Pills, Pills, Pills: In Defence of a Complicated Medicine Cabinet

This week will be devoted to my decision around medication as it relates to mental health (or rather, mental illness). I know that some people don’t think any people should do that, and I have a problem with that attitude. I’m not talking about someone experiencing depression or anxiety and trying to decide for themselves whether or not it’s in their best interests to medicate (under the supervision of a doctor), because honestly, that can be a complicated decision. But I am talking about people who think it’s THEIR business that I and my doctors decide would be best for ME.

When I first started taking medication for (supposed) major depressive disorder, it was one medication. I filled up a weekly pill case with it and took it once a day. Admittedly, when things were at their worst and I was really feeling awful, I would sometimes stop taking it, wondering if anyone would notice that my pill case was sitting empty for days on end. (Then there were the times I stopped taking it because I was hung up on the statement from my ex-best friend that she “couldn’t be friends with someone whose personality was dependent on a drug.”) 

I’m a long way from there now. I think I take eleven medications now for various reasons, probably about half of them brain-connected (things like allergies are also in there), and I almost never miss a dose. The “almost never miss a dose” is the happy part here. Taking that many medications is exhausting. Filling the pill case wore me down to the point that I asked Adam to take over for a week a while back and I still haven’t taken the task back. The constant stream of refills is almost as overwhelming.

Some people will hear that and demand to know why I’m supporting Big Pharma like that. To which I say: YOU. DON’T. KNOW. 

I’ve heard more than a few times that I was too young to be depressed, that my generation just has this inexplicable need to label everything, that everybody is depressed and anxious sometimes, but you don’t see them needing help from drugs to live a normal life.¹ Some people just seem unwilling to accept that the brain is a part of the body, and that it sometimes malfunctions. If you’d never had strep throat, would you tell someone suffering with it that everyone’s throat hurts sometimes, just drink some water? Well, no doubt there are some people who would. But I think the vast majority would recognize this as cause for antibiotics.

I think one sticking point, for a lot of people, is just how much we don’t know about our bodies and how they work. How a particular medication will affect a given individual, for example. Or how it will affect them when they’ve been taking it for years. There are so many tiny factors contributing to the outcome, and we simply don’t know them all.

In recent months I’ve been unfortunately, and quite harshly, reminded that there can be a real cost to medication, even when it’s helping you. But I have to say that I still don’t regret my choice to take lithium. New and challenging side effects² fourteen years in still feel like a better choice than a continuation of the alienation of people around me, the behaviours with so much potential to harm myself and others, and the suicidal ideation I was facing in the days before lithium.

And that’s what it’s about, really. Harm reduction. If I hadn’t been put on lithium when I was, would I still be married to Adam? Would I be in contact with my parents? How many car accidents might I have caused? How much would I have hurt others? How much would I have hurt myself? Would I even still be alive?

I know we don’t know everything about the medications we use. I know there are side effects. And I know our lives would look completely different without them. I think I like the view from here.

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¹ An opinion often expressed whilst the expressor waves a vessel filled with caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol. They’re only drugs if they’re illegal, right? Right??

² I will circle back to this later, but it’s kind of a right-this-second development right this second, so please forgive my vague references for now.