The Dark Side of Antidepressants: Personal Experiences

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I interviewed a different friend of mine, Leona, (not her real name) who is clinically depressed. She had used typical antidepressants since her diagnosis, but was always telling me how she felt like they did nothing to help her. Leona constantly complained about how they made her so dizzy and sleepy that she didn’t feel like doing anything and wanted to sleep all day. These things only increased her depression, and she realized that later once she looked back on her time of antidepressant use. Before Leona’s use of antidepressants, she’d never actually attempted suicide. While she was using antidepressants, however, she attempted suicide twice and her habit of self-harm increased. She told me that after getting off the typical antidepressants, she actually felt better, not worse. Leona’s parents and therapist found alternative methods to deal with her depression which ended up helping her better than any of the antidepressants she had been prescribed. I have another friend who had similar results with antidepressants; after this I became more interested in the truth about them. I will concede that not everyone has this reaction to antidepressants; many people swear by them and say they are …show more content…

I concede that they are essential in some serious cases of depression, but continue to stress that they should otherwise be used rarely. Even exercise alone has been shown to be more effective than antidepressants, yet they are prescribed like candy; everyone just believing that they do what they’re supposed to. Knowing the side effects and adverse reactions experienced by a large amount of antidepressant users, I believe they should severely limit prescriptions of these drugs. Besides this, doctors and the pharmaceutical industry profit greatly from antidepressants and I see very few positives to continuing to uphold them by the enormous consumption of these phony

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