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Antidepressants Quotes

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Antidepressants Quotes

“How does your patient, doctor? Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest. Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart. Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself.”

“My sadness is beautiful. It infuses everything I do. It is at the core of my identity and always has been, just as happiness is in some people. I refuse to be told that it's a flaw. I will not mute it with medications for the sake of society. I will hold it close to me and celebrate it rightfully while the rest of the world fails to see it for what it is and it will be their loss.”

“Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office—the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement—is of such importance. In my case the difference is often made by publicity. For example, and to boast of one of my few virtues, I used to derive pleasure from giving my time to bright young people who showed promise as writers and who asked for my help. Then some profile of me quoted someone who disclosed that I liked to do this. Then it became something widely said of me, whereupon it became almost impossible for me to go on doing it, because I started to receive far more requests than I could respond to, let alone satisfy. Perception modifies reality: when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.”

“Medications used to treat psychiatric disorders are commonly referred to as psychotropic drugs. These drugs are commonly described by their major clinical application, for example, antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, anxiolytics, hypnotics, cognitive enhancers, and stimulants. A problem with this approach is that these drugs have multiple indicators. For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRls) are both antidepressants and anxiolytics, and the serotonin-dopamine antagonists (SDAs) are both anxiolytics and mood stabilizers.”

“In his work with depression, [Donald] Klein cried to distinguish chose patients who were best created with imipramine from chose best treated with MAOis (monoamine-oxidase inhibitors). Klein found that imipramine was most useful in the treatment of severe depressive episodes with a definite and rapid onset. Patients who looked less depressed, had arrived at depression more gradually, and complained mostly of boredom and apathy did not respond to imipramine but might respond to MAOis. This second group could sometimes be interrupted by distractions or amusements; in the midst of a hospitalization for depression, they might be seen on the ward chatting happily. Yes, they were impaired. But the impairment extended only to appetitive pleasures. Though they had lost the capacity to forage, if pleasure landed on their plate, they consumed it.”

“For people who are depressed, and especially for those who do not receive enough benefit from medication of for whom the side effects of antidepressants are troubling, the fact that placebos can duplicate much of the effects of antidepressants should be taken as good news. It means that there are other ways of alleviating depression. As we have seen, treatments like psychotherapy and physical exercise are at least as effective as antidepressant drugs and more effective than placebos. In particular, CBT has been shown to lower the risk of relapsing into depression for years after treatment has ended, making it particularly cost effective.”

“Nie tworzy, nie przekształca. Interpretuje. To, co było ostateczne, czyni przejściowym; to, co było nieuniknione, czyni przypadkowym. Nadaje życiu nową interpretację – uboższą, bardziej sztuczną, napiętnowaną pewną sztywnością. Nie przynosi żadnego szczęścia ani prawdziwej ulgi, jej działanie polega na czym innym: zamieniając życie w ciąg formalności, pozwala skierować człowieka na inne tory. Pozwala ludziom żyć, a przynajmniej nie umierać – przez pewien czas.”

“It was as if I finally understood what being present meant. I had heard it so many times in yoga classes but I had never experienced it. It was like a protective film that someone had forgotten to take off was peeled back from my brain, and I could finally see things clearly. How I wasn't truly stuck.”

“Physicians do not systematically prescribe placebos to their patients. Hence they have no way of comparing the effects of the drugs they prescribe to placebos. When they prescribe a treatment and it works, their natural tendency is to attribute the cure to the treatment. But there are thousands of treatments that have worked in clinical practice throughout history. Powdered stone worked. So did lizard's blood, and crocodile dung, and pig's teeth and dolphin's genitalia and frog's sperm. Patients have been given just about every ingestible - though often indigestible - substance imaginable. They have been 'purged, puked, poisoned, sweated, and shocked', and if these treatments did not kill them, they may have made them better.”

“Psychotropic drugs have also been organized according to structure (e.g., tricyclic), mechanism (e.g., monoamine, oxidase inhibitor [MAOI]), history (first generation, traditional), uniqueness (e.g., atypical), or indication (e.g., antidepressant). A further problem is that many drugs used to treat medical and neurological conditions are routinely used to treat psychiatric disorders.”

“I had a moment of what I can only call clearheadedness. The suffocating anxiety was gone, momentarily, and I felt a deep relief, a sense of sudden calm after eons of warfare inside my head. I had gotten so used to the noise that the quiet was unfamiliar. It was as if the evil beast that had been holding my head under water, trying to drown me, had suddenly let go.”

“Our analyses of the FDA data showed relatively little difference between the effects of antidepressants and the effects of placebos. Indeed, the effects were so small that they did not qualify as clinically significant. The drug companies knew how small the effect of their medications were compared to placebos, and so did the FDA and other regulatory agencies. The companies found various ways to make the data seem more favorable to their products, and the FDA helped them keep their negative data secret. In fact, in some instances, the FDA urged the companies to keep negative data hidden, even when the companies wanted to reveal them. My colleagues and I hadn't really discovered anything new. We had merely revealed their 'dirty little secret'.”

“All I know is it’s silly to chase fun when all you need is the ground underneath you to be solid. And I don’t expect to be one of those people that does cartwheels in yogurt commercials. I wanna be the cartoon character in that antidepressant ad who has, like, little lines under her eyes, and the divot in the middle of the pill is the pill’s mouth... have you seen this ad? It’s very good. It’s for Abilify, which is not a word.”

“To help other people, you've got to be able to help yourself. You go to a psychiatrist, and they're on this Prozac, Effexor, and antidepressants, you may have picked the wrong person. If you go to somebody who's broke who's selling you financial services, that might not be a good thing. You go to somebody who's fat to help you lose weight... And a lot of people ironically do these types of things.”

“As James Surowiecki noted in a New Yorker article, given a choice between developing antibiotics that people will take every day for two weeks and antidepressants that people will take every day for ever, drug companies not surprisingly opt for the latter. Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn't given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.”

“When I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.”

“My mom was a manic depressive schizophrenic who, after a year in prison, went home and shot herself. My sister, Kirsten, an amazing poet, who was raised by this woman, and was dating a guy who broke up with her for the fourth time in three weeks. And one day, she came to his house, got a gun, and blew her brains out all over his headboard. I just went through a divorce, five years in court and cost me $2 million dollars. If anyone, by law, should be forced to take antidepressants it's me... But instead, I choose to be an antidepressant. And you can take me with alcohol.”

“I have trouble getting approvals from my heath insurance company for basic antidepressants. And I have the best plan my agency has. I can't get high off this stuff! I'm not going to sell it! Getting my medication is critical. It's me saying, "I just want to live." And their response seems to be, "We agree that it's a matter of life and death; that's why we're declining it." Every time I get a cold, I have Tylenol with codeine coming out the wazoo. But the medication I need to live? Nah.”

“If you say, "I'm bursting with joy," a scientist could analyze your skin and find it loaded with neuropeptides that may have antidepressant effects and that may modulate the immune system. If you say, "I feel exhilarated, unbounded, and joyful," and I were to examine your blood, I would find high levels of interleukin and interferon, which are powerful anticancer drugs.”

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society... Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”