Depression And Anti Depressants Ch 02

There are no underage characters in this Review & Essay. All characters portrayed are over 18.

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Susan Jill Parker refuses to take anti-depressant medication.

Yeah, no kidding. Is Hannah depressed? Of course she's depressed. She's a Mennonite. Not to write anything bad about Hannah, about Mennonites, and/or about the Amish but I thought to myself how happy I am not being born a Mennonite or an Amish woman. None of them look very happy, especially the women.

Moreover, too many of them look too much alike which makes me wonder if it's time for them to either invigorate the gene pool by having sex with others who aren't Mennonites or Amish or for Dad and brothers to stop having incestuous sex with their daughters and sisters. I know for a fact that incestuous sex is the reason for Hannah's depression and the reason why she never married and had children of her own. Once she was old enough, she ran the Hell away from her family and from the Mennonite religion and traditions.

I can only imagine a Mennonite mother's worst fear when trying to protect the virginity of her daughter. Difficult enough to protect her adult daughter's virginity from other men but when those men are her husband and her adults sons and adult cousins, there's no telling what goes on in the barn when mother is busy in the house doing all of her other chores.

"Where's Hannah?"

"She's in the barn with her brother Seth and her cousins Jacob and Thomas."

"Seth! Jacob! Thomas! Leave your Hannah alone and get in the house. Hannah! Why are you naked? Shame on you. Wipe that gunk from your mouth and get dressed this instant!"

* * * * *

With her never marrying, with her not having any children, and with her having big tits, with all the anger issues she has, no doubt Hannah was sexually abused too, probably by her father, brothers, and cousins. Even though she's loaded after selling the family farm in Lancaster for four million dollars and collecting a million dollars after splitting the rest with her three brothers, she makes still makes her own clothes. She drives an older, plain Jane Honda Civic without any chrome nomenclature on it and with a standard transmission instead of an easier to drive automatic. Leaving a piece of chrome on the car would be considered unnecessarily flashy. If I had her money, I'd be driving a Cadillac with a Corvette parked in the garage to drive on Sundays.

Wait. Hold on. Back up. Too busy thinking about the empty life of my Mennonite friend, it just dawned on me what my doctor had just said. Change my mood? How could he possibly change my mood? I wondered what he meant by that comment.

Maybe he wants to have sex with me. He's not a bad looking man and he does have a good job. Maybe after three years with him being my general practitioner of a doctor, my primary care physician, he's been dreaming about me, lusting over me, and now wants to make his feelings for me known. Maybe he's been masturbating over my hot body and my big tits. More than that, maybe he loves me. Maybe he wants to leave his wife for me. Maybe he wants to marry me!

"Wow!"

Not really thinking that he'd be interested in giving me sex, suddenly excited, instead of sex, I wondered if my doctor was going to give me the winning lottery ticket. More believable than him leaving his wife to marry me or giving me a winning lottery ticket, maybe, being that I don't have health insurance, he's not going to charge me for this office visit or for the blood test that always follows. Certainly for him not to charge me would change my mood from thinking where I'm going to get the money to pay for his exam and blood test to being glad that I no longer have to worry about paying the hospital for their services.

"Pardon? Sorry Doctor but I was daydreaming. What did you say?"

"I can prescribe something to help change your depressed mood from sad and angry to not as sad and not as angry," he said carefully choosing his words again.

He reiterated what I thought he said.

Hmm. As if he's the Wizard of Oz, too good to be true, I wondered how he could change my mood from sad and angry to not as sad and angry. I wondered if being not as sad and angry would translate to me being happy and calm or was that too much for to ask from my doctor and too much to ask from a mere pill.

* * * * *

What can my doctor possibly prescribe to change my mood? Are there happy pills out there that will make me feel calm and happy instead of sad and angry? Even though I knew there are happy pills, if only by all the drug commercials that they have on TV where their good looking models appear so happy when we all know that, in real life, they're all so sad. Actually, truth be told, models as part of the beautiful people, except for Naomi Campbell, are always happy. Okay, of course with exceptions to every rule, in the way that politicians and cheerleaders are never depressed and always happy, models are another group that are never sad. Too dumb to be depressed, I've never seen a sad model, that is, unless they have a real personal tragedy in their life.

