Advice and warnings like this kept me from seeking pharmacological help for my anxiety issues for over ten years. I missed out on a whole lot during my 20s because of it, and therapy alone was never enough. Now that I have started a therapeutic dose of an SNRI, I feel like myself again, the self I was in high school and college before my anxiety spiral started. My anxiety made me somebody I was not, and anti-depressants brought me back.

It's exciting to hear that your personal subjective experience with "everything that can be prescribed" generalizes perfectly to the other 7 billion humans on the planet. This should save a ton of time and money on medical research.

Not to mention the highly disputable value judgement that someone crippled by depression is somehow more authentic.

It is more authentic, the question is whether that means anything. Having invasive surgery without sedatives or anesthetics is more authentic, but we don't do it.

I disagree. I think you've only pointed out that depression and surgery with anesthetics require less intervention, but I don't think less intervention = more authentic.

Flourishing with other humans, whether in a tribe or NYC, is more authentic than starving to death in the wilderness.

I think it's obvious that any psychoactive substance will change one's self. Hence the word psychoactive.

Of course they'll change one's self, that's the point. Also talk therapy (hopefully) changes one's self. More specifically changing from depressed to not depressed. But that completely different from your original statement of "make you into somebody you're not".

To change one's self artificially is to make one into something he or she is not. Yes, I did not mention artificial, but I assumed that was a given.

By the same technical semantics parsing, it is either impossible or trivial for anything to "make you somebody you're not", depending on how you parse it.

If it means that you aren't the person that you are after taking it, then that's obviously contradictory. You are always the person you are.

If it means that you aren't the person you were before taking it, then the medication is not necessary for that. At any given moment, you are always a different person than you were in the previous moment.

And even if you (erroneously) reject the latter, you would still have to concede that you are not the same person, after "fixing" yourself through non-pharmacological means, as you were when you were depressed.

Well that's the kicker isn't it? These drugs do alter who the user is, to an extent. But presumably, the user wasn't entirely happy with how they were doing beforehand. Trying to wade throw a mess of external variables that are impacting your psyche while remaining simultaneously open to the possibility that the problem is within is a special level of hell that those dealing with depression are all too familiar with. There is of course a certain allure to the throes of depression. Nothing does a better job of forcing you up against the limits of your own existence and consciousness, and down into the rabbit hole, than when you start to realize that you're using your brain to analyze your brain to determine if your brain is the problem, all under the explicit assumption that your brain might well already be a problem that you couldn't possibly detect and really it's all just hopeless because how can you use a broken tool to analyze or fix itself and it's all a nonlinear chaotic system that you're at once in control of and trapped by... You get the picture. Sure, such mental exercises are fertile ground for creativity, but they're also fertile ground for slowly losing grip on the tattered remnants of what might be called sanity.

So you look to antidepressants. That's still you trying to fix you. And perhaps the changes it induces to the psyche don't outweigh the benefits of depression, even in the face of its monumental drawbacks that urged you into trying the pills in the first place. Now, I can hardly say I've been on everything that can be prescribed. It's exaggerating to say that I even dabbled in SSRIs. But for the few months I spent on them, I wouldn't say they made me into somebody I wasn't. I'd say that I made me into something different. Of course, I might not have liked that different somebody. I might have pondered whether this was all still in my head and I was swallowing sugar pills and what would that say about me if the mere suggestion that I was taking magic pills made me better but wouldn't that put me back at square one... And so on.

But I can't in good conscience begrudge anyone trying to muddle their way through life. If pills work for them then by all means take them. If they're happier with that different someone then I'd say they've embraced their new identity, not morphed into something they aren't.

I don't really know why I typed all this up. I'm tempted to Ctrl-A/Backspace it. But hey, when's the next time the ramblings of the inner conscience will be topical in HN?

If you must take the pill to become the new you, is it really you you're becoming? I feel that it's the pill, not your self, that becomes the identity.

I suppose we could take this further, for the sake of making a point, and ask if one receives a lobotomy, is one his or her self?

I'm glad you typed it up, it made me think.

"After severely injuring my leg and being prescribed a cane, I can safely say that prosthetics make you into somebody you're not. Yes, it might make it easier to get around. But, you know what? So does a car."

Did you just compare heroin to cars? =/

Think his point is that heroin is generally not considered a good thing, although it can obviously have some nice effects.

> Did you just compare heroin to cars?

Well, you'll reach your destination quickly and it's bad for your environment.

In seriousness, the stigmatization of medicating anxiety and depression is very unhealthy. While pills shouldn't be the first or only option, implying someone is weak for using meds is plain wrongheaded.

"No son, I'm not going to give you painkillers while you pass these gallstones. You see, that would change your state of mind and make you a different person. Plus, if you fight through the agony it'll make you a better human. It's natural, y'see."

There's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with heroin if it's used in a reasonable manner for something it can actually help with. It is, in fact, quite useful to deal with some kinds of physical pain. It's been eclipsed in recent decades by other kinds of opioids, but that's a difference of degree, not kind. Heroin isn't magically evil just because it's become a bogeyman 'substance of abuse' over the past few decades.

The point is that drugs are not inherently evil. Some drugs might be more harmful than beneficial, but that can only be determined by trials and evidence. Demonizing the things is the exact opposite of helpful.

In fact, I'll amplify the point: Injecting morality into things without a moral dimension is very harmful. It prevents people from looking at things rationally, by clouding the issue with emotional noise.

I agree and have no qualms with people's use of heroin, and have dabbled, myself. It was only presented as an example.

To amplify, there is nothing morally wrong with anti-depressants either. However morality is not the issue of my concern, the deadening of true self is.

Most descriptions of depression I have read sound like "the deadening of the true self" is what depression does, and any effective treatment would rather be the revival of the true self.

I'm not too concerned if my "true self" dies, growth means change, and change can mean death of a previous "self"

Is artificially modifying one's self ipso facto a bad thing? What's your basis for this claim?

There is no basis for me claiming that artificially modifying one's self is a bad thing, as I never made that claim. I only pointed out an observation.

I find it extremely doubtful that you can actually give a definition of "true self" which meets the following conditions: 1) coherent and non-contradictory, 2) in accordance with reality, and 3) something a person should care about preserving.

I find it even more doubtful that you can give a definition of "artificially modified" which is meaningfully distinct from natural change.