Antidepressants Quotes

“How does your patient, doctor?

Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest.

Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart.

Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office—the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement—is of such importance. In my case the difference is often made by publicity. For example, and to boast of one of my few virtues, I used to derive pleasure from giving my time to bright young people who showed promise as writers and who asked for my help. Then some profile of me quoted someone who disclosed that I liked to do this. Then it became something widely said of me, whereupon it became almost impossible for me to go on doing it, because I started to receive far more requests than I could respond to, let alone satisfy. Perception modifies reality: when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Sylvie wishes the anti-depressants had been around when she was in her early twenties, not only to rescue her from the dark tunnels that came when her brother first got sick, but also to keep her from fucking all those assholes.”
― Francesca Lia Block

“I'm generally a happy person -with the help of antidepressants, that is- so there is something to be said for surrounding myself with happy people.”
― Rachel Machacek, The Science of Single: One Woman's Grand Experiment in Modern Dating, Creating Chemistry, and Finding Love

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression has been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today’s society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”
― Theodore J. Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future

“Depression, we are told over and over again, is a brain disease, a chemical imbalance that can be adjusted by antidepressant medication. In an informational brochure issued to inform the public about depression, the US National Institute for Mental Health tells people that 'depressive illnesses are disorders of the brain' and adds that 'important neurotransmitters - chemicals that brain cells use to communicate - appear to be out of balance'. This view is so widespread that it was even proffered by the editors of PLoS [Public Library of Science] Medicine in their summary that accompanied our article. 'Depression,' they wrote, 'is a serious medical illness caused by imbalances in the brain chemicals that regulate mood', and they went on to say that antidepressants are supposed to work by correcting these imbalances.
The editors wrote their comment on chemical imbalances as if it were an established fact, and this is also how it is presented by drug companies. Actually, it is not. Instead, even its proponents have to admit that it is a controversial hypothesis that has not yet been proven. Not only is the chemical-imbalance hypothesis unproven, but I will argue that it is about as close as a theory gets in science to being dis-proven by the evidence.”
― Irving Kirsch, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

“Our analyses of the FDA data showed relatively little difference between the effects of antidepressants and the effects of placebos. Indeed, the effects were so small that they did not qualify as clinically significant. The drug companies knew how small the effect of their medications were compared to placebos, and so did the FDA and other regulatory agencies. The companies found various ways to make the data seem more favorable to their products, and the FDA helped them keep their negative data secret. In fact, in some instances, the FDA urged the companies to keep negative data hidden, even when the companies wanted to reveal them. My colleagues and I hadn't really discovered anything new. We had merely revealed their 'dirty little secret'.”
― Irving Kirsch, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

“Psychotherapy works for the treatment of depression, and the benefits are substantial. In head-to-head comparisons, in which the short-term effects of psychotherapy and antidepressants are pitted against each other, psychotherapy works as well as medication. This is true regardless of how depressed the person is to begin with.
Psychotherapy looks even better when its long-term effectiveness is assessed. Formerly depressed patients are far more likely to relapse and become depressed again after treatment with antidepressants than they are after psychotherapy. As a result, psychotherapy is significantly more effective than medication when measured some time after treatment has ended, and the more time that has passed since the end of treatment, the larger the difference between drugs and psychotherapy.”
― Irving Kirsch, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

“For people who are depressed, and especially for those who do not receive enough benefit from medication of for whom the side effects of antidepressants are troubling, the fact that placebos can duplicate much of the effects of antidepressants should be taken as good news. It means that there are other ways of alleviating depression. As we have seen, treatments like psychotherapy and physical exercise are at least as effective as antidepressant drugs and more effective than placebos. In particular, CBT has been shown to lower the risk of relapsing into depression for years after treatment has ended, making it particularly cost effective.”
― Irving Kirsch, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

“A Pill cannot make your Unconscious, Conscious.”
― Serena Jade, Eros and Psyche: An Ancient Soul Mate/Twin Flame Story

