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Urge
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Editor's Note:This is Part 2 of a two-part series.
Read Part 1

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By Michael Alvear

August 5, 1999 | How do you notice the absence of something? When you're repeatedly hit on the head with a hammer and it suddenly stops, will you experience pleasure?

The absence of pain is different from the presence of pleasure. Luvox didn't give me any pleasure. It didn't change my personality or give me an "edge" socially. It didn't make me more charming or outgoing. It didn't help me focus or concentrate better or do my work more effectively.

What it did was escort the sisters of seizure out of the room. Out of the house, really. After a few weeks of 150 milligrams a day, most of my physiological reactions were gone -- the air "hunger," the weak spells, the panic attacks, the obsessive thinking.

I dropped out of therapy soon after my symptoms disappeared. I walked out the way I walked in -- without knowing what was wrong or what I needed to talk about. I had done with pills what I could not do with willpower, prayer, meditation, yoga or therapy. As socially disapproved acts go, the decision to get on "mental medicine" is on par with the decision to get divorced. Prescriptions and divorces are granted freely, but there are widespread taboos against both. Divorcés and patients get accused of not trying hard enough, of being quitters, of looking for an easy way out. Both suffer for years before approaching the taboo's threshold, and cross it after realizing the only other option is to keep suffering.

Doctors grant prescriptions for the same reason judges grant divorces -- to stop years of pain and suffering and allow the parties to build better lives. Doctors and judges are the only ones to bear witness to the wrecked lives before them, but it is we who pass judgment. When a weight's been lifted off you, people complain you look too thin.

Critics believe SSRIs cauterize the pain and suffering fundamental to personal growth. They dismiss Zoloft (a widely prescribed antidepressant) as "Soul-off." It's a question I wrestled with constantly. In the rush to relieve the pain, did I leave myself behind?

And never mind ordinary people like me, what happens to the extraordinary when we pump them full of neurotransmitter regulators? What if genius, madness and greatness are the products of biochemical imbalances? If Holden Caulfield had been given Prozac, would he have lost the orneriness, the implacability, the pain that made him a beloved hero for challenging society's hypocrisy?

While I am still no fan of SSRIs, my stridency against them diminished in proportion to their effectiveness. The truth is, Holden Caulfield would have been in no danger of becoming a castrated critic of society. Most antidepressants don't change your personality. They don't make you feel better about things that should upset you. They lift the disabling weight of a disorder so you can feel the pain, pleasure, sorrow or joy appropriate to the situation. Antidepressants as a prophylactic to life is pure "weed theory" -- a theory growing through the cracks of inhospitable facts. There's nothing to support it, but the theory grows anyway.

Most people on SSRIs are as caught up in their emotions as the rest of the world. But now, instead of crying for no apparent reason, SSRI users cry when they're sad. Now, instead of their hearts racing without cause, their hearts pound away when they're in danger. Now, instead of repeating endlessly, SSRI users' thoughts have a beginning, middle and end.

Next page | Sex on an SSRI is like copping a feel wearing an oven mitt