Thought I'd post up this insightful article on the role of pills in mental health:
https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-role-of-pills-in-mental-health/Some years ago, I decided to eschew pharmacological intervention, very much because it prevented me from experiencing the very things I needed to face, to put in their rightful place, so that I could start to understand that they weren't going to bite me now.
We might want to feel as though we're "living in the present", but without being able to review how and why we're doing that - our behaviour "now".
Very often, living "now" is a strategy for blocking out what's to come, or to forget about what's happened. Other times we look to put distance between past and future, and we think of "now" as something that separates the two, differentiates between them.
Neither past nor future exist of course - which is not the same thing as saying x didn't happen, or that y won't.
Sometimes, feeling crap, is the very thing we need to sit with - rather than get out of, and understand that it's not a predictor of what's to come. I think this is very much what happens when we put ourselves in difficult situations in climbing; we're forced to accept the difficulty and work with it. In a great article I once read - but can't find, sorry - this was referred to as "a desire for meditation". It's why I used to put myself in scary places on the rock. Difficult terrain.
I went through a tough time, struggling tremendously with anxiety, and was attending my GP practice very regularly, looking for something to "take it away". I tried to get hospitalised, but they wouldn't take me
It was desperate.
I spent a few weeks with Dave Pegg over in the States, and decided to come off anti-depressants. (Thank you Dave x)
I still take things to help me sleep - and need to look at this - some prescribed, some not, some abused in a self-medicating way, but I'm trying to get to a point where both a "Desire for Medication" and "Desire for Meditation" are perhaps replaced by something more deliberate.