An idiot’s guide to antidepressants

I’m no biochemist (I’m not, really) and wouldn’t want you to think I was. People have tried to explain what antidepressants are supposed to do to the chemicals in the brain and it goes in one ear and out the other. The explanation I mean, not the brain chemicals. So this isn’t a scientific piece by any stretch of the imagination. It’s purely experiential.

The first one I was prescribed was the legendary Prozac. At first I was pleased – there seemed to be something exciting about taking this infamous drug. It made my headfuck real. It gave it status. It wasn’t just a hangover from teenage moodiness – it was an actual Condition (with a capital C). However, I soon came to realise that Prozac did nothing. Nothing positive, nothing negative. I took it and I felt exactly the same. I don’t know what I was expecting – to be reborn as Julie Andrews possibly – but it didn’t happen. I took the little blue pills (are they blue? Or am I thinking of something else in an effort to make Prozac sound more interesting?) and that’s it.

So it was on to number two – Edronax. This was horrible. Almost immediately I stopped sleeping normally. I was hot and cold at all the wrong times, I kept falling asleep and wanting to throw up. Thankfully not at the same time or I would’ve got through a lot of sheets. If I’d paid for the prescription I would’ve demanded a refund.

Third up came Seroxat which were no better. All the chopping and changing probably meant I didn’t see it at its best but it just seemed to be more of the same. More side effects and more lack of anything positive. I appreciate that diddling around with the brain is a tricky thing to do three failures out of three made me lose faith in their magicks.

Then came a period where I took nothing. It felt better not feeling worse and this oddly made me feel better in general. It didn’t last of course – nothing ever lasts. Not truly.

Fourthly came St John’s Wort. A herbal antidepressant with something of a reputation. I found out about it online. I researched it, visited a few websites and read a few message boards (yes – there are St John’s Wort message boards) and it sounded good. With Holland and Barrett in a state of perpetual 50% off sale I was able to pick up and month’s worth for a shade over a fiver. They smelled like Compo’s socks. A truly vile aroma. I learned quickly not to breathe while the lid was off. The side effects I’d read about online were glorious by their absence and people actually noticed an improvement in me. All was rosy.

Then I was off work sick for the first time ever. I had a dizzy thing that made everything seem like a Point of View shot from the Avengers when a character has been drugged by an evil mastermind. You know the sort of thing – man wants to take over the world, has a fiendish scheme which involves getting plastic surgery to look like a top diplomat, man drugs said diplomat, takes his place and gets foiled after 49 minutes by Steed and his bird of the week. That’s how I felt. I went to the doctor and he took a blood sample, checked my blood pressure and declared that it was depression. A strange diagnosis IMO. But he dished out some pills and – more importantly – a week’s sick note.

Cipralex was nothing special. Mild side effects and no benefit. The week off passed in a haze of mild nausea and continuing dizzy spells. The greater sleep potential of not being at work probably did more good than the pills. When time came to return for more he dished out a second lot and, after a month, we abandoned them as a bad idea.

Which brings me to Venlafaxine which is my current tipple in tablet form. They rattle as if full of sand and the leaflet talks about the beneficial salts inside the squashy capsule. They seem to be doing some good though. They aren’t a miracle cure and bear in mind what I said before about nothing lasting forever. I know that the effects will wear off eventually. A few weeks or months down the line they will no longer work. Perhaps I’m like the Borg – I assimilate things after a while and neutralise them. Maybe my head doesn’t want to be well and will always fight it. But I change my shampoo every couple of months because I do believe things stop working. I change most things like that to keep them new and fresh. Perhaps head pills are the same.

Or maybe I’m doomed. Oh well – the pills are working at the moment so being doomed doesn’t really depress me.

5th November 2003