Writing under the pseudonym Will Barrett, a person who has been continually on various psychiatric drugs since age 10 philosophically reflects in Salon. “But the idea that whatever troubled me could be resolved by taking pills shifted my depression (if that’s what it was) from the nebulous world of mental illness, of personal dysfunction, to the comparatively clear and defined world of physical illness… But I don’t know what, if anything, the Triavil fixed. It’s difficult for me to chart my pharmaceutical history, because I was so young.”
“A close friend whom I’ve always considered a natural candidate for antidepressants (cancer, fraught relationship with family, multiple career disappointments) has serious ontological issues with antidepressants,” writes Barrett, whose friend asks, “If I were in a good mood or more functional because of pills, what would that mean? Where would the pills stop and I begin? Would it really be me living this better life?”
“For me these philosophical questions have an extra dimension because I was so young when this all began,” comments Barrett. “If my friend started taking antidepressants now, she would be doing so as an adult, making a somewhat informed decision. She would at least know who that person was deciding to take the medication. I, on the other hand, began taking medication intended to alter my personality before I became a person.”
“At times I am more or less untroubled by the fact that I chemically alter my personality… And at other times I ask myself, who’s really at home?”
My drugged life: I’ve been on antidepressants since 10 (Salon, December 6, 2014)
