I beg to disagree with you about the false comparison between diabetes and mental illness.

Just because we don’t know the exact causes of depression and the other mental illness, doesn’t mean that they don’t have at least partly biochemical cause. It took over 3000 years from when diabetes was first recorded to when scientists started identifying the causes and then ways to help the body handle sugar.

I hope and pray that our suffering brothers and sisters don’t have to wait that long.

As far as having to try different medications to see what works, that is partly due to the lack of detailed knowledge about the biochemistry involved. Part of it is also that drugs work for a while in some people and then stop working. Again, lack of extremely detailed knowledge.

We humans are a varied bunch, and just as I react very mildly to skunk odor, while others react very strongly, our brains and bodies are very different.

Personally, I’m for whatever works for a person, and will not say that what works for one, Must work for all.

I would like to be able to get by with out these meds, but time and experience have shown me that I can’t. I’ve been on psychotropic meds for almost 17 years, now.

I used to think it was just a matter of “pulling myself up…”, a matter of “riding it out”, even using it to feed my creativity.

But, during 1979 certain events sent me over the edge; wwaaayyy over the edge. The psychiatrist told my parents I was a very sick young woman and he didn’t know if I’d “come back from it.”

Even then I wasn’t put on any meds as the hospital I went to didn’t believe in giving meds for anything but psychosis. I was there for seven weeks. During that time my Psychiatrist forbid my husband and parents to see me. I won’t go into what my husband and my mother put me through physically and verbally/emotionally when I got out of the hospital. It was physically and emotionally brutal. I was divorced in 1983. My mother died in 1986. Dad had died Nov.1980. I left Minnesota and moved to Phx. Labor Day 1987.

Let’s skip to 1990 I’d been living in Phx for three years. One night I had the worst panic attack I’d ever had(uncontrollable shaking,crying,end of the world, all my fault I’m going to he** kind of thoughts). A friend took me to a crisis clinic . They put me on xanax and a tricyclic anti-depressant. They hooked me up with a social worker.

Nov. 1998 I moved back to my home state. Some relatives invited me back. “Come on home you can live with me..sure we’ve got room for your cat and dog. It’ll be fun.” It took me Three weeks to find my own apartment. It took me a year or so to go to a Psychiatrist and start taking meds, again. I hate needing them, but I know how I’d be without them.

I would like to say that all the replies in this forum are well written and well thought out. I think I am among very intelligent people here.I feel kind of out classed.

However, comparing diabetes to depression does not make scientific sense. Many of these drugs have unknown action mechanisms. How many people on antidepressants had the same kind of chemical analysis done on their brain that a diabetic would have done with his blood? As far as I know, none. However, anyone who has quit meds cold-turkey (which is stupid) can attest to the dependence one develops on them after they do alter the chemistry of the brain.

Doctors prescribe meds and hope for the best. If you’re lucky they do what they are supposed to do. If not, you can end up homicidal or suicidal. Maybe it’s a chicken-and-egg problem, but has anyone noticed how often the people who go off the deep end (i.e. shooting up a college, a high school, or drowning their kids) are on these meds?

My wife suffers from what Martin Luther would have called “melancholy”. Yet she is able to cope with it apart from taking antidepressants. I know someone who was diagnosed as bipolar and after he found freedom from sexual sin he was able to quit his meds. Sure, he still has ups and downs, but they aren’t as drastic as they were.

Still, I can’t discount the experiences of those who have had success with these meds. I just think that we need to be very, very cautious with them. To compare depression with diabetes is a logical fallacy.

I certainly feel for you and your position.

To mitigate with medication any of the numerous chemical problems to which the brain is susceptible is not escapism, and is not the same as using alcohol, any more than is treating hypothyroidism with medication. And frankly, I question the intelligence of anyone who makes that claim.

After 9 years on meds (seratonin re-uptake inhibitors), I am intimately familiar with the difficulty of getting off them. I’ve tried unsuccessfully 3 times, not liking the dependence or some side effects. My doctor (a Christian) has said that some people end up having to resign themselves to remaining dependent on them. But if not for them, I seriously doubt I’d be alive now.

mattdabbs wass right:

“I wholeheartedly agree with what you said about treating children in an attempt to make them “normal.” I think we have medicated out some of our future geniuses. What is normal? The best thinkers the world has ever seen weren’t normal.”

But I think he was mostly talking about kids. I would have preferred to stay “real” and let the chips fall where they may, but having a wife and kids kind of complicates things. It’s one thing to be whoever you are and embrace your pain, it’s another to inflict it on the innocent.

I wish I had an answer for you, other than to be wary of the simple-minded opposition you’ve encountered and attendant eagerness to see everything in terms of spiritual warfare. (It seems to me that actual cases of demon-possession are rare and involve very peculiar circumstances). Just be sure that your doctor is closely involved with your attempts to get off the meds. And may the peace of Jesus Christ be with you as you struggle.

I have always been amazed at how John Piper can teach so strongly and uncompromisingly and still communicate so much compassion. I read where his Dad used to say about their family, “We Pipers are fundamentalists without the attitude.” When I read that it put into words exactly what I had felt while reading this book on Depression.

I am writing a review of “Darkness is My Only Companion” for the magazine of the Evangelical Covenant Church, the denomination to which I belong. Overall, it is an excellent book and is wonderful at conveying what it feels like when a person is sick. I believe this is a “must read” for the church and one of the best on the topic that I have read in some time.

A frustrating weakness comes in the middle of the book, when the author repeatedly breaks up the flow of her discussion on theology and mental illness by inserting lengthy quotes from various sources.

I have made sure, however, to encourage friends and family to read this book. I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Grace and peace,
Stan

As someone who has struggled throughout my 45 years with depresssion, I agree completely with your observations. The same thing applies with alcoholism and seeking treatment in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I’ve been sober 12 years, and have seen dozens of men and women get sober in AA, get saved, get drunk again, go to jail, or die.

Most evangelicals (pastors included) simply have no clue about addiction and do great damage by counseling addicts that because they are now in Christ, they are no longer alcoholics or drug addicts.

They might be interested to learn that AA was founded solidly on biblical principles. Indeed, it was the success of the Oxford group that gave AA founders its vision to apply those Christian principles to helping the alcoholic.

I don’t know if I would be around to share the gospel today if it weren’t for AA and anti-depressants.