The Dark Side of Anti-Depressants

Next To Normal, the Broadway musical about treating depression, got me thinking about the crapshoot involved in psychopharmacology and the awful side effects involved in taking a lot of the meds that are so readily available.

A few years ago, I gave Zoloft a whirl and found that it not only left me spazzing like a Jack-in the-box, but it made my fingers numb, it had me urinating every five seconds, it left me endlessly thirsty, and it made me afraid to ever lie down because I'd inevitably wake up so dizzy I'd topple over and break things. And this is an ANTI depressant? Even more traumatizingly, I was told by the professional who prescribed it that "We won't know if has any good effects on you until two or three weeks from now." As if I was going to keep taking that shit for even two or three more minutes!

Of course, if you reject a drug, you're then just supposed to try something else, and so on and so on until something proves more beneficial than harmful--i.e., if you occasionally smile through your thirsty, chapping lips while standing on a window ledge. I did follow the Zoloft with a far more pleasant affair with Neurontin, but I now face life un-narcotized, preferring to find real satisfaction, not an artifical one with side effects and a co-pay.

Do any of you, like me, feel that anti depressants and anti-anxiety pills can make things even worse? Isn't that depressing?