You can’t hardly go anywhere or talk to anyone anymore who doesn’t bring up their anxiety, their kid’s anxiety, and even their pet’s anxiety. Seriously, now even dogs are taking Prozac and Xanax. This is nuts! People talk about their anxiety like it’s a creature that we all must own and carry through life; some seem to even embrace it—they pat it, and hold it close like a toddler does their favorite stuffed bunny. The narrative that’s fed to just about everyone is that anxiety is somehow a legitimate excuse to medicate. I’m sorry if I offend anyone but I’m going to cry foul—and here’s why:
The DSM5 describes anxiety as the “inability to control worry, irritability…benign words that describe human emotions and feelings, but probably thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, these normal human emotions have become a medical diagnosis. As a society we have come to accept that people are anxious, and that it’s an inherent part of our DNA like brown hair and green eyes. But why buy into this narrative? People used to live life without the crutch of medicine, and here I’ll offer up my one and only caveat: People who have experienced sexual abuse as a child seem to have genuine anxiety and hyper- vigilance that’s extremely hard for many of them to work through. In these cases, I’m more than sympathetic, and some do seem to be helped by medication, but in most all other cases, anxiety is nothing more than a lack of coping skills, spiritual connection, and/or the insane desire to want to control the uncontrollable.
As many of you know who read my blog or visit my website, I’ve been in recovery for twenty-eight years. I’ve been a registered nurse for twenty-four years and have spent those years in emergency rooms and psych wards. These two departments are magnets for the dysfunctional person who has more than their fair share of drama in their lives—some of it is legitimate—but much of the anxiety, depression and chaos in their lives are due to alcohol and drugs. Is far as I’m concerned a person should lose their right to complain about anxiety and depression if they’re going to continue to drink alcohol—a depressant. If people want to ingest a depressant, that’s their business—but then why complain that they feel depressed? People come to the hospital in droves for their depression and anxiety, however, when I suggest to any of them that maybe they want to stop drinking instead of taking handfuls of antidepressants or other medication, the reaction is predictable—they get pissed or make one excuse after another as to why it’s not the booze, their crappy relationships, or any of their awful lifestyle choices.
Life is complicated, but human nature is unchanged, and when I examine what’s different now, the one thing that has changed—is the messaging. Pharmaceutical companies pump billions of dollars into advertising to have people believe that they need help in the form of some new pill that is the perfect antidote to whisk away your worries. We also have to look to the parents who dump their anxiety and depression complaints on to their young children who have grown up listening to and internalizing these destructive story lines. Too many children come to the hospital and believe that they too are doomed to a life of anxiety and depression. When you hear a child say, “My mom said I’m going to have anxiety and depression like she does,” I want to scream. If this is the message a child is raised hearing, how can any of us be surprised when the thirteen year old child gets admitted to the hospital because they’re depressed and anxious?
Stop Going to the Doctor: They Cannot Fix Your Life—but You Will Get a Prescription
When you work in healthcare you see medical professionals for who they are—people. They’re just people with lives and concerns of their own and they only care so much. Most doctors that I’ve worked with don’t have the time or the inclination to really talk to their patients so they defer to ineffective rationalizations of their own: “Well,” they say, “I think the person drinks because they’re depressed, so I’m going to start them on Zoloft, Lexapro, Effexor” …pick one. The truth is that people are depressed because they drink, drug, isolate, lie on the couch, have no interests, have few meaningful relationships, lack a spiritual connection and/or can’t/won’t/don’t deal with their emotions… The other problem with healthcare is that some doctors would rather go ahead and prescribe something, maybe even a few pills to see if that doesn’t ”help” because that’s what patients have come to expect: Go to the hospital or the doctor’s and get medication. When you work in healthcare you’ll understand that our whole system is more about sick-care than healthcare. BigPharma has some of the most powerful lobbying groups out there. They work hard to keep people medicated, and their efforts pay off, handsomely. According to this New York Times article, Prescription-drug spending increased yet again, and about $322 billion was spent on prescriptions.
What’s With All of the Anxiety?
