by Rachel Stewart

First, a disclaimer. I’ve been a functioning depressive for a large part of my adult life. I sought help for that in my forties, and like everybody else I was sold a lie by GP’s who didn’t know any better, but more so by the pharmaceutical industry that just can’t help themselves. If they could stick their collective grandmothers’ into a pill-sized form and sell her for a dollar, they would

So when I learned in 2022 that the first systematic umbrella review of the evidence for the serotonin “chemical imbalance” theory of depression, which found that “there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity”, I became even more depressed. What to do? Up my SSRIs to an even higher ineffective dose?

Here’s one of the two researchers who did that study speaking recently on Triggernometry. Psychiatrist Dr Joanna Moncrieff sees depression as a “mood state” rather than an illness and argues that it's a largely normal reaction to adverse circumstances which some people are more prone to than others. In other words, it’s generally situational.

And therein lies the other problem. If you’ve been on SSRIs long-term how the hell do get off them?

The other researcher on the ground-breaking review with Dr Moncrieff was Mark Horowitz who is a psychiatry researcher and deprescribing expert. He has said that the historical lack of research in to stopping antidepressants is “the same as allowing cars to be sold without brakes”. Hmmm, that’s inspiring.

Like me, some years ago he attempted to get off them and learned the hard way that it is a long, slow tapering process that can take many months or even years.

For me coming off them was like being in a horror movie. Like, I’m not a person who is scared of anything too much in my day-to-day life. But fairly suddenly I was nervous about going outside in the dark – I mean, that’s where the possums are! – plus even in the daylight I thought everybody was out to kill me. Which, too, may have had some truth in it considering the litany of death threats received in my lifetime for voicing opinions. But, nah, this was different.

I, of course, had tapered off the drugs way too fast – thinking I was bulletproof – and what a wakeup call that was. So back on them I went. All sorted. Except that nobody appears to know how they work, or even if they work, and what damage they’re doing to you in the meantime. And more and more people have come to understand that SSRIs are essentially ultimately pointless for depression and dangerous to withdraw from.

But here’s where it gets really interesting. Anyone noticed an explosion of ADHD in adults? Fad or just more drug sales? Check this out.

So, yeah, here we are. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world. It’s also an incredibly drugged up world. Street drugs baaaad but prescription drugs gooood.

Me. I think I’ll go in search of an old-fashioned ten pints and, at the very least, have a fun night out socialising and talking rubbish. There’s nothing quite like it. Until the next morning.

Then I’ll just a take some paracetamol. It’s all good.

Listen to the full episode of Riding Shotgun.