How Prozac saved my life

My doctor told me to keep an eye on how I felt and, without any professional help, these episodes became more frequent. It took three years before I was referred to a psychiatrist, by which time I was having suicidal thoughts and was also suffering from delusions that I was under surveillance and that someone planned to kill me.

I felt I was a horrible person, but when the psychiatrist said that I suffered from severe clinical depression it gave me some meaning. In fact, it was a relief to know there was something physically wrong and that my difficulty in dealing with the world was not my fault. That diagnosis made me decide to give life another chance. I was 18 years old.

Recently I found a diary entry from that time which I find particularly haunting: "I'm going to start taking Prozac tomorrow," it reads, "and I'm terrified. What if it changes who I am? I could lose the ability to think, to feel, to be creative. What if I lose the desire to write?" I had been writing poems, short stories and had even had some articles published in the local paper.

In my opinion, there is nothing shocking about recent studies showing that the anti-depressant medication Prozac does not work for those who are not clinically depressed. It was never designed to treat mild depression, just as chemotherapy shouldn't be used to treat a headache. The way parts of the media simplified these findings, however, could make life even more difficult for clinically depressed individuals. Already faced with the stigma of mental illness, which, because it lacks visible injuries is often dismissed as being "all in the head", they now face a misinformed public believing that their treatment does not work and any perceived benefit is self-delusion.

I was surprised by the way my Prozac prescription affected me. I had expected to feel numb, which I didn't, or maybe a little manic, which I didn't either. What I did feel was better able to think clearly, to focus on one idea at a time, when before I had a buzz of thoughts swarming constantly, overwhelming me.

Once, before I started Prozac, I had called the Samaritans in the middle of this blizzard at 3am. An elderly man answered the phone and I poured my questions over him: "How can I be sure I exist?" I asked, "The scale of suffering in the world is so big, what can one person do?" even, "If God loves everyone then why did he take sides in wars in the Bible?" I would guess that it wasn't his easiest night in the office. He patiently deflected these questions but it was clear to me that he thought he was dealing with a crazy person and, when I hung up the phone, I realised that he was.

At 16, I had still believed that I could change the world. I was the outspoken president of my school fundraising club, convincing teachers and fellow pupils to support charitable causes at lunchtime and speaking during school assemblies to raise awareness about humanitarian issues like the Rwandan refugee crisis. Over the next couple of years, I had gradually stopped believing in myself and was crying more and more: thick, heavy sobbing which I could not control or understand. By the time I had left home at 18 to live on my own as a student, I had lost my appetite and went from a healthy size 12 to a size eight, and then I became paranoid. When I came home, I would burst into each room of my flat in turn, convinced that I would find someone there, waiting to bludgeon me to death. By the time I got help, I felt that death was preferable to living the life I had, filled with unfounded misery and fear.

When I spoke to my mum recently about this time she said: "I had an office which overlooked your flat so I could see your curtains were always closed. I felt torn because part of me thought that it's normal for teenagers to sleep a lot and I wanted to allow you your independence. I was trying not to interfere but I was really desperately worried that you might kill yourself."

I had formed an unlikely friendship with a 30-year-old schizophrenic man who lived upstairs. We would drink beer and listen to records as I tried not to laugh at his stories of alien spaceships landing on the roof. "They're coming for me tonight, so this is goodbye," he would say, but he was always at his window in the morning, to reassure me with delusions so complex that mine seemed small-fry in comparison - but that was only short-term relief.

It was only when I started taking Prozac that I slowly regained a sense of normality. I stopped feeling paranoid within a year and no longer thought about suicide, but I was still scared about even the immediate future and many days I lacked the motivation to go to university or even to get out of bed. Antidepressants did not make me feel happy, as many people believe, but they allowed me to think more rationally, to weigh my choices and eventually, over a period of almost three years, to find the strength to make decisions again.

By the time I was 21, I felt mentally strong enough to wean myself off the drug. I had been told that the reason I was depressed was because my brain was not making the right connections or releasing feel-good chemicals like other people's brains do. Prozac's function, I was told, is to retrain the brain to do this. My psychiatrist had explained that this was why it was important to take the drug continuously over a long time span, to allow my mind time to reconnect. A few months later, I stopped taking Prozac altogether.

In those first few days, I felt I had achieved something extraordinary, like I had been hauling a heavy weight uphill for years and now I was at the summit, freed from purgatory. Pretty soon, however, I was feeling miserable again and, incredibly, it took a couple of days to equate that with Prozac withdrawal. Asking myself why I felt so bad and finding no good reasons, I finally remembered what life had been like pre-Prozac and made the connection.

It might have been easier at that point to start taking it again, but facing the possibility of a lifetime of dependence, I was determined to try as hard as I could to live without it. Those first three weeks were hellish, but I distracted myself with the things I enjoyed: books, playing guitar, cooking and going out with friends. When I didn't feel like getting up in the morning I would literally slap myself in the face in an attempt to shock me into the day.

It is eight years since I stopped taking Prozac and I find it hard now to relate to that young woman who thought she had no reason to live. I think of myself as a caring, empathetic person, so it is particularly painful to remember that when I was struggling with suicidal thoughts I never thought of what my death would mean to those who loved me. Today, I find my greatest fulfilment in relationships with friends and family.

As for Prozac, it saved my life - and never robbed me of the creative urge to write as I had feared it would. I wouldn't go so far as saying that I am happier than the average person - far from it - but I wonder if I experience happiness more intensely than people who have never experienced depression. Having seen the floor of the abyss, even small joys make me feel on top of the world.