BETWEEN A PILL AND A HARD PLACE

New research reveals that long-term use of antidepressants may raise your risk of serious health problems. But getting off the medication poses its own set of risks

- OLIVER BROUDY

IT STARTED AROUND five years ago. My boys were two and four, my wife was a stranger, and my professional life felt like an avalanche of uncertainty and stress. In the morning, the air smelled like cinders; in the evening, the sun looked like blood. When people opened their mouths, I stared at them blankly. All I could hear was the howling of orcs.

More than half of guys who have symptoms of depression – and may benefit from antidepressants – don’t seek professional help. I’m not one of those guys. My primary-care doc handed out the candy: 150mg of bupropion, a starter dose. I whined, and she doubled it.

Life got less jagged. I discovered a newfound emotional resilience. Marital spats no longer led to isolation. A wind chime replaced the tolling of doom.

These days, life feels almost Brady Bunch normal. Every morning, I wake up humming like an idiot. Feed the kids, water the plants, pop the pill. Heck, I could do this forever. Many people do. According to the PBS, one in every eight Australians are using the drugs, including about 100,000 children.

A STAB IN THE DARKNESS

Thing is, there’s a lot we don’t know about antidepressants and how and why they interact with the brain, largely because we don’t understand most of the hows and whys of the brain itself. What we do know is that there is recent research that suggests that some antidepressants – including the class known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) – may increase the risk of heart attacks, seizures and dementia, among other things. Granted, the data remain pretty squishy – more correlation than causation. And no one has conducted long-term research on antidepressants for anywhere close to the amount of time people have been on them – in some cases, 25 years.