Katja Schuurman can no longer do without medication to suppress her obsessive neurosis, she announced last week in the podcast #Metznallen by Gwen van Poorten. “You can make your life so much more beautiful and better just by taking medicines”, she said.
But, she says, there is still a taboo on taking medicines for mental disorders and disorders. “We live in a country where we think we should do it ourselves and not put stuff in our bodies, because then we are not ourselves. But I am not myself without medicine. I am not the one who is angry or sad. This is who I am. I just need a little help with it. “
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Like Katja there are many. Figures from the Pharmaceutical Kengetallen Foundation (SFK) show this in 2019 1.1 million Dutch people were taking antidepressants.
‘People just take me as I am’
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Heidi Duivenvoorden (43) also only feels herself when she is on medication. She has ADD, an ADHD-related disorder in which attention deficit is in the foreground. “My thoughts are hyperactive,” she explains. “I talk a lot and quickly, I am very chaotic and easily overstimulated.”
Since she has been on medication against it, things have improved a lot. “It is a world of difference. Especially now that I have found a medicine that works really well for me, I feel better than ever. My boyfriend also notices that I am much calmer and more accessible when I use medicines. ways better with me. “
Heidi has sometimes quit for a few years. “Sometimes I get rebellious and I think: damn, I have to be able to do without it; people just take me as I am. But at a certain point I get stuck incredibly. Then I really run into myself and have the greatest difficulty with structure.”
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Late in your head
Her son (17) and daughter (15) use medication for ADHD and they also benefit greatly, according to Heidi. “My daughter is in pre-university education and has been taking medication for six months. She had to fight hard for years, but now it is much easier. She compares it to drawers in her head that were always open all at the same time: after a pill they close and can they open whichever they need. “
Although Heidi sometimes finds it difficult in herself that she needs medication to function properly, she fully understands this with her children. “If medication helps them be themselves and achieve their goals, who am I to deny them?”
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Heidi does not advertise her ADD and medication use; only close friends and her employer know about it. ‘I don’t want people to say,’ Did you take your pill? ‘ if I come across as very happy or active. In a way, I find it embarrassing that at the age of 43 I cannot do without a pill. I find it hard to give in to it, it’s an inner struggle. It feels like I’m not good enough of myself, but I have to get rid of that idea. “
Better version of myself
“My friend says: you are also good enough, but everything just works better with a pill like that. Then, according to him, I am the better version of myself. If I don’t take medication, the real Heidi will not work out. I have the space to be myself I now try to no longer see it as a defect, but to approach it more like him If you use crutches with a broken leg you don’t have to be ashamed, why should I be “Shame because I supplement a substance that is missing, making everything easier? A mental illness is such a label. But I’m not crazy, it’s just chaos in my head. That pill helps against it.”
‘I am anything but crazy or insane’
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Nazrien Ozir (45) has been taking antidepressants for about three years. She suffered from anxiety disorders and panic attacks. Now she still has it sometimes, but to a lesser extent.
“The antidepressants help me to rest my brain. In the morning before I take my pills, the adrenaline rushes through my body. When I don’t use them, I have a constant rush. I am always in a fight, flight. – or freeze mode, as if I was in an acute stress situation all the time, ”says Nazrien.
After Nazrien was the victim of a violent robbery, she no longer dared to walk the streets alone. “I was stiff when I saw guys walking who were even reminiscent of my robbers. When that happened, I was transfixed, broke into a sweat and my brain completely locked up.”
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Put in a box
Since she has been on antidepressants, things are getting better. “I still sometimes hyperventilate when something frightens me, but I am now able to keep walking. The pills suppress that extreme stress, they calm me down somewhat.” She’s not thinking about quitting for now, she says. She is not ashamed of it, although from her Hindustani-Surinamese background she experiences little understanding of psychological disorders. “There is a taboo about it. People quickly put you in a box, you are dismissed as insane or crazy. I am anything but that. If those pills help me to go through life a little more calmly, then I will take them.”
‘I keep taking it until my death’
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Anika Rooke (38) will never stop taking antidepressants again. She’s been taking it since she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder at the age of 18.
She had suffered from depression years before, but her mother was against Anika taking medication for fear of addiction. “I suffered from mood swings, tantrums, crying fits, a very negative self-image, fear of failure and was severely depressed. When I also started to damage myself, I started on antidepressants in consultation with the doctor.”
After being admitted to a clinic for over a year, she tried to stop the antidepressant she was taking at the time, but it didn’t work out well. “It turned out to be a bridge too far to do it on my own. I sank deeper and deeper into my depression and all the stimuli came in so hard that I could no longer function. I walked with my soul under my arm and went from mood swings to depression, to tantrum to self-harm. It was one big mess. “
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She decided to take medication again, this time also for a compulsive disorder developed in the clinic, until after 16 years of intensive therapy she again saw an opportunity to phase out the antidepressants. “I had learned so much and received new tools that it seemed a good time to investigate whether I could do with less medication or perhaps without it at all.”
The first weeks it was, except for some withdrawal symptoms. “But not much later all the stimuli came in twice as hard, I started to shake, slept badly and felt terrible. At one point I could only cry in a corner, I was no longer worth anything. The Anika for whom I “I had fought for so long and the one I had recovered had disappeared. I was a pathetic little human being, unable to participate in society. I felt so very bad and bad during that period.”
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No shame
She built up her medication again, this time for good. “It took months before I was back on the old dose, months in which I felt very unhappy. It was only after the familiar dose that I finally had the feeling: I am alive, I am back. Then I decided: I will never stop again. and I just turn 100 on antidepressants. I still stand by that. No more experimentation. I’m not ashamed that I need medication to function. It is what it is. I keep taking it until I die. “
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