"What happened Heather? Why are you so sad?" Olga, Heather's modeling agent, looked at her with the concern that a mother would have looking after her daughter.

"I broke my nail," said Heather looking up at Olga as if she was about to burst in tears.

"Don't worry. It will grow back," said Olga. "Trust me. Fingernails always grow back.

"It will?" Heather, tall, blonde, beautiful, and busty, but very dumb looked at Olga as if she was lying to her in the way that man asked her to strip naked, jump up and down, and bend over because he just wanted to see something. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, yes, of course. For the time being, I'll file it down for you. There, it looks as good as new. And until your nail grows, I have a fake nail that you can put on your finger.""

* * * * *

I laughed while looking at my doctor as if he was just as crazy as I was.

"Actually there are happy pills," he said with a little laugh in the way that Dr. Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory tries to laugh but can't actually ever seem to laugh in the way of a normal person. "We call them anti-depressant medication," he said as if I was Alice in Wonderland and he was the Cheshire Cat ready to give me a pill that will make me feel small enough to fit through a keyhole.

"Anti-Depressants?" Having heard more bad than good about anti-depressants, I remembered hearing the long list of the side effects and warnings of anti-depressants whenever they advertise such medication on TV. "No thanks," I said.

Now thinking that my doctor was nothing more than a pill pusher pushing pills just to make money for the maddening HMO, medical machine called preventative maintenance healthcare. How dare he use me for his monetary advantage? Pressured to sell them by the big pharmaceutical companies, I'm not an expert but I'm intelligently informed enough to know that these doctors have no idea what's in these medications that they routinely prescribe and what it does to the body and the brain. If it's so good, I wanted to ask him, why aren't you taking anti-depressants doctor?

Perhaps if he took an anti-depressant, it would improve his mood enough for him to crack a smile, make a joke, and even laugh. Oh, I see, he's not allowed to take anti-depressant medication while practicing medicine. He can only prescribe them. Is that it?

I trust before prescribing these pills that they called up the long, laundry list of side effects and potential dangers that these medications have. Moreover, how can and why should a medical doctor, a general practitioner, my primary care physician, and/or even an internist be able to prescribe mind and mood altering drugs when they have no idea of the patients' mental stability or instability. Seriously, I could be just as crazy as he is or as his nurse is. Little does my doctor know that I have an AK-47 in the trunk of my car, just in case I see someone to shoot, someone who annoys me, and/or someone who makes me angry.

Shouldn't prescribing anti-depressant medication be the job of a trained psychiatrist after seeing someone for psychological therapy and over an extended period of time, instead of during a brief physical examination? How can they possibly determine by seeing me for a few minutes while asking me if I'm depressed and solely based on my answer that I'm a candidate of any one of the long litany of anti-depressant medication? More than suspicious about him peddling anti-depressant medication to me, I was against taking anything that could change me from being the well-adjusted woman that I am to the raving lunatic that I could become.

A normal occurrence now when seeing a medical doctor during a routine appointment or even when visiting the emergency room for an unexpected medical emergency, even a mere cut, after asking me my name and date of birth, they all ask me if I'm depressed. Next I'd be expecting my car mechanic to ask me if I'm depressed.

"Are you depressed," I imagined my mechanic saying while closing my hood.

"Usually not until I get your bill," I imagined replying to him.

I've had more than one doctor try to prescribe anti-depressant medication to me because I told him that I was depressed when he asked me if I'm depressed. Maybe I should lie and tell them that I'm happy. Maybe I should confess that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger and I used to be a cheerleader, a model, and/or always wanted to run for political office and still might. Yeah, definitely, how can I be depressed if I wanted to be an astronaut, used to be a cheerleader, a model, and/or might run for political office? Maybe I should just smile like the idiot that I am and tell everyone that I'm glad to be alive, even though I'm broke, unemployed, and living in the spare bedroom of an insane Mennonite woman, who enjoys walking around topless and flashing her huge, sagging tits to her neighbors.

"God help me. Why is my life such shit?"

