convinced me that I was not only different from other people, but worse.
Self-hatred is the most horrible kind of pain: it’s an introspective, uncontrollable pain that, seemingly on its own, reviews your worst memories – regrets, shameful moments, missed opportunities, lost friends – and feeds on them, growing stronger, more jagged and uncontrollable until it becomes impossible to distinguish the self from self-hatred. It took root in me, and I’m sad to say that it’s never really left.
Living with depression isn’t living; it’s like being stuck in tar, slowly sinking and completely unable to save yourself. And what makes it worse is that nobody can see this sort of suffering: externally, I looked just fine, if a little haggard and sad. As usual, David Foster Wallace describes – well, described – it better than anyone else:
It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self’s most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate […] and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world, every constituent of which means painful harm to the self.
It is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed.
Eventually, it got too much to bear. I started self-mutilating in the sixth grade; though it hurt like hell, it was the only way to express to others just how bad I felt – I couldn’t go fifteen fucking minutes without wanting to commit suicide. Luckily, my parents recognized that I was slipping away, and I landed in a therapist’s office, completely devoid of hope. We talked, and talked, and talked, and eventually she suggested trying Prozac and Adderall. I didn’t believe in much, but I believed in her – so, despite my misgivings, I gave them a try.
Antidepressants don’t just flip a switch: things didn’t get better immediately. It still took an effort to drag myself out of bed in the morning; I still cried in the shower; I still felt It every day. But one day I woke up and realized that I felt just a little better. That little bit of hope allowed me to function again: I started writing short stories and keeping diaries. I tried programming computers, and I realized that I maybe – just maybe – might have a talent. I noticed that if I really concentrated, I could pay attention to things that were boring in school. And, perhaps most importantly, I started making friends: not just people to talk to, but actual connections. I realized that communication was more than waiting for my turn to talk: in short, I started listening.
I am wholly and utterly convinced that without medications like Prozac and Adderall, I would have blown my brains out long ago. And that’s why I completely despise the people who spread the myth that psychiatric medications are inherently harmful, and those who decry childhood ADHD as a myth, and those who think clinical depression can be treated with maybe some vitamins or exercise. The truth is the opposite: people are suffering due to real, treatable conditions – and psychiatric medication, combined with therapy, is one of the most valuable ways to treat them. And as more parents buy into the myth of overmedication, I fear that we’ll lose more and more children to suicide.
Obviously, psychiatric medication has been overprescribed in the past. But if you consider that reason enough to deny help to the children and adults who need it, I put it to you that you can go fuck yourself.
Meanwhile, I’ll be here, staying alive and productive with the help of therapy and Prozac.
Addendum: I do not wish to imply that there was one single cause of my depression. Mental illness runs in my family, and I’m sure it would have hit sooner or later.
