Disclaimer: I am writing based on my own personal experience with the antidepressant. I'm not saying it's the same for everyone. Everyone is different.
I'm finally at a place in my life where I'm happy. Sure, I would love to be in love and having sex on the regular with a partner that I'm completely monogamous with but beggars can't be choosers. Aside from my fear of commitment (we'll talk about that some other time) and the fact that I'm
lonely single, I'm in a really good place. For you to really understand why this is such a big deal requires me to tell you a little bit about myself.
I am a recovering depressive who used to try and cope with her problems by binging and purging on a daily basis. It started out with an occasional binge and purge back when I was about 17. I had lost a ton of weight that year working out and eating 5 small meals a day but I was so deprived of my favorite foods that I would, at least once a month, go to the store and pick up a box of oreos, a box of chips ahoy, a box of entimens(sp?) chocolate covered doughnuts, a box of nilla wafers and nutella, and sometimes a family sized bag of doritos. I would go home wait until everyone in the house fell asleep and eat it all. I would devour every last bit while drinking water in between because I had read on a site that it made purging easier. Once the last bite was swallowed, I would run to the bathroom and empty myself out. I would walk out of the bathroom smelling like bile, with my eyes watering, nose dripping, rosy cheeks, and a feeling of satisfaction that radiated throughout my entire body. Guilt kicked in about 30 seconds later when I would remember that there was no way to be sure that it was all gone, that I would have to workout longer and harder the next morning. This was an occasional thing until I went to college and the changes that I thought I was handling where really swallowing me whole. I didn't know who I was while still being so desperate to be liked. My binging didn't happen for the first two semesters but the purging would take place after a particularly large dinner that I felt I didn't deserve even though I was on the crew team having practice twice a day 5 days a week. Purging made me feel in control when everything else I had once known was gone and a new everything was taking over. I went home for the summer and things started getting back to normal until I went back to school not knowing what to do with myself or my life. The binging started and the purging always followed. I would purge in the shower so no one would hear and I'd remove the grate so it would all drain down. It became a daily thing and soon a twice daily thing. I was spiraling out of control and loosing all sense of who I was. I knew I needed to get my shit together.
I started going home on the weekends and sometimes skipping the classes I knew I could skip and extending my stays at home. I told my family I wouldn't be going back to the dorms in the fall and that I'd commute instead. After my finals, my sister picked me up and in the car she asked me why I was really going home, that she could sense there was something really going on. I told her that I just missed being home and couldn't focus being away. I was in denial that I had and eating disorder because I was fat. In my head, only skinny girls had eating disorders. As I spent more time at home the binging and purging lessened but still occurred. One night I was gchatting with my friend, R, who'd known I had binged and purged in the past but didn't know the extent or that it was still going on. I told her that night and I told her things about how I couldn't be sick there was no freaking way. I was fat. Eating disorders are for skinny people. The thing about gchat is that you can see your stupidity forming sentences and making preposterous declarations of sanity. I realized I had a problem and that night emailed my sister telling her the truth about why I came home. I wrote out EVERYTHING in an old notebook and let her read it. Two days later I was at inpatient at the Renfrew Center.
While there I was put on Prozac. The other typical rehab stuff happened too but it's not important. After the two weeks my insurance covered in full, I went to outpatient. During which I would go to one on one therapy sessions, hop on the lirr at penn, go to class, and come home. The binging and purging stopped since I was constantly being watched. The depression that had made me hole myself away and spend days not wanting to get out of bed or even caring enough to bathe seemed to dissipate but so did every other emotion. I had become a shell of a person. Sure, the therapy and the Prozac helped me reconnect with old friends and rebuild my relationships with my family but it took away my ability to feel. I no longer knew the difference between being sad, mad, happy, annoyed, astounded, and all those other wonderful "being + adjective" states that humans are capable of having. I was someone who was never happy yet never sad. I was going through the motions without ever reacting. I went to my sister's wedding and even though I was smiling in the pictures you can see blankness in my eyes. Prozac took away my sister's wedding and a thousand more moments in which my emotions were needed but gone.
I've finally found a balance in my life. I'm no longer the size 2 I was when I first started binging and purging but I'm also not the size 12 hate the world, hate myself, and everyone who loves me bitch. I've found my happy medium but I didn't find it until I made the choice to stop taking the Prozac. I started journaling and actually talking to myself. I asked myself why I was having certain feeling, once I started having them again, and actually doing something about it. I also stopped going to therapy. I started going to my family and by family I mean the women that I love most in the world, the ones who have known me since before all the weight was shed and the purging took over, the ones who have been there through everything with me and I with them, my rocks, my sisters and my "sisters". I realized that talking was where the real healing took place, knowing that they were there every time I needed them made me stronger and better. I know that not everyone is as fortunate as I am to have a place to fall back on but I do believe that those who need help, like I did, should avoid taking antidepressants at all costs. If someone finds oneself in a place like the one I was in, I recommend (remember I'm no doctor, this is all based on my experience) seeing an eating disorder specialist without an MD or any ability to dole out prescriptions. Find the healing power of talking and actually expressing yourself because for most people with eating disorders all we want is to be heard.
I haven't binged and purged in close to a year. I went off Prozac in November of 2011. I have an eating disorder and always will but it's up to me to decide who's in control and for now it's ME.
AM
Forgive me if I'm paraphrasing but I'm sure you all know where it's from. If you've spent your days living under a rock or lack cheesey cable channels, let me remind you. It's from Bridget Jones' Diary or Bridget Jones's Diary. I can never remember the correct way to turn words that end in -s into possessives. Basically, it's about a women who's about 10 pounds overweight and searching for love in all the wrong places. She falls for her boss who of course fucks her along with every other vag that moves but there is this one man, Mr. Darcy played by Colin Firth, who likes her just as she is. He legitimately likes her yet she can't seem to stop her fanny from letting the douche of her boss back into her knickers. Excuse me for the British slang. I'm an anglophile and just can't help it. 