Depression pills numb enjoyment as well as pain
She’s written about the pain of her marriage break-up with unflinching candour. But here, ROSIE GREEN says there’s one thing she couldn’t bring herself to reveal — until now
ANTIDEPRESSANTS can make patients feel emotionally dull, according to scientists.
One class of antidepressants, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), targets serotonin, the ‘feel-good’ chemical that carries messages between nerve cells in the brain.
A SSRI side-effect is ‘blunting’, where patients say they cannot respond with the level of enjoyment they normally would.
Professor Barbara Sahakian, of the University of Cambridge, is a senior author on the study of SSRI side-effects.
She said: ‘They take away some of the emotional pain that people who experience depression feel, but, unfortunately, it seems that they also t a ke away some of the enjoyment.’
Between 40–60 per cent of patients taking SSRIs are thought to experience blunting. The study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, was made up of 66 volunteers.
When Rosie Green’s marriage ended, her relationship with antidepressants began. here, for the first time, she writes about her rollercoaster withdrawal…
If some people are glass half empty, and some half full, I’ve always been rim- brimmingly optimistic. happy, content — a wearer of rose-tinted glasses.
If I get a parking ticket, I can write it off within minutes by performing some mental gymnastics.
I’m Tigger, not eeyore. And even though I was born a Wednesday’s child, I don’t identify with any of her traits.
so I thought I would never need antidepressants. I hadn’t needed them when some dramatic, traumatic life events beset me. The shocking death of a loved one, a world-changing diagnosis for a close friend.
I understood the sadness and anxiety I experienced were a rational response to stressful situations and, though I felt wretched, I was always able to feel hope.
I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
And then, in 2018, life changed. I went, in a split second, from happily married to not.
The moment I discovered some messages on my husband’s phone, everything I knew to be true about my 26-year relationship shattered into a million shards of glass.
Decades of trust annihilated in a few sentences. Certainties dissolved in an acid bath of betrayal. The life I envisaged gone. This was a body blow I couldn’t recover from.
I spent every day — apart from that wakening nanosecond of bliss before I remembered what had happened — consumed by fear.
It was animalistic. Even my sweat smelt different. My body trembled. My muscles twitched.
I was surviving. Just. Mostly I crawled towards bedtime, when I took a sleeping pill, desperate for a respite from the pain.
Often I took a couple, then another at 2am when I would wake drenched in sweat.
When they ran out I went to the doctors to beg for more. But doctors don’t like prescribing sleeping pills. I was taking zopiclone, which can be addictive — and besides, they stop working if taken too often.
I hadn’t meant to, but the doctor’s kindly face and gentle line of enquiry meant I told her my story. How I had lost two stone in as many months. That I was scared. Desperate.
She suggested a low- dose antidepressant. I was surprised. I knew my sadness and anxiety were situational rather than inbuilt.
But mental turmoil is mental turmoil. She said the drug would help me to think more clearly — to eat, to rest, to build strength. And, most importantly, to parent my two teenage children.
I left with a prescription for sertraline, an SSRI, which stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, although I didn’t much trouble myself with how the pill worked.
I have since learnt that, even though it’s Britain’s most popular antidepressant, many in the medical profession are not exactly sure either.
The general gist, according to the NHS website, is that SSRIs increase levels of serotonin, a brain chemical considered to have a beneficial influence on mood, emotion and sleep.
Having more serotonin is also thought to make people more receptive to other types of treatment, such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). And, in my case, other healing activities such as girls’ nights out, holidays and watching Friends.
Did I feel a stigma when I popped that first pill? Did I feel fear? I think I was in such mental turmoil that I didn’t really consider it, but I do recall looking at the pharmacist as I handed over the script and wondering what she thought of me.
But, as 8.3 million people in the UK are now taking antidepressants, I doubt she gave it a second thought.
As I put that first pill in my mouth, for a split second I panicked about the long-term effects.
I didn’t tell my husband about the pills, even though we were still together at the time, supposedly working things through.
I thought he would think me weak, and I was trying to be the perfect, non-needy wife.
I know there is still a stigma around antidepressants and judgment from some quarters. A beloved relative has taken antidepressants at various points in her life and spent a lot of time scared her ‘ secret’ would get out and she would be shamed.
I was less fearful of being judged. When I started taking them I told my family. I thought I was open. But, I now realise, I was subconsciously editing out any mention of antidepressants from the newspaper and magazine pieces that I was writing.
I have always prided myself on my honesty, yet I think I was worried that colleagues, potential boyfriends and the wider world might think me unstable. However, the truth is the pills made me far more stable.
During the first week of taking them, anxiety still rampaged through my body, plus I felt a few waves of nausea and dizziness.
Then, around a month in, I felt the famous ‘click’. I was calmer, my body no longer in such a heightened state of fight or flight. My hands stopped shaking.
A month after that I found my dignity, stopped begging and pleading with my then husband and started to see the truth. I called out the lies. I had stopped spiralling.
Today I attribute this, in large part, to sertraline.
I took the pills religiously every day but, even with them buoying me up, the year my relationship ended was really hard. Looking back, I can’t imagine how I would have made it through without them.
The year after that was tough, too, but life had found a different rhythm.
I’d lost two stone in as many months. I was scared. Desperate