TO WRITE: Are You Friendly with Your Little Pink Tablets?
If you take antidepressants - or mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, sedatives, stimulants or any other of the panoply of psych meds - how do you feel about them? For many people with depression, that handful of tablets and capsules that it sometimes seems we gobble like candies can be hard to get down. That is, while we know intellectually that these drugs are helping us, or at least could help us, many of us still have mixed emotions about taking them.

Have you ever wondered what exactly those pink or white or turquoise or yellow pills are doing once you swallow them? Scientists still can't fully explain how they operate to change our thoughts and our entire mood. How does that mystery leave you feeling? At different times I've felt dumbfounded, nervous, grateful, embarrassed, angry, resentful and relieved to reach for my regular doses from those amber bottles.

Play with this...
Write continuously for 20 minutes describing your feelings about taking medicines for psychiatric reasons. What emotions did you feel initially? Have they changed at all? How do you feel when you take your prescribed dose today? And would you feel any differently if these were drugs you were taking for some non-psychiatric ailment? Untangling such thoughts and feelings may provide some insight into our attitudes toward our depression and our life situations as well as our treatments.