“...I am you might say, chemically altered.”
― William Dudley, Antidepressants

“According to an article in the Washington Post: The Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly urged antidepressant manufacturers not to disclose to physicians and the public that some clinical trials of the medications in children found that drugs were no better than sugar pills, according to documents and testimony released at a congressional hearing yesterday. Regulators supressed the negative information on the grounds that it might scare families and physicians away from the drugs, according to testimony by drug company executives. For at least three medications, they said, the FDA blocked the companies' plans to reveal the negative studies in drug labels.”
― Irving Kirsch, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

“Physicians do not systematically prescribe placebos to their patients. Hence they have no way of comparing the effects of the drugs they prescribe to placebos. When they prescribe a treatment and it works, their natural tendency is to attribute the cure to the treatment. But there are thousands of treatments that have worked in clinical practice throughout history. Powdered stone worked. So did lizard's blood, and crocodile dung, and pig's teeth and dolphin's genitalia and frog's sperm. Patients have been given just about every ingestible - though often indigestible - substance imaginable. They have been 'purged, puked, poisoned, sweated, and shocked', and if these treatments did not kill them, they may have made them better.”
― Irving Kirsch, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

“It was as if I finally understood what being present meant. I had heard it so many times in yoga classes but I had never experienced it. It was like a protective film that someone had forgotten to take off was peeled back from my brain, and I could finally see things clearly. How I wasn't truly stuck.”
― Jennifer Pastiloff, On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard

“There was a wound somewhere deep inside of me. It never healed. But after I began to take "Y", I could no longer feel it.”
― Sarai Walker, Dietland

“Der Arzt wirkt plötzlich ärgerlich: "Frau Herrmann, ich finde es durchaus löblich, dass Sie keine Tabletten nehmen wollen. Glauben Sie mir, ich habe Patienten, die würden alles für eine höhere Dosis geben. Aber wenn Sie Tabletten gegen Bluthochdruck oder Herzprobleme nehmen müssen, hinterfragen Sie deren Wirkung und Dosierdauer auch nicht, sondern Sie nehmen sie einfach, weil sie ihnen helfen. Ich verstehe nicht, weshalb die Menschen bei psychischen Problemen nicht die gleiche Hilfe in Anspruch nehmen. Da wollen immer alle von alleine funktionieren. Das erwarten Sie von Ihrem Bluthochdruck doch auch nicht.”
― Sarah Kuttner, Mängelexemplar

“antidepressant: (n.) any of various energetic techniques for warding off parasitic friends, colleagues, and family members.”
― Sol Luckman, The Angel's Dictionary

“Nie tworzy, nie przekształca. Interpretuje. To, co było ostateczne, czyni przejściowym; to, co było nieuniknione, czyni przypadkowym. Nadaje życiu nową interpretację – uboższą, bardziej sztuczną, napiętnowaną pewną sztywnością. Nie przynosi żadnego szczęścia ani prawdziwej ulgi, jej działanie polega na czym innym: zamieniając życie w ciąg formalności, pozwala skierować człowieka na inne tory. Pozwala ludziom żyć, a przynajmniej nie umierać – przez pewien czas.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Serotonin

“The “chemical imbalance” theory of depression, for example, also known as the catecholamine, monoamine, or serotonin deficiency hypothesis, was based on the chemical action of the first generation of antidepressants, which were discovered serendipitously and found to act on monoamine pathways to increase monoamine concentrations (López‐Muñoz & Alamo, 2009). We now know that the “chemical imbalance” hypothesis of depression is false. First, the fact that drugs that increase monoamine concentrations also reduce depressive symptoms (O'Donnell, 2011) is not strong evidence that depression is caused by a deficiency of monoamines. Aspirin reduces headache symptoms but headaches are not caused by an aspirin deficiency. Second, antidepressant drugs increase monoamine concentrations almost immediately (within minutes), but their antidepressant effects only appear after a few weeks (Frazer & Benmansour, 2002; Harmer, Goodwin, & Cowen, 2009). Third, other drugs, such as cocaine, increase monoamines (Kalsner & Nickerson, 1969; Kuhar, Ritz, & Boja, 1991) but are not effective antidepressants. Fourth, some antidepressant drugs, such as tianeptine, decrease monoamines (Baune & Renger, 2014; McEwen et al., 2010). Fifth, depletion of monoamines does not induce depression in non‐depressed individuals (Ruhé, Mason, & Schene, 2007). In summary, although monoamines might play some role in depression, there is no evidence that depression is caused by a simple imbalance of serotonin, norepinephrine, or any other neurotransmitter or biochemical (Kendler, 2008; Lacasse & Leo, 2015, and references therein).”
― Kristen L. Syme, Mental health is biological health: Why tackling “diseases of the mind” is an imperative for biological anthropology in the 21st century

