by Lynda Lampert

Created on: November 11, 2008   Last Updated: December 14, 2008

I have suffered from depression for most of my life. It started as a teenager: feeling hopeless, not understanding why everything made me so unhappy. I would cry at nothing a commercial, an offhand comment, teenagers laughing in the street. I thought that was how I was, how life was. I wanted to die. A life like that, in my thinking, was not a life worth living.

It was only in my early twenties, after living so long like this, that I was finally given an antidepressant. I guess at that time, no one thought one so young could be so depressed. There was also such a horrible stigma to it. Even my father didn't know how to act around me after I started taking "the medicine".

Prozac was the first Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) that I ever took. My mind was like a rushing torrent one horrible, irrational thought crashing over the other. There was never silence or respite. I remember clearly the second day of taking the medication, watching some Cosby Show reruns. I was engrossed in the show. No other thoughts intruded. Nothing else chattered away in the back of my mind. Nothing brought my shoulders up around my ears. I just watched TV. Amazing!

It was like a miracle. I went out with friends and was not constantly tense. I could laugh more, but not in the cynical way I was accustomed to. I wanted to meet people, to talk. For the first time in my life, I was not reluctant to ask for help in a grocery store.

I was on Prozac for almost ten months. It worked well and quickly for me, and I never missed a dose. Insidiously, I found certain thoughts creeping back. It wasn't long before thoughts of suicide returened. A disappointment, a rejection, or a harsh word would send me scurrying back to my dark mood, crying in the corner of my room. I could not think. I slowly became what I was before.

It was at this time I saw a psychiatrist. I remember the questions he asked me. He asked me to state the months of the year in reverse. Think about it. It is fairly simple to do. I couldn't. He gave me three words to remember in the beginning of the session. By the end, I could only remember one.

It was at this time that I learned of Prozac poop-out. Sometimes the benefits of SSRIs begin to fade away. The nerve cells in the brain begin to adapt to the bombardment of the medication. Serotonin, the hormone that encourages depression to dissipate, is no longer available in the numbers the medication produces. Slowly, the body adapts back to its natural state the serotonin deficit

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