Prozac Nation

I don't know how many of you are on anti-depressants, but according to CDC statistics, they are the most prescribed drugs in the US. They are prescribed for all sorts of things, but mostly for people who display certain emotional criteria. If you have a depressive episode, which many people over 25 usually do, and you go in to your doctor, it's fairly easy to meet that emotional criteria.

My grandmother had severe depressive episodes in addition to an obsessive compulsive disorder. Her house was always closed up in the winter time, curtains drawn, in bed, the whole bit. To this day I find that opening the curtains in the morning is one of the more important things I do. Letting light in is a big deal. She used to clean silverware with bleach after certain people whom she considered to be not clean enough came for dinner. She bleached the hell out of everything. Many a morning my mother leaned over the kitchen counter in the kitchen to find a line of bleach on her shirt. She showered constantly. She was obsessed with killing any and all flies that entered her home. She needed there to be at least one gallon of milk in the refrigerator at all times. She was funny and she knew how to make you laugh, but she had obsessions that were debilitating and straining at times.

My mom lived with these moments her whole life. My grandmother was convinced she was going to die early and talked about it. In my grandmother's defense, her life before she had kids was no picnic. She could easily have been dealing with the demons of her experiences. But I wonder if it is genetic. Certainly depression may run in families as a result of environmental factors, and it must be hard to distinguish that from genetics in a study. The most they've come up with is that it's possible to inherit a vulnerability.

I've always been kind of an anxious person, a little prone to compulsion when it comes to things like keeping my environment neat and tidy. I feel very good when I see lines on the carpet after vacuuming. I feel like a clean apartment is brighter, with more space and air. I need the paper towels and toilet paper to go "over" and not "under," and I will change them when I see they are not. When my in-laws came to visit the first time (which also coincided with my mother visiting our apt. for the first time) I cleaned every single piece of silverware and put it in the drawer in an organized way. I scrubbed every surface of my apartment. There is a funny story in my family of my grandmother visiting my aunt in her first home and stepping inside only to go right to the oven and open the door. Of course, the oven was one place she didn't feel she needed to scrub. She was wrong. So I scrubbed like hell. And my mother-in-law was just happy to see us, she didn't seem to care about how clean my apartment was. My mom, of course, went to the bathroom and pulled the shower door to see if I had cleaned the tub. Every faucet gleams, every floorboard is dustless when I'm on a cleaning tear. It's ridiculous. I'm a perfectionist in a lot of ways, which makes me anxious and anxiety sucks. I get TMJ, so my jaw gets tight. My dentist was surprised that I needed more than ibuprofen to deal with it and prescribed a muscle relaxant because I was so "high strung." You know what high strung people hate? Being called out for being high strung, dentist guy. Geez.

When I was having a "depressive episode" a couple years ago I finally decided to talk to someone about it. A friend of mine told me that since she'd been on anti-depressants, things were much easier to deal with and she was much happier. I made an appointment with my HMO's psychiatric center. They were really fascinated with my compulsive stuff. They asked all kinds of questions like "What happens when you find that the paper towels are under? How do you react?" You know, to see if I go on a psycho frenzy. But my anxiety and bummed out situation led to the prescription of Prozac. Or, at least its generic, fluoxetine. Some piddly little amount.

I was more open and less focused on minutiae, I felt easy going as a teacher (btw, great job choice for an ocd, anxiety ridden, shy perfectionist, right?), and I wasn't as concerned with perfection. I went to therapy for a minute, but that was a disaster. One doctor told me to deal with my anxiety over finances and not having enough time by hiring someone from a service called "My Man in India" to do all my bill paying for me."It's very cheap," she said. Modern day colonialism, a solution for all! Every solution to my problems seemed to come from Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for Highly Effective People. Like I needed more numeric lists in my life.

Recently I realized that I've been on this stuff for years. It was only supposed to be for a few months, until I was able to motivate to work on the dissertation (my main reason for being depressed). So I gradually weaned myself off and now I'm drug-free. Want to know what's changed? Nothing. I don't think it really did much anymore. Maybe it's what they prescribe to people like me that aren't clinically depressed, as sort of a placebo. It's not like I'm in some happy great place in my life, believe me there are things to be super bummed about. But I'm not, at least not as much as I could be, given my genetic pre-disposition. Maybe it's too soon to tell, but I have to say, I think it gave me the license to be more laid back, to fight anxiety, to be more confident in my abilities as a teacher. Maybe it just allowed me to give myself permission more than it messed with my chemistry. Or maybe my grandmother's life-long struggle with depression made me think that every bout of the blues was part of a cylce that would lead toward my self-emposed entombment in my bedroom for months at a time.

Hello, overshare! I just thought I'd let you in on some good news in my life. Don't think my story means you can just cut out your drugs or that I've joined Scientology. It doesn't work the same for everyone and some of you probably need some chemical maintenance. If anything, my story should encourage you not to be insured through an HMO. Maybe I would have gotten better psychiatric care had there been someone who didn't just have a checklist in front of them and a bookshelf full of self-help titles.