Looking back on what I wrote in November, I honestly never would've expected this type of story just a few months later.

I'm sure you've seen the Zoloft ads on television, probably even in Parade or Reader's Digest. You know, the ones with the little egg guy that's so horribly sad and has an ever-constant rain cloud hovering just above him. Then the second the narrator utters the word "Zoloft," the sun pops out, eradicates the mini-storm and illuminates the sky while flowers bloom. With that, our Eeyore-esque little egg dude then magically cheers up and joins a pack of other egg dudes that are already frolicking among daisies and butterflies.

If only things could be that picture-perfect in real life, huh?

For the uninitiated and uniformed, Zoloft is on the bottom rung of the antidepressant food chain. This is evident by the fact that commercials for the drug permeate the public airwaves during prime time along with advertising mainstays like Coca-Cola and FedEx. I don't recall ever seeing a TV ad for anything more potent (although I'm fairly certain I've heard radio ads for Zoloft's older cousins).

Having said that, this story simultaneously relieves and scares me. I'm relieved that I stopped taking the stuff after depending on it for so long, and I'm scared by the possibility that such a mild drug could cause such irrational behavior. THink about it... if this is one of the side effects brought about by Zoloft, imagine what could happen to someone on a much stronger medication like Wellbutrin?

Now I will say this much: this incident is in the minority. This sort of thing is not a regular episode for someone taking antidepressants, and thus is something of a freak occurrence. This is the sort of thing that both the pharmaceutical companies and their attorneys would argue, and you know something? They're right.

However, I can testify as someone who took Zoloft for a year straight that the drug isn't the blessing that Pfizer's creative department would have you believe. Being on the stuff is no walk in the park. To recap, while I was on the medication, I did begin to feel better as time passed. But with that improvement, other frightening negatives became obvious. I lacked enthusiasm, was listless, argumentative, anti-social, and completely sapped of my energy. I stayed in more than I would like to admit, had little drive, gained weight, and never really felt much more than just "eh."

That last point is the one I would really like to drive home. See, when you're depressed, you feel miserable 24/7. You feel as if nothing is worth doing, and the few things you do have no true relevance in the grand scheme of things. When you're medicated, you feel nothing. You feel no plummeting lows, nor the dizzying highs. You fail to appreciate people, places, events, and the biggest drawback is that the drive to improve yourself, the very same motivation that led you to seeking help in the first place, is now replaced by this hollow attitude with no real soul.

You become something slightly less than human.

In short, the drug really doesn't help you, so much as it distills you. It washes away your emotions, both good and bad, and you're left with little to work on and seemingly nowhere to go.

Couple that with the fact that every time you get your daily RX fix, you run the risk of dozens of side effects (including potentially painful and dangerous ones), you have to ask yourself if it's really worth it.

I suppose to some it is. I've no doubts about the fact that there are plenty of folks out there who are in deeper emotional ruts than I could ever fathom. I suppose that to the truly unstable, no emotion is better than constant despair. But I still insist that the medical community pursue alternate methods of therapy. I was skeptical prior to taking Zoloft, and with this latest affair, I'm suspect of it as well. And that goes for all antidepressants, weak or strong. I simply do not beleive in them, and I do not trust them.

The short, fast, ugly summation is that antidepressants, for the most part, do little to correct psychological disorders. They do a damn fine job of masking them, but they don't llend much in terms of solving them. Actual therapy is a good start, and the range of theoretical alternatives is endless. Simply put, it's high time the medical community quit thinking about lining its pockets with dollars per milligram, and start conducting some truly thoughtful research on what could be.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.