Being sad, may not be so mad.

Brave New World is coming true in a Brave New Reality.

this is a great thought. i think that those of us who have seen just how dark things can be are the ones who can really enjoy the light of their lives. when life is difficult we are supposed to deal with it because ultimately, a bad day will pass, even a bad year. once its all a memory you will at least have exposed a new part of yourself that will in turn make you a better person. its pushing through the rough times that reveals your character

Sadness can turn into full blown depression-
I found myself at a crossroad of life...
I needed love and there was none...
I needed friendship it was fleeting...

I needed light there was death...
I am now addicted to alprozolam.
Does anyone have an answer?
If you can, love everyone and every moment you have.

Instead of popping a pill to rid yourself of depression, maybe you should smoke a joint...

I'm really glad I read this. I've used to think I really needed anti depressants. I never got them though, and I'm still living!

My advice, get a shrink. Costs more but they can help you in a way no pill can!

As a person who has suffered many a sad moment in life and never taken medication to cope with them, I can tell you that (for me), I have learned to simply not care much about anything or anyone....that way, when something sad happens involving the people and things in my life, it doesn't drag me down into depression.

Thank you for your thoughtful response ChewWawa. Based on the descriptions that people are giving in this thread of being on meds it sounds like they didn't need them. People who are mentally ill and go on the right meds finally feel *normal* (not flat, or emotionless).

I think that psychiatric medications should not be prescribed by general practitioners, but rather by trained psychiatrists that can distinguish between severe mental illness and a circumstantial sadness that does not require medication.

Patients who do end up being prescribed medications need to be seen by their psychiatrists frequently in order to make educated medication adjustments. Far too often psychiatrists just see a patient once a month for fifteen minutes at a time and make unwarranted changes that aren't needed and may actually be very harmful. With that sort of medical treatment (or rather lack of treatment) of course people are jaded about anti-depressants!

With the exception that the forced pursuit of money in order to survive has led to it replacing "supportive group" behavior in our society, leading to all sorts of painful emotions that probably might not exist otherwise.

Twisted humanity? It depends I suppose. Just look around you.

i was on prozac briefly as a teenager and could scarcely feel anything.

i realize that you can't instantaneously snap out of depression (i still struggle with it at times), but, you can gradually alter your mental habits and their subsequent moods through mindfulness. science is confirming what yogis have known for years, that the brain is malleable and neural pathways can be habituated through conscious intention.

Sadness and MI are two different things, and this is why people stigmatize the MI. It is all in the head, but it's physiological when it comes to BD, Schizophrenia, and other related illnesses. You cannot snap out of a manic episode any more than you can turn off a schizophrenic delusion. IMHO, sadness is a good thing, it causes you to reflect and grow. But please don't confuse it with clinical depression and psychiatric disorders. That is a grave mistake.

True Testimonial: I HAD a Wife Who had been on "PAXIL" for years before We got together, prescribed by a Psychiatrist all that time, but Who started using General Practitioners after She re-located when We Married. When Her Son got old enough to go off to College 6 years later, She skipped a few days meds to "sharpen up" just before starting a new Teaching Job...result, Psychotic Break...GP's solution...up the meds...after 2 MORE years of roller coaster emotions, I tried to tell Her Dr. what was going on, begging to have Her meds re-evaluated...So the Dr. INCREASES the PAXIL, AGAIN, & throws some CLONAPIN(sp?) into the mix, while telling My wife I'M the primary stressor!(the only time this Doc ever spoke to Me was when Major Meltdowns occurred, & I was insisting My wife had been on these meds WAY TOO LONG, 15 YEARS by this time)...6 months later, during another SEVERE mood swing, I suggested to MY WIFE that She quit USING a General Practitioner to treat Her illness, & go see a Psychiatrist to get Her meds straightened out.(remember it was a Psych who initially put Her on Psychotropics)...5 days later I was served with Divorce Papers.(& up until that time, She had been publicly telling everyone on-line how great Our marriage was...)
Do I really need to tell You My opinion about pharmaceutical anti-depressants?

Non chemical approaches to depression, sadness, anger have been found to be more effective than chemicals.

I do emotional change work and have found that I can get a person centered and in touch with their true nature in one or two sessions. The sadness or depression just won't hang around when a person is grounded in their own essence.

This is an idea that needs to pop up in our image a lot more.

It is important to feel it all.

people just need to toughen the fuck up. our species will never survive if we all continue to run from reality and hide from life through medication.