People are buying into the prescription drug narrative. I go to the doctor once every few years, except for routine preventative care, but when I do happen to go, the doctor can’t believe it when I tell them I take one pill, and it’s for my thyroid. They stare in disbelief, like I’m a freak or something. Years ago it was the norm NOT to be medicated. Now, the norm is to BE medicated. This is twisted and I wish people would start asking questions and stop to think or wonder—why are so many people so medicated? Human nature hasn’t changed since the beginning of time. Why have we seen such an increase in the medication of America? Other countries don’t medicate like we do here in the United States. The other factor that people tend to gloss over is that most of the studies touting the benefits of antidepressants are skewed studies paid for by the drug companies. They hide the studies that don’t fit into their narrative and publish the slanted ones that do. They are making a fortune on the backs of people who would rather reach for a pill than do any inside work and make the lifestyle changes that will actually improve the quality of their lives. Many studies have shown that antidepressants are ineffective. They do little more than a placebo. If you’re someone who has had good luck with an antidepressant and your life is better because of it—that’s wonderful news, but my experience from working in hospitals and from working with alcoholic women for the past several decades is that far too often the person complains that the antidepressants don’t work and the doctor adds more pills to the mix. Many of these patients don’t see an improvement in the way they feel and their lives continue to deteriorate as more and more medications are added. I’ve also noticed that women who do decide to quit drinking and/or learn other ways to cope, most often find that once they make up their minds to get and stay in recovery or make other lifestyle changes, they find they don’t need medication to feel okay—and those panic attacks? Gone. For the women that do stay on and benefit from an antidepressant—I’ve noticed that once they work on their inside emotions they may still take one antidepressant, but they no longer seek or think they need a handful of settle-down drugs like they used to.
I knew I had to write a post that speaks to anxiety when I was invited to a book club to talk about my book, Raising the Bottom: Making Mindful Choices in a Drinking Culture. One mom, with rubbery lips and a wine glass dangling from the end of her perfectly manicured hand proudly proclaimed “I have two daughters working in Chicago and they’re both medicated. So are all of their friends?”
“Excuse me?” I had to ask, “But why?”
“Oh, they have anxiety,” she said, then shrugged, and took a long pull on the wine glass.
Anxious and Depressed, at 24 Year’s Old? What Happened to Coping Skills?
What the hell is going on? Why is that acceptable that we have young women in their twenties who have so much anxiety that they have to take medication? I have twin sons. They’re twenty-seven. One is married, the other one quite eligible: he’s bright, good-looking, educated, and makes a great living. He can’t seem to find the perfect woman—maybe because I told him you better check her medicine cabinet. If she’s in her twenties and needs medicine, run the other way. I’m not kidding! Here’s what happens and I’ve seen it over and over again: women in their twenties who start down the medication trail instead of learning to cope or deal with their emotions, don’t end up in a good place. When their go-to solution is to run to the doctor and get pills, where do you go from there? When life piles up on them as it surely will once they try to juggle families, careers, spouses, and all things that come with adult lives—where do you go if at twenty-something you can’t cope and you’re solution is pharmaceuticals? How will you manage any better at forty? More pills? Will life be an endless procession of doctors and pills in order to try and feel better? Medications take a toll on a person’s body too. Medicated women seem to age faster. Some medications cause weight gain. The side effects can snowball, (you’re doctor won’t tell you this truth because he/she wants you to come back. Customers over cures). The woman goes back to the doctor. More pills are prescribed. A few decades of this dance the person ends up a shell of their former self. I’ve seen it happen over and over again, and it is a disgrace. Some people have taken antidepressants for so long that even if they wanted to get off of them they can’t because their brain’s receptors don’t function properly anymore. People have been duped into believing that the medication is their ticket to happiness. How did we sink so low that medication has become an acceptable norm, and that this is the way it is or the way it has to be? I refuse to accept that conviction because I know it’s a lie.
We’ve lost sight of coping skills: journaling, exercise, time outdoors, building meaning full relationships, less alcohol and drugs, spirituality. People want instantaneous fixes for whatever ails them, including the emotional pain that they’d be far better off working through. There are no quick fixes to a happy life. It takes work to rid ourselves of emotional baggage: the hurts, resentments, fears—emotions that everyone alive has felt at one time or another. It’s up to us to learn to deal with them in a healthy matter. Our overall well-being and happiness is what’s at stake. It’s possible to learn to feel and deal and lead a medication free life! I hope you’ll give this some thought and maybe even get brave enough to give it a try.