I have been living with depression since a teenager and after so many years, I recently finally started receiving psychotherapy (CBT). While I’m already seeing some modest changes in my thinking patterns, my therapist noted that in the last few weeks the severity of the condition is worsening and it might be a good time to talk with my primary care provider about antidepressants as a combination therapy.
This got a reaction out of me, specifically that I don’t like the idea of chemically altering my mental state and losing access to what “I really feel” (as I perceive it).
I know that the logic behind this sentiment is not very solid, but we can’t reason ourselves out of our feelings that easily. For me this is also challenging because I don’t take any recreational substances that affect my mental state, so I can’t tell to myself that it’s like e.g. smoking weed only more targeted and supervised.
I’m curious if this sentiment is familiar to anyone else, and how you dealt with it (whether you decided for or against medication).
I definitely think that some of my hesitations have to do with not having any experience of using chemicals that affect the mood before, so I don’t have a mental model that I can re-use for antidepressants. I definitely drink caffeine though, so it’s probably valid to say that I have constructed a fiction of me never having done anything like this, but it’s a convincing fiction.
I think of it like a sci for scenario where Earth is destroyed. There’s a new planet and some people might be thinking “but it’s not the same”, but I say it’s better than death.
Without the antidepressants, my emotional world was a charred landscape of pain and misery. No place for a life, even if it is more “natural”.
There’s nothing natural about a helicopter airlifting you out of the water, but the loss of natural is made up for by no longer drowning in a roiling sea.
Just try it for a month. If you decide there’s something too valuable missing with the loss of your “natural” state of mind, you can go back.