The biggest negative in taking antidepressants in particular in my opinion is this:

Doctors thought they were manna from heaven when they first came out. And they do work initially for most people. The fact is though they stop working like most medicines after a time .So people stop taking them. After the med is out of their systems totally which takes a few weeks, they start having very weird withdrawal symptoms that feel like "electrical jolts" in their brains. It took a damn decade before doctors would buy that. Because most doctors stereotype people so when they came in with these complaints, they were not believed . Finally there is research to prove it is almost like getting off heroin! And, to further compound problems, they say "oh, lets just increase the dose"...and people wind up taking 4-5 times recommended dosage.

They feel no better and now they would rather take these drugs than experience all the disturbing side effects. These drugs are only recommended by the PDR (physician desk reference) for 6 months of usage.

Tell that to Hamlet (j/k).

I think the issue is interesting in that "sadness" in the wild is very, very different from "sadness" for a human being living in 2009.

If we generalize then, yeah, being sad and learning to deal with it is more theraputic then supressing unpleasent emotions.

BUT!

What about someone traumatized by war experiences? Childhood abuse? Rape? Or the generalized euuni that is unique to modern living.

"Far from the disorder being a modern malaise, humans have suffered from depression for thousands of years - and it has survived partly because it is beneficial to the species in the long-term, they claim."

Evolutionarily speaking we have no idea what "depressed" a cave man or if that "depression" made him stronger or weaker...do we?

What's interesting to me is that we have evolved so far from the hunter/gather socieites we lived in for hundreds of thousands of years that our brains might not have had time to adapt.

When your a primitve man living in a small tribe of 15 proto-humans and hunting big game to survive....are you even capable of the kind of "depression" that occurs in 2009?

I like the idea of the study...but in evolutionary terms it seems like they are comparing apples to organes. The emotional life of a human living 10,000 years ago is simply not comparable to that of one living in 2009, is it?

Everyone goes thru rough times, and everyone gets the blues, most people need no medication, but to work out their problems and go on with life... but there are times when people should be medicated for their own protection.

I think that people who are so distraught that they are at risk for suicide, they need to be medicated. They may or may not have Major Depressive Disorder with or without other things on top such as General Anxiety or bipolar tendencies..etc. But if suicide is an ongoing problem and due to a chemical imbalance and is life threatening, medication is the only way to save a life without putting them in the hospital (and that costs insane amounts of money).

There are also some mental illnesses that require medication for control if they are extreme if the person doesn't want to live in an institution.

Being someone who has prescribed herself to a doctor for some so called "happy pills", I defenatly would not do it again.

Zoloff what I needed for some anxiety and depression. It made me feel like I was being held back from who I really was. It also felt like I was tweeking a bit as if I had the symptoms of overdosing and coming down from coke or at least something like that.

As much as these man made chemicals sound so great in approaching a better feeling for your body and mind they are not what they seem. Talk to a shamen or naturalist. Smoke a J, its natural. Learn about natural organic herbs.Learn perma culture and how beatiful and perfect it is to be used.

For those of you who use the excuse of being depressed in getting pills by acting, get to know your true emotions and learn to deal with yourself because in doing something as meditation can help drain negative energy. It will boost self confidence and help you think and feel healthier. Trust yourself in helping yourself. =]

Medicine is there for a reason and can help with serious or chronic ailments, but it shouldn't be an excuse or an instant go-to for a method of coping with all negative emotions.

In fact my parents even tried to force feed me psychiatric meds and I have refused to take them because they destroy my creativity. I cannot live if i cannot create. Even if it means I must be sad sometimes because why should i behave like some sort of programmed robot

Please people vote this one up so it plays on television...they need to direct more attention to this sort of scientific studies..people are definitely overmedicating

My husband and I made a New Years resolution to get out more and have dinner/movie.

Both movies so far, Gran Torino, and Last Chance Harvey had the entire theatre sniffing and wiping their eyes. Including me. But, while watching strong emotions from excellent movies may leave us tearful, it feels good to express that emotion.In real life we have become too hardened I think.

this is a great article...I have been saying this for years...actually when i was 14 my high school doctor wanted me to take prosac and I refused to take it. He was Australian. I am so happy that I never took that medication because I am having a great life now.

Many years ago I saw a study on television where researches tested tears. They had people generate tears via sadness. Then they used an onion to generate the tears. They then studied the differences in the tears. The tears generated from sadness generated additional protein.

