Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Antidepressants saved my life — and destroyed it

By the time Lauren Slater was 24, she had been hospitalized five times for attempted suicide. She was deeply depressed, she cut herself and she obsessive compulsively tapped objects to calm her overtaxed nervous system. So when Prozac came on the market in 1988, her psychiatrist recommended she try it.

“I knew that living the way I was living, there was nothing good about it,” Slater told The Post. “I was unable to give to others or myself. I was unable to work or write. I couldn’t do anything meaningful.”

She filled her prescription, and the result was “the most miraculous thing that ever happened to me,” she says. Within three days, her obsessive-compulsive symptoms began to recede, and within five days they were gone. By day 10, she was actually feeling good. “It got stronger and stronger, and pretty soon I wasn’t depressed anymore,” she says. “I was happy, and I had never been happy before. I was without anxiety, without mental illness.”

More

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Anti-depressants often make you feel like you are flipping out when you first start taking them. For 2 weeks I was afraid to walk out the door of my house. I wish my doctor had not encouraged me to start on them.