Staying on Your Antidepressant

Andrew Solomon in his National Book Award-winning The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression wrote that his friends would react with, "Still? But you seem fine" to his disclosure that he was still on meds. In Andrew's words: "To which I would invariably reply that I seem fine because I am fine, and that I am fine in part because of medication ... they say, 'Surely you are strong enough to be able to phase out some of those drugs!' If you say to them this is like phasing the carburetor out of your car or the buttresses out of Notre Dame, they laugh."

Let them laugh. For many of us, going off our antidepressant is as unthinkable as a diabetic going off his insulin or a heart patient going off her beta blocker. One day, perhaps, I will have a ceremony in which I joyfully flush all my antidepressants down the toilet. There will be marching bands and pom-pom girls and the Governor will make a speech. But only after a permanent cure or a replacement therapy hits the market.

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