Yet, when I think about depression and depressed people, who isn't depressed? We're all sad over one thing or another, especially if we're one of the majority of have nots instead of one of those who have it all. I wanted to ask him if he was depressed for being a general practitioner instead of being a specialist. Seriously, we all have our crosses to bear, even doctors. I wanted to ask him if he was depressed because he earned one quarter of what a specialist takes home to his family while they play more golf and don't work nearly as hard as he does. If he wasn't depressed, I wanted to ask him if he was happy because he was a doctor instead of a dentist or was a real doctor instead of a chiropractor.

* * * * *

I looked in the examination room mirror to see if there was a sign written on my forehead that read that I'm depressed. Maybe it's the big bags under my eyes but that's from not getting enough sleep and not from my depression. The bags beneath my eyes are from waking up too early and going to bed too late while writing, writing, and writing. I guess he didn't hear me say that I'm a writer or comprehend what it means to be a writer who's driven by her passion to write and who doesn't earn enough money writing erotic stories to even feed herself.

Truth be told, I'm depressed because I'm a survivor of sexual abuse. Beaten, tortured, and raped by more than one abuser, one of my sexual abusers, my older cousin, even tried to murder me by drowning me. Thinking that I was going to die, it wasn't until I saw the Virgin Mary underwater that I felt at peace and relaxed myself enough to accept my fate. It wasn't until the Virgin Mary spoke to me and said, "Don't worry," that I knew I wouldn't die.

I'll never forget what happened as long as I shall live. Floundering in the water, unable to swim, not even knowing how to do the doggie paddle, and with my heavy winter clothes weighing me down, I watched as my life flashed before my eyes. Then, when I saw the Virgin Mary there beneath the water with me, as soon as I saw her, I relaxed. As soon as the Virgin Mary said for me not to worry, instantly the hand of my sexual abuser reached down in the frigid water from the boat to pull me up by the hood of my soaked and ruined wool coat. It was February, the coldest day of the year and I've never been as cold in my life nor as relieved as I was then that I was still alive albeit shivering, frightened, and in shock.

If that forced sexual and death defying experience with my cousin wasn't enough when I was an 18-year-old virgin, a few days before that life changing episode, my uncle force me to give him oral sex. With no sexually abused victim having just one abuser, it's as if all we have a sign on our foreheads that reads, sexually abuse us. With my mother never around to stop them and with my incestuous slut of a mother having sex with them anyway too, my four, much older, drunken brothers raped me more than once, until I finally left home to live with my girlfriend.

Then, if that wasn't enough, to compound my depression, years later, I hooked up with a man, a bad, Boston cop who took his daily frustrations of his job out on me. Somehow and for some women, it doesn't help to be born beautiful. Wishing that I was ugly, especially being that I felt ugly after being sexually abuse, whenever I ventured out, I went out of my way to hide my appearance from men, not an easy thing to do when being tall, blonde, beautiful, and busty.

Not only was I my ex-husband's sounding board, more of a yelling and pounding board, I was his punching bag too. Being that he was a black belt in Judo, he knew exactly where to hit me to not show a mark outside my body but to do damage inside my body. Coughing up and anally shitting blood, most of the time I was with him, with going from one emotionally and sexual abuser to a sexual, verbal, and physical abuser, and with him coercing me to participate in the swinging lifestyle, my life hasn't been wine and roses. Then, when the men wanted me more than the women wanted him, he was no longer interested in swinging and called me a slut and a whore for doing what he coerced and forced me to do. I couldn't win with him.

Normally martial arts experts don't hit women and never hit anyone outside of the dojo or a tournament, that is, unless attacked first out on the street, but he relished hurting me, especially if I dared to talk back to him or sassed him. Talk about depressed, he was crazy mad, one too many steroids, no doubt. Maybe I should introduce him to my doctor. Yet, if my doctor dared ask my ex if he was depressed, my doctor would be eating his meals through a straw.

"Pardon? What did you just ask me, Doc? Depressed?" POW! Bam!

* * * * *

With my doctor and his nurse making me feel bad that I was depressed, they made me feel that there was something wrong with me for being depressed. A life peppered with misery, who wouldn't be depressed with all that I've been through, had to endure, and survive during the short time that I've been on this planet? Obviously needing anti-depressant medication for more than one doctor to ask me if I wanted a little something to improve my always sad and angry mood, I began soul searching. I needed to understand, if only to justify my depression to myself, why I was depressed. I mean, I always knew that I was depressed but I wasn't suicidal. I was just sad and angry. Who isn't sad and angry, other than politicians, cheerleaders, models, and astronauts?

