Free Coming of Age on Zoloft by Katherine Sharpe Page A

depression in high school, and then again after dropping out of college. When she was in her early twenties, a psychiatrist put her on an SSRI, and she found it helpful. Six months later, Claire’s brother, who had been suffering from undiagnosed mental illness, killed himself. After his death, stories of other mental illness in the family began to come out. “That gave me a really different perspective on taking antidepressants,” Claire said. “Since then, I have tried to take my mental health very seriously,” a commitment that has included staying on medication, out of a sense that she is at high genetic risk. Once in a while, Claire wonders whether she really needs antidepressants. When we talked, she was in the process of finalizing a divorce. She said she was managing well, but had speculated about whether antidepressants were preventing her from digesting the experience: “Am I numbing myself by taking medication?” she asked. “Would I process things more quickly if I were feeling them on a deeper level?” But when she thinks about quitting, she always remembers her brother, her perception of her own vulnerability, and her feeling that over the years, medication has helped her a lot. She told me that while she doesn’t agree with the analogy comparing depression to a physical disease in every case, she does think it applies in her own. “For me, okay, my brother killed himself,” she said. “The issue is pretty cut-and-dried. It’s probably safer to medicate.”
    The matter is even clearer for Josh. Of all the people I spoke to for this book, Josh corresponded most closely to my preconceptions about what a person with clinical depression might sound like. His voice on the phone line had a flatness to it that I desperately wanted to cheer up. Josh, who is thirty-two, told me that his father had committed suicide when Josh was four. One of his uncles also committed suicide, and his mother and both his brothers suffer from depression. Josh made a suicide attempt of his own when he was fourteen, an event that led to his first prescription for an antidepressant. He told me matter-of-factly that he remembers feeling “disappointed” that his attempt hadn’t succeeded, but that after it, he became “resigned to living.” Josh did start feeling better on medication, and has continued to take it since. He said that while he still doesn’t consider himself to be remarkably happy, he knows that antidepressants keep him out of the depths of depression. “I’m confident that I’m not going to kill myself,” he said, adding, “I’m very aware of how it feels to be a survivor of suicide. I didn’t want to put my family through that again.”
    I asked Josh whether he ever wrestled with feeling that antidepressants might prevent him from knowing who he really is, and he says that hardly matters to him. “I can understand that,” he said. “I felt that a little bit. But, yeah, it doesn’t really enter into it. I’ve probably been off them about four times, and when I do, my life will slowly slide into just, I’m just miserable. The last time, when I was represcribed them, they said that the more times you have to go back on—they just said that I might be one of those people who needs to be on it, and I agreed.” He told me he has an ex-girlfriend who once wondered “if medication was affecting my ability to feel love. And I don’t know. But it’s not—it’s not a choice of being in love or—I mean, I need to be on it. I can’t go off it to figure out if I can bond more strongly without them.” When you need the pills the way he does, says Josh, the question of personal authenticity “becomes kind of moot.” Josh is pretty sure that antidepressants are what keep him alive. At this point, taking them “is just kind of part of who I am.”
    There is also a sizable group of people for whom antidepressants simply don’t raise troubling questions about personhood. David Ramirez, a psychologist