“In Australia, for example, antidepressant use increased 352% from 1990 to 2002, with a further 95% increase from 2000 to 2011. Similar increases in antidepressant and other treatments occurred in Canada, England, and the United States...Nevertheless, no reduction in the prevalence of mood, anxiety, or substance use disorders was observed in any country... The limited efficacy of commonly prescribed antidepressants has been recognized for at least two decades... A recent exhaustive meta‐analysis of published and unpublished antidepressant trials found an almost identical effect of antidepressants over placebo”
― Kristen L. Syme, Mental health is biological health: Why tackling “diseases of the mind” is an imperative for biological anthropology in the 21st century

“We now know that the “chemical imbalance” hypothesis of depression is false... Aspirin reduces headache symptoms but headaches are not caused by an aspirin deficiency... treating symptoms is not necessarily equivalent to correcting a biological dysfunction.”
― Kristen L. Syme, Mental health is biological health: Why tackling “diseases of the mind” is an imperative for biological anthropology in the 21st century

“Taking some fresh air is safer than taking a thousand pills.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“Prozac fundamentally and selectively alters personality without altering perception. This gives rise to disturbing questions: By using Prozac, are we fiddling with the human soul? Does the drug's effectiveness mean that we don't have a soul-that the mind is merely a glob of tissue in which electrical and chemical events occur?”
― William Dudley, Antidepressants

“It comes down to this: Who am I? Am I my no-chemicals-added self, no matter how unhappy I may be? Or Should I swallow this pill, achieve tranquility and risk obliterating a certain essential part of me?”
― William Dudley, Antidepressants

“Some consider this a paralyzing moral dilemma. I don't. For me, having lived through episodes of major depression, this is a no-brainer. If there is a pill that will make you well, or make it less likely you will get sick, you take it. If Prozac hasn't saved my life, it has profoundly changed it.”
― William Dudley, Antidepressants

“..There are times when I have the uneasy sense that I am ceding a big part of my autonomy to the pharmaceutical industry. I wonder who I would be if I weren't taking Prozac. Maybe I would be a tortured genius....or maybe I would be just me, with periods of dank despondency.”
― William Dudley, Antidepressants

“I had a moment of what I can only call clearheadedness. The suffocating anxiety was gone, momentarily, and I felt a deep relief, a sense of sudden calm after eons of warfare inside my head. I had gotten so used to the noise that the quiet was unfamiliar. It was as if the evil beast that had been holding my head under water, trying to drown me, had suddenly let go.”
― William Dudley, Antidepressants

“Exactly, what form this alteration has taken. I will never know. I don't feel sedated, jittery or drugged. I simply feel normal-as if I had been driving a car all these years with the parking brake on, and now it is off. I feel as if the real me has returned, perhaps all the way from childhood, where she lived before The Beast arrived.”
― William Dudley, Antidepressants

“Sometimes I sense that I have lost an intensity of feeling along with the moments of lacerating despair, I have greedily swapped them for ordinary life. That may sound dull, but I tell you it is sweet. It is not caviar I crave, but clean sheets and hot soup.”
― William Dudley, Antidepressants

“Осінь Дон Жуана

всі дами
на антидепресантах”
― Богдан Задура, Найгірше позаду