Since watching that study, I have come to realize tears are an important part of our human makeup. We aren't supposed to be happy all the time. Sadness is a part of life at one time or another. Experiencing sadness helps us appreciate gladness.

I love this post and these responses

Suppressing your emotions with pills only perpetuates the problem. You can only get over and move on from something emotionally stressfull by dealing with it head on. Taking something that makes you feel better at the moment only wedges the hurt into a place it will fester and become more difficult to handle. Which will require the taking of "happy pills" indefinately.

Freetalk: thank you for your intelligent response. Most people still don't recognize that there are Mentally Ill people out there who truly need medication to function. However, the greed of corporations has astonishingly convinced many pdocs (free vacations anyone? free rolex watch? blow job?) and primary physicians (who in my opinion, should not be permitted to prescribe psychotropic drugs) to overmedicate. Yes, I agree that those with psychological issues that are causing them distress should not reach for a pill when necessary (but sometimes it is; as in the case of intense grief...) But the MI need drugs; at the moment, when they don't take them, they end up in prison, dead, or homeless and addicted to other drugs that exacerbate the disease. Dylan Thomas, famously bipolar poet, walked out of a NYC bar after doing 27 shots of whiskey and said "I think that's the most I've ever had to drink." and then dropped dead @ 27.

I say that we are normal people reacting to an abnormal society...that causes a lot of depression. Also, people used to learn about things months later via pony express, and maybe they would be sad but its not the same as knowing everything that happens all over the globe and within our lives instantly via technology...that is both a good thing and bad thing. I have put myself on media restriction at times when I feel like the whole world is falling apart. That would make any of us sad....children missing, war, science warning us that everything we do causes danger, murder happening all around us, and the list goes on.

Take time to just release all of that and read a book, focus on your personal relationships, do something in your community to make you feel valued. Somedays, just force yourself to smile, and you will find out you feel better!

sadness today is so often seen as abnormal and so easily labelled as 'depression' that people no longer have the incentive to use the sadness to kick themselves back into being motivated. could we be turning into a nation of happy-pill popping emokids?

the argument in the article regarding the evolutionary consequences of anti-depressants is pretty interesting. as a species we've grown so weak and disease prone largely because of our dependence on medication and technology. the 'weak' are no longer weeded out. natural selection, for us, no longer favors the 'fit' in the traditional sense of the term. too many artificial factors outweigh our natural adaptability to the environment, so our biological weaknesses as a species are not only perpetuated but amplified, making us increasingly more dependent on our drugs and tools and such.

the same is likely true for depression. the genetic predisposition for severe depression won't be weeded out by natural selection either since the symptoms can be suppressed, nor will we have much incentive to change our behavior or thinking patterns so long as we have drugs to regulate them, exacerbating the condition.

frick that I like being miserable and sad, and I am not kidding. without knowing the depths of sorrow how can we know the highs of joy/happiness?

I think we're far too prone to take a pill for every little thing that comes down the pike. Most of these only relieve the symptoms and have no effect on the cause.

For myself I'll smoke some cannabis if it's available in preference to drinking alcohol. But I stay away from all pills. Including asprin unless the need is severe. Mostly they don't help anyway. Better to eat, sleep and just get on with it.

There are many people on psychiatric medications who need them in order to function and have some semblance of a life. Unfortunately, some doctors medicate without distinguishing between disordered behavior and life's natural ups and downs.

the world can be a depressing place. it'd be nice if we focused more on the causes of our depression than suppressing the symptoms. all the medicating also prevents people from generating coping skills, particularly when they're medicated from a young age. so when people feel a bit of melancholia set it, they don't know how to handle it, let alone embrace it.

to achieve any sort of meaning in your life you need to experience the highs and lows. being drugged up and apathetic will only lead to disapointment when you realise that you have missed out on important, character-building experiences because of the fear of being let down. any emotion that you feel naturally is an emotion that you need to feel and, even if it sucks at the time, without it you will probably never reach true happiness.

"It is true that sadness can be used again evil and at other times as a shield against heart disease... the more that an individual show their sadness, the more that it is safe to have a heart disease besides there are plenty of sources being depressed and some of them are trauma not just having a psychological illness."-jb

No kidding. People were around for ages without prescription happy pills. Maybe they used other forms of remedy, but likely natural rather than man-made chemicals.