Anti-depressants and the world there in

Anti-depressants are a funny thing.  For a lot of them, they really don't know why they work.  Then again I'm not sure there is a full understanding of what causes depression in the first place.

A lot of anti-depressants work on the concept of increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain.  I think the concept is that serotonin makes the connections in your brain work.  Not enough serotonin and the connections don't come out right.  A little simplistic of the way it really works but what ever.

Anyway, when you start taking anti-depressants they take a long time to start working.  I've always believed it takes 4 to 6 weeks but I've heard sometimes as long as 8.  This is the main reason people don't stay on them.  After a few weeks, if you make it that long, you start to think "this ain't doing anything for me" or "I'm just a zombie on theses drugs".  This makes depression a incredible problem, a long with making you feel miserable.

On top of all that, you have to find the right ones or the right combination for each individual person.  That's right, different people react to different anti-depressants differently.  There is no one cure all for everyone.  Once you find the right combination you never want to change them again.  (Man this is bumming me out).

But then the next problem is that sometimes the ones you are taking stop working.  And it's hard to figure out which one or ones.  I'm taking three different ones right now.  If I start felling like crap all of sudden I have no idea what the problem is.  Sometimes.

Fortunately for me I could tell which one was the problem.

This one anti-depressant that I'm taking (we'll call it bupropion just for example) has a number of different generic manufacturers.  My pharmacy gets two different ones; a long, oval one and a round one.  The oval one works great, the round one not so much.  Actually the round one makes life worse.  I feel like I'm not on anything.

Of course my pharmacy can't get one or the other.  They get what's sent to them.

So after all of that background here's the story.

I end up getting the crappy ones and I'm depressed.  And I think to myself I'm gonna cut back on this one because it couldn't make it any worse, right.  So for the last 6 days I've been only taking 1/2 of the crappy one a day.  And low and behold I'm feeling pretty good.

So the moral of the story is this:

"How are you doing?"

I'm doing pretty good.