Just after I stopped nursing my second child, I had an emergency appendectomy. Nine months later was a tubal ligation and major repair, then a year later was a total hysterectomy. I didn’t bounce back very fast and was feeling out of sorts. I cried easily, I was tired, and I just didn’t feel good. I told my doctor that I picked up my baby at night and cried. “Hmmmm…inappropriate crying.” as he made a note in my chart. I left with a prescription for Zoloft and even though I thought he was way off base, I took it. That started me down a long, LONG path of destruction…to my self, my family, my friends. It took ten years and a lot of hard work to come back from that. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for antidepressants or medications…there most certainly is. But I didn’t listen to my gut. I didn’t get a second opinion. And I lost ten years of my prime because of it.

I’m not knocking the medical profession either. I was married to an excellent physician. They have such a difficult life. They work long, hard hours. But too many of them offer a prescription for medicine instead of a prescription for health. I worked for an old school doctor many years ago. He told me he was taught as a new physician to give a prescription to every patient. For one, it gives them the impression you care about them and it also puts your name and number in their medicine chest. That way they are likely to come back when there’s another problem.

The medical treadmill is difficult to jump off of. When I hear of people taking fifteen to twenty medications a day, I cringe. I graduated from Zoloft to Prozac which quite literally made me crazy. Then they gave me Dexedrine (uppers) to counteract ADD symptoms. Ativan (downers) to counteract the speedy effect of Dexedrine. Narcotics were soon added for the bad headaches I got from the meds. I progressed from Darvocet to Percocet to Demerol injections to Stadol with Compazine to Thorazine (basically an animal tranquilizer). I was being told, week in and week out, that this is just how I was. My brain had a “chemical imbalance” and I was going to be this way the rest of my life. I was going to have to take all this medicine every day…forever. Well, how depressing is that? Top that with a marriage falling apart at my feet, a half-empty nest, and a child to raise…I disintegrated and nearly died. It took a different psychiatrist nearly four years to convince me I didn’t have a chemical imbalance in my brain and my focus should be getting OFF of medicine, OUT of therapy and LIVE my life.

My point is this…before we start down the road of endless prescriptions simply because we don’t “feel like ourselves”, maybe if we try changing our environment, eat better, sleep better, drink lots of water, stop drinking alcohol and/or smoking, exercise, meditate, pray and try that religiously for two or three weeks, we would all feel better.

Ok, here’s the obligatory disclaimer. I am not a medical doctor. While I learned a lot about medicine by living with a doctor and working in the medical field for most of my adult life, that doesn’t count. You have to actually have the license in your name. Sooooo, these are merely my opinions. Seek medical help when you feel it’s necessary.

❤

“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”

Proverbs 17:22