Quitting Anti-Depressants Just Might Save My Life

I’ve stopped taking my anti-depressants.

It’s not a decision I make lightly. I tried to do so once before, and the results then were not pretty.  

Then, I wasn’t in a place where I knew how to handle my sudden mood swings, or breathe through my terror or rage. I couldn’t stop terror-filled or rageful thoughts from coming. I couldn’t stop terrorizing or raging at others.

So I quickly re-filled that prescription and kept on them.

But within the last few months I came to realize something: I haven’t cried since I started taking those meds.

It’s like the well of sadness just dried up within me. Where once there’d been a seemingly unending stream of water perpetually leaking from my eyeballs and pooling at the feet of everyone who encountered me, now there was a dead seabed crusted over with salt where tears once resided.

I’d been suicidal and (sometimes) violently reactive for several years, so those anti-depressants were, at the time, a wise choice: They gave me stability my brain wiring wasn’t providing for me on its own, and the peace I needed to do a LOT of inner work.

And it’s because of that work I can sense it’s time to re-meet my tears.

The Depressing Truth

I used to be a big crier. Tears would well up from I didn’t know where, and I’d feel this profound sadness. Back in the day, I’d refuse those tears with anything I could get my hands on: drugs, boys, alcohol, fights…anything to avoid having to acknowledge what was driving those tears.

As I got older and bore children and cleaned up my drug and alcohol habits, I turned to anger to help thwart those tears. My anger took up so much space there wasn’t room for any other emotion, so I could conveniently stuff sadness as far down into my consciousness as it would go.

Once I started healing, those tears turned into something nourishing, but I was still afraid of them. Afraid that if I let them begin to fall, they’d drown me completely and I’d never again be able to come up for air.

It was ironic, really. I’d spent my teen years trying desperately to exit this planet in myriad dramatic ways, but once I’d cleared that hurtle it was the very thing I needed – access to my smashed emotions – that I was pretty sure was going to kill me. 

Enter my anti-depressants.

What Are We Really Suppressing?

“Anti-depressant” is an interesting concept, isn’t it? We are against your depression. You shouldn’t be depressed. You’re unhealthy because you’re depressed.

And, yeah, in some ways that was undoubtedly true. I was unhealthy, in my thoughts, in my beliefs about myself and the world, in the actions I was (or sometimes wasn’t) taking. And I was passing that unhealthiness onto my kids and infecting everyone around me with my sadness, my anger, my hopelessness.

But those pills…they numbed me out. How were they any different from the mounds of coke I’d snorted or the bottle of vodka I’d once downed? Wasn’t the result ultimately the same? Wasn’t I just stuffing my emotions down somewhere I couldn’t really feel them?

Is that what we really want? Not to feel?

I don’t believe I could’ve gotten to where I am today – healthy, whole, and happy – without those pills.

But once I really delved into the roots of all this anger and sadness, once that genuine healing had softened some of the hard edges of what sadness and anger feel like in my body and what they’re associated with from my childhood, I realized I missed feeling sad.

I missed the innocence of a good cry, where tears just well up and flow down, effortlessly, and your chest constricts at first but then opens in time with your tear ducts,  and how the two of them together march you homeward to yourself, how your breath descends deeper into your belly, until you’re able to take in so much more air than you did before the tears started, how when they’re finally done, all that remains is space and gratitude and a lessening of all that is hard in your life.

I missed crying. So I stopped taking the pills.

Tears Heal, Not Harm

I needed to be able to access the wisdom contained in those watery vessels, the wisdom my body hadn’t been able to pass to my mind in several years because it was missing vital sensations while I let those pills numb out my sadness.

It’s been kinda ugly for a while.

I feel tired, all the time. My body literally feels depressed, compressed, unable to move, but this time I know what to look for in my thoughts and actions, know exactly what to do to not sink and not just tread water, but to float almost effortlessly above the miasma of depression’s pull.

I can access sadness again. And this is good. This is very, very good.

Sadness, like every other emotion, is a temporary energy state we can delve into and come right back out of again anytime we choose. It’s a signal that grief is present, that something is changing or going away and our heart is aching a little with the passing.

It’s a feeling that lets us know, Hey, you need to pause.

You need to feel this. Just for a minute.

Breathe with me. Let me in. Let me be felt.

I promise I’ll leave when my time is up, but right now, you need to be with me.

Please, just be with me.

Why would I not want this friend of the heart to be with me? Why would I want to push away her wisdom, her support, her care, her love?

Tears wash us clean. Their release creates space in our bodies for new healing, new thoughts, new ways of being to enter our consciousness. How do we grow – how do we know – without access to every single one of our emotions?

I stopped taking my pills. And I started feeling all of my self for the very first time, ever, in my 44 years on this planet. 

What choices have you made that “went against the grain” that have pulled you into a better version of yourself? How did you know it was the right thing to do for you?

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below, and please share this post!