Recently, someone commented on my Xanga site, that antidepressants (Prozac in particular), make everything better. I know that the comment was made in a jokingly way, but I felt the need to voice my views on the topic.

There are a lot of people who believe popping Prozac will make them happy beyond belief. Those people have a false sense of what the real purpose of drugs, like Prozac, is. Taking one dose of Prozac doesn't cause instant happiness; it doesn't even begin relieving the pain of depression. Antidepressants aren't over night miracle drugs; most of them take 6 to 8 weeks before any real signs of improvement occur. Newer medications, like Remeron, work a little faster. A bit of improvement can be seen and/or felt in as little as two weeks (when using Remeron). Even so, it takes 6 to 8 weeks for the full effects of Remeron to kick in.

The effect of such drugs is what misleads many people. Antidepressants do not make people happy; they just balance out certain chemicals (Serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine) in the brain. Once the medicine begins to have noticeable affect, the user will begin to notice breaks in his or her periods of depression. Those breaks can cause happiness (as they are something that hasn't been experienced in a while).

Another misconception is that feelings of sadness do not occur once antidepressant therapy is in use. I wish that were true. However, one can feel sad. The antidepressant medication helps one feel a normal sadness. Depression is an abnormal sadness. Andrew Soloman, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, wrote that "Depression is the flaw in love...In depression, the meaninglessness of every enterprise and every emotion, the meaninglessness of life itself, becomes self-evident." Medication and therapy help people recover from that kind of meaninglessness, they don't give super powers that make people immune from sadness. I believe a friend of mine really put it very well when he said, "I'm still able to be sad on Prozac - just less likely to be completely desolate and wretched."

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An Excerpt From The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression --

Highly politicized rhetoric has blurred the distinction between depression and its consequences -- the distinction between how you feel and how you act in response. This is in part a social and medical phenomenon, but it is also the result of linguistic vagary attached to emotional vagary. Perhaps depression can best be described as emotional pain that forces itself on us against out will, and then breaks free of its externals. Depression is not just a lot of pain; but too much pain can compost itself into depression. Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on this air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory...Depression is a demon who leaves you appalled.
-Andrew Soloman