Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

I can't bring myself to try an SSRI. I just cannot do it. I've got a prescription for an NDRI on my desk, and I still won't take it. I am not anti-psychiatry either. I take psychiatric medication for a different condition already. But something about anti-depressants just doesn't sit well with me.

As crazy as it may sound, I think a lot of my depression stems from living a life that is not true to myself and due to countless failed attempts to be someone I cannot never be. As far as I am concerned, depression is just a symptom of my situation and not some true disorder. For the sake of analogy, I would say it's like food poisoning. Yes, the GI issues are awful, but the body is responding appropriately.

> I've got a prescription for an NDRI on my desk, and I still won't take it. ... something about anti-depressants just doesn't sit well with me.

At first it sounded like your antipathy was with SSRIs specifically (which I largely share), but it seems like it's anti-depressants in general.

FWIW, I used to think similar to you, and roughly agree with the gist of your second paragraph, but I've come to think of antidepressants as useful in a specific way: people say "it's a crutch" as a negative thing (about a lot of things including antidepressants), but a crutch was very useful to me when recovering from a fracture, and helped me enormously with my progress; similarly, even if "depression is just a symptom of my situation", it can and does often lead to a cycle where the depression itself feeds into the situation and in turn sustains itself. An antidepressant that works for you is a good way to be able to see things more clearly, feel the motivation and insight that depression clouds out, and thus be able to break out of the cycle.

It doesn't have to be a "cure" that counters a disorder, it can be a tool that you use for its purpose and then throw away (and it does sound like you're well-motivated to do that).