Reversing the Damage

From what I've learned throughout my life, and particularly in Psych101 is that everybody, no matter who they are, is susceptible to depression. Everyone is capable of developing the chemical imbalance. It's mostly a matter of how high one's stress level gets. That's where one can be pushed over the edge.

Soon, no matter the circumstances of her/his life, he/she still feel a constant displeasure with life in general, and at first, not know why. The beginnings of these feelings are somewhat commonly known to start during adolesence, but of course, depression can begin at any age. Some people just adapt to this feeling and go on living their lives, but a lot literally feel something in their brains that just isn't right. Counselors are available to help a person discover their issues that have brought on the depression and overcome the misery, helping restore peace to his/her life.

Other times, the chemical imbalance requires medication. Medications like Prozac, Zoloft and Wellbutrin XL are designed to balance the chemicals in the brain, thus helping the imbalanced handle stressful situations better and reduce anxiety. It doesn't take long to feel the effects or for it to show, and usually anti-depressants have a pretty long half-life, so if you forget to take them for a few days, you won't fall back into the slump immediately.

However, if you do stop taking them for an extended period of time (i.e. Prozac's half-life is 21 days, so after three weeks), the chemical imbalance is unfortunately likely to reoccur. For an anti-depressant user, this creates a frustrating situation, especially if he/she doesn't immediately realize he/she hasn't been taking the medicine for a while. All of a sudden, old habits and attitudes start to resurface. Maybe you used to be a cutter or a scratcher and would use self-mutilation as a release from the intense and nearly unbearable emotional pain you were feeling. Depending on how much stress you are under, you may wind up feeling that overwhelmed again and thus result to the same habits. You know very well that there really are no benefits to cutting or scratching, for they just make you even more upset after you realized what you've done, but that helping hand you've had is gone and you didn't realize it until you were beyond the point of making it by yourself.

Once again, you're left laying in bed crying until you can hardly open your eyes, just wondering where you would be if you had just made taking those little pills a higher priority. Now it's time to start all over again. So the moral of this story is: Adrienne, just take your meds, okay?