The author on drugs

I have been taking Citalopram for almost three months, replacing fourteen years on Paroxetine, a drug which is suitable for neither pregnant women nor women who wish to become pregnant (nor, I suppose, women who prefer discussing dog pregnancies over their hypothetical own). For the first month or two I regretted the loss of that old self, but I think that life on Citalopram is calmer and more productive for me overall. I was not expecting better, just different, so this is something of a bonus.

How to describe the difference? Imagine my experience of Paroxetine as a heavy lid that fits over a large compost bin: the malfunctioning psyche stews and brews and generates heat among whatever degrades within, but the lid keeps it subterranean. Nonetheless, the functioning self never loses that sense of the menace that lies beneath, the earthy, odorous and perhaps toxic organic matter that seems at times to press up as hard as the lid of the bin presses down. Life lived this way is like life on parole: one is given respite from a darker way of being, but that way of being never quite recedes. Activity, especially around ordinary or well-loved things, feels therefore furtive, and life lived on borrowed time. In practical terms it has meant that quiet, everyday pursuits, whether necessary like housework or pleasurable like reading, were very difficult to do indeed, since underneath my functional calm has always been that darker other self, who stays in bed for weeks or overturns the furniture at parties.

Now, imagine my experience of Citalopram as like an open compost bin, the kind that’s a metre by a metre by a metre, with appropriate gaps or openings in each side for aerating the contents within. Or imagine it as the gardener’s fork that turns the compost, or the lime or fertiliser that gets regularly applied to keep the pH as it should be and the organic matter integrated. Imagine it as the pockets of air, the spatial repose, between that which naturally decays. I have back the concentration of my childhood, the ability to be with myself, to do one thing and then another, without feeling stalked by (in my worse moments) a sense of horror. This, I suppose, is the functional illusion with which non-depressives live their days, the fading of that feeling of being haunted by mortality that makes a happy life possible. I cannot quite articulate the joyful plumb I feel, now that it is possible to sit and read for a few hours at the weekend, or to tidy up around the house without looking at a dirty or dusty surface and thinking “cradle of filth!”, to listen to the worries and problems of others without feeling that my own troubles were somehow multiplying by proxy.

I do not write this to exaggerate or to scare, since the suitability of the antidepressant to the individual is as varied as the individual themselves and the colour, the texture, of their own depression.  I am fortunate that my depression is not so serious that a change of drug seriously imperils me; indeed, I could probably function without antidepressants, although I would be cowed and miserable.  But the individual’s experience deserves its own narrative, and this is mine.  I am feeling a lot better.

Tagged as: anti-depressants, depression