Until asked, I didn't think I was depressed because depression was my normal state of mind. Depression runs in my family. All of my family members are depressed. Certainly my mother and definitely my four brothers are all depressed. If I'm depressed at all, and undoubtedly I am, it was because of my bitch, incestuous whore of a mother and my four perverted, much older brothers are responsible for ruining my life.

Old now, in her seventies but telling everyone that she's in her sixties because she looks ten years younger, and indeed she does, my mother was a model, turned stripper, and turned prostitute. She had a different man on her arm every week. More than her being a stripper and a prostitute, my mother was an incestuous whore who had sex with her four adult sons before I was even born. Unless it was one of her Johns, and I doubt that, with me an accident of ejaculation with one of my brothers not wearing a condom while inside of my mother, conceivably one of my much older brothers is, no doubt, my father.

With none of them admitting to it, no one knows who my father is. How's that for growing up in a fucked up family? How's that for having a reason to be depressed? Having to trek out to Michigan and Ohio to track down my brothers, it would take a DNA test for me to get the truth out of any of them. I can see me now trudging through the deep snow while chasing after them before having to paddle across one of the great lakes.

"Hold still so that I can get a blood sample," I imagine saying to one of my brothers while trying to stick a needle in his arm. "Don't you want to know if you're my Daddy? Don't you want to be on the Maury Povich show?"

* * * * *

Yet, even though fantasy over reality can sometimes be appealing as well as appalling, especially when writing fiction, rather than when taking anti-depressant drugs, I need a clear mind to write. I know that I'm naïve but I can't help but put anti-depressant medication in the same class as LSD, designer drugs, and other hallucinatory drugs. Certainly, without a doubt, for anything to relieve my depression, my sadness, and my anger, it would have to be a hallucinatory drug for the medicine to set me free. Yet, even though I wish I had their writing ability and a portion of their financial success, I don't want to be like Poe, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and King who abused alcohol and drugs. Who knows, maybe if I was high on mood altering drugs, while writing about unicorns, dragons, aliens, vampires, and monsters instead of people, I'd be a better writer.

Even though I'm forever tortured with the never forgetting thoughts of all that happened to me, they are all my thoughts and this is my depression. They are not someone else's thoughts created by a drug induced haze from the help of a little pharmaceutical pill created by some Dr. Frankenstein chemist in a lab to make billions of dollars for his company at the expense of depressed people like me. I apologize for my ignorance about anti-depressant medication and I'm sure that they help a lot of people make their way through life but because of their inherent side effects and in the way that they react with other medications and alcohol, no thank you.

Moreover, you can't take yourself off of your anti-depressant medication without a doctor weaning you off of them. God forbid you just stop taking them and go cold turkey. That's when depressed people start shooting people. How many times have we heard of a depressed gunman killing people because he stopped taking his medication?

Rather than taking them, I'd rather do without them. I'd rather be sad. I'd rather be angry. I'd rather be depressed. I rather not have some mind altering medication inside of me that will make me say, feel, and do the normal things that are expected of me and that are not and have never been part of my physical and mental makeup.

If ever I was happy, what the Hell would I write about then? I need to be angry and sad to write. I need to be depressed to be able to think clearly through the problems that are my life. Maybe if I accepted my doctor's prescription and took anti-depressant medication, I'd write about white, puffy clouds, balloons, fireworks, fairy tales, pretty dresses, cheerleaders, and models.

* * * * *

Nonetheless my miscellaneous ramblings, for those who have been prescribed to take anti-depressant medication, don't you dare take yourself off of your anti-depressant medication without prior doctor's approval. They are very dangerous drugs. I knew a man who took himself off of Zoloft and murdered two of his business associates. The nicest man you'd ever want to meet before he had his psychotic episode, he's in jail now serving a double life sentence without parole. Being in a cell for 23 hours a day, I couldn't do jail. Now that I think about it, as if in solitary confinement, being in prisoned is much like the self-imposed prison that my life is when writing alone with my bad self.