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soundlogic2236:

hymnofamedicaloddity:

rarara-riot-grrrl:

vetmedirl:

princess-xion:

simonbitdiddle:

gandalfkorv:

adistasteformath:

I honestly hate how art and media have kind of romanticized the idea of like “going off your meds and being your true self again” because like I started taking antidepressants and like immediately got a new job, found a place to live, improved my relationships with people in my life and completely reconciled with my sort of estranged ex-girlfriend?? Medication can be rad and while I realize that it’s not for everybody I don’t think anything should be trying to convince anyone that being on medication inherently makes you less of who you are

(Most) Medication is for helping you to be you again. The real me isn’t tired by just walking to the train station. The real me is not my anxiety or depression. They don’t define me.

The real me is who I am when I’m not anxious and feeling worthless 24/7.

Medication is supposed to be the chemical equivalent of glasses or a wheelchair, depending on the severity of impairment. It tries to help you compensate for what has been taken, been broken, or is missing.

In particular, i always hear the myth that anti-depressants give you “artificial happiness”… no, no, no. They give your brain the ability to be happy. You won’t always be happy, and sometimes you’ll be sad. But the happiness you’re able to feel when you’re on meds is your own, real, happiness.

SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE NEUROTYPICALS IN THE BACK!!!

I mean this is important for neurotypicals but it’s honestly more important for people who struggle with mental illness and hate being on meds for a variety of reasons (aka me).

Take away med stigma! Don’t deny yourself something that can help you live a more fulfilling life and don’t shame people for their choices!

Meds alter the balance of various chemicals in your brain (the details are quite ridiculously complex, as the brain is not exactly well put together). In some ways, meds are actually rather different from glasses or a wheelchair, since they are based on pre-existing systems in your head. For a given chemical balance, increasing it will either improve, worsen, or keep the same your state, and the same holds true for decreasing. This is true by mathematical law (assuming state quality is well defined at all times, and I don’t really know what that being false would MEAN).

This means that there are a lot of symmetries between the presence of a med, and the absence of some (possibly hypothetical) med of the opposite behavior*

From this, we can conclude that meds in and of themselves are neither good nor bad-for any good effect we can imagine a med having that means the med converts your brain from state A to state B, and we can imagine a inverse med that converts your brain from state B to state A**, which is as bad as the first med is good.

However, when CHOOSING which meds to use, people generally select the meds with good effects***. While there ARE drugs that have effects like emotional blunting, if the net effect of the med is negative, “don’t take that med” is a fairly simple solution.

I am lucky enough that my balance of meds is such that they make me VERY much more me. Other people may not be so lucky-brains are complicated and finicky. Sometimes all the chemicals we have access too only means that someone has to choose between “terrible depression” and “emotional blunting”-but for either one being the default, a med that at least lets you choose which one seems like it would be good to have, since then whichever one is better can be the one you actually have.****

There probably is at least some chemical which could give “artificial happiness”. But there could also be a brain which has such a trait by default, in which case you would want a MED to change the state to not that*****

So people with meds: Remember that they can have downsides, and you often try to avoid those downsides! If a med permits you access to part of your true self, but obscures another, it might well be worth it to try to find a different med that lets you have both! We might have such a thing, we might not. Sadly, I cannot promise success. But if a med only obscures parts of your true self without letting you access others, that is a problem******, but can be fixed, quite possibly with a different med, rather than simple lack of meds!

* This symmetry is somewhat broken, since, for example, meds are often ingested, which means they have potentially problematic interactions with things like your stomach, liver, blood vessels, etc. I consider the fact that my neurological alterations involve putting complex chemicals in an acid bath a stupid way to do things, but unfortunately we don’t really have a better way.

** Entropy, admittedly, is a thing. The chemicals which will destroy your brain are a lot easier to find than the ones which can take a pile of acid melted neurons and reconstruct you, but physics is to the best of our modern knowledge fundamentally time-reversible.

*** There are exceptions. Parents have insisted on problematic drugs for their children, and things like slipping a drug into someones drink occurs.

**** People forcing such meds on people means there are cases where less options being available could actually be an improvement. But this holds true in most cases: If airplanes didn’t exist assassins would have a harder time assassinating far away people. At most, one could argue that humanity as a whole cannot be trusted with the ability to alter neurochemistry, not that altering neurochemistry is itself bad.

***** A LOT of details and philosophical implications are being glossed over here. If this bugs you, replace the example with something else, I use it simply because it was brought up before.

****** Health issues vs psychological effects are admittedly a tough case-what if without a med you will die in 6 months, but with the med you can’t make the art you love? That is a tough thing to balance, though at least fortunately the psychological effects of such vital meds are generally limited, so this doesn’t generally come up. If it does for you then I am so so sorry.

(via soundlogic2236)