Antidepressants - Expensive Tic Tacs?

According to a Newsweek.com article published on Jan 29, 2010, "The Depressing News About Antidepressants", studies suggest that popular drugs are no more effective than a placebo.

While I know that statement may come as a surprise to many and many may completely disagree with it, I'm actually learning just how true this is. At one time, I was on antidepressants as well and I actually believe they helped me during that time. It was a time where I was so depressed and suicidal that I needed something to help lift me up from that. During this time, I had very little support but did start to see a therapist on a regular basis. To me, the medications helped lift me up enough that therapy could work and I could begin moving forward in my life. Until that point, I was on a downward spiral.

My Own Medication Experiences
Than if I go back to some of my own experiences and that I've personally witnessed, I saw where drugs were the crutch and without them, the mind was much stronger than anyone wanted to believe. We often turn to the medical doctors, tests and medications first instead of taking inventory of all aspects of our lives.

I still remember when my grandfather needed pain pills after a car accident and since we lived in a rural area and it being the weekend, no medications refills could be obtained. My mother however, took some of our little candies from Halloween and convinced my grandfather that these were super pain pills. He went from being cranky and complaining about being in pain to falling asleep and having no pain. Little did he realize, that he had been given sugar candy and yet in his mind, these were pain pills.

In my own life, I've reached for medications that I thought helped but in fact, without them I could accomplish the same results. Of course that meant, I needed to address certain issues of my life and make changes in my life but in the long run, this was much better than a continued dependence upon drugs. I'm not talking minor physical complications either but situations involving allergies, migraines, stomach ulcers and some of the latest things that I experienced involving severe itching and rashes. Actually the more I tried the regular medications and drugs, the more some of my situations worsened.

Long Term Medication Harm
One thing that is important to note is that when you take medications, in order for it to alleviate some symptom or situation, you are suppressing something else in your body. Some normal process that helps keep your body in balance is now suppressed and that has implications on down the road at some point in your life. So, just because something seems to work on the surface, it may be doing untold harm to your body in ways that you're not even aware of. Most of the drug commercials on TV talk more about all the side effects than anything else, which I believe is very telling and proves the point that I'm trying to make here.

The Placebo Effect
In this Newsweek article, the following was stated which again lends credibility to what I am talking about.

But ever since a seminal study in 1998, whose findings were reinforced by landmark research in The Journal of the American Medical Association last month, that evidence has come with a big asterisk. Yes, the drugs are effective, in that they lift depression in most patients. But that benefit is hardly more than what patients get when they, unknowingly and as part of a study, take a dummy pill—a placebo. As more and more scientists who study depression and the drugs that treat it are concluding, that suggests that antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.

I'm Now Drug Free
For me, I am no longer on any medications. At one time, I was taking Zoloft for depression, Claritin for allergies, Imitrex for migraine headaches, Tagamet for my stomach problems and Tylenol for daily headaches. While I was taking these, I was told by medical professionals that most likely I would be on many of these for the rest of my life considering all that I had been through. Even though I had no clue or real understanding that I would one day be able to kick these drugs out the window, something deep inside of me urged me to keep searching. It was that little tiny voice inside that told me there was more to these things than I currently understood. The only thing I am currently taking is Fish Oils and there is a wealth of benefits that this naturally occurring substance helps our body with.


How Did I Do It?
As I went into some intense therapy where I started to face down the fears in my own life and let go of all that locked me into events of the past, my body began to change physically. So many conditions that I and the medical establishment thought were untreatable, were in reality something that could be changed. It wasn't a magic pill or a miraculous healing that did this. It was going into the fears of my life and the hidden corners of my mind to release all that was there. We all have situations in our current life or our past where things have happened to us and unless we find a way to allow that energy to exit, we hold it in the cells, muscles and tissues of our body. It is not until we fully release those things, that we truly get our lives back and function the way our bodies are meant to function.

Designed For Health And Balance
Our bodies are designed for health and balance. Our bodies are currently changing. In the book by Mirka Knaster, "Discovering The Body's Wisdom" on page 46 it says, in less than one year, we replace about 98 percent of all the atoms in our bodies. When I read that, I am astounded at just how much power our bodies have and how they biologically can change. If we continue to suppress their functions with the same information that we have relied upon all our lives, than we inhibit the change in our lives. Humans are evolutionary in that we should be changing and evolving. It is built into our biology. Let us not be content with the status quo because this is what we were raised to believe or what society offers as a total explanation to life. Let us all go beyond that and see the potential that exists even when we cannot begin to see a glimpse of it through our eyes.

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