What if I Got Antidepressants at the Age I Wanted Them?

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This thread is a sequel/follow-up to my earlier thread about antidepressants: "Do Aspies React Much More Strongly To Antidepressants?" (viewtopic.php?t=374987) In that thread, I talked at length about how happy Effexor made me. I also talked about how my therapist refused to get me antidepressants when I was a preteen thru teen, even though I was very depressed, and cried myself to sleep after half the sessions. I just never let myself cry during the sessions, because I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of having made me cry. What made it even worse, is that she wasn't honest about not wanting to prescribe me anything. Or more precisely, not wanting to refer me to someone who can prescribe. Time and again, she deflected my requests or begging with a joke, a platitude, or a rhetorical question. I eventually gave up trying. Which is probably what she wanted.

In the earlier thread, I also mentioned how I turned to alcohol to comfort myself, when I knew I wasn't going to get any antidepressants (or "happiness pills", as I called them). I first tried alcohol when I was 12, and never really stopped. Well, Effexor (75 mg dose) this year was even better than alcohol was at age 12. But back then, it's all that was available to me, so I was ecstatic to get even that.

Now, I'm aware they don't give Effexor to anyone under 18, and in some cases, to anyone under 25. So what I'd most likely have gotten is Prozac, if anything at all. But let's ignore specific medications, and keep the discussion to antidepressants in general. Unless, of course, a specific medication makes a difference in an aspie's happiness level.

So... WHAT IF that therapist agreed to get me antidepressants? Let's say she didn't deflect, and just said: "Sure, let's get you [drug]. You're going to be so happy!" How would my life be different? Would I have all the aspie-related problems I had in real life, due to being trapped in my bad mood? And would I still hate all therapists as strongly as I do today? (Probably not, but I think I'd still see them as a means to an end, like I do with my current psychiatrist.)

If anyone here had real-life experiences with antidepressants between ages 0 and 21, please, please share how it felt to you. Did it make you as happy as Effexor made me at age 35?

Last edited by Aspie1 on 02 May 2019, 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Depends on what you were given and how much

I've read about one study on this topic, which concluded antidepressants had minimal effect on teenagers, other than slightly increasing suicide risk.

Well, I was suicidal already. Heck, I had some form of suicide plans since I was 8. That's eight! (I didn't tell my therapist 'cause I didn't want her to put me in a mental institution.) At least an antidepressant might have kept me away from a lifelong alcohol habit, which I started specifically because I was feeling low and couldn't get "happiness pills". I don't drink much now, since it can interact with Effexor, although last month, when I inadvertently mixed the two, I made out with a woman in a nightclub. So I doubt an "increased suicide risk" from an antidepressant would have made much difference. I think it would have been worth it.

Or maybe I'm wrong.

I was given Prozac when I was 19 (I think , my memory is hazy due to the amount of anti psychotics that I was pumped with which also did absolutely nothing except give me side effects ) , it didn't fix anything but it did make me emotionally numb ( which has it's benefits ) , I was in a neutral state. I still tried to off myself though so it didn't help with suicidal thoughts.

I am of the opinion that some people on the spectrum are sensitive to AD's so it effects everyone different and does not necessarily do the same as it would for an NT - no proof of this , just my own experience.

I don't think there were any antidepressants when I was a teen.

To your question, aspie1, that kind of question, how would my life be different if..., devolves into a morass of tangled threads that quickly become overwhelming, at least to me. What if my mother had married the man who really loved her and was mature and stayed a friend her entire life, rather than my a$$hole father. That's one of my personal favorites. OTOH, what if I had been born in Somalia...what if I was born with CP...etc.

Your not that old , AD's were used in the 50's

I wondered who would catch that. Yes, there are old ADs still rattling around from the 50s. But nobody talked about them, and certainly weren't prescribing them to teens. It was an era during which mental illness was something to be ashamed of.

Antidepressants from the 1950's are still around. The oldest class are MAOI's. They're very powerful, but have many equally powerful side effects, and are addictive to boot, so they're seldom prescribed today. (Medication bottles still carry interaction warnings about MAOI's, though.) They were mostly superseded by SSRI's in the 1980's. Which means at least Prozac was around when I was in therapy, although it was probably very expensive, since it hadn't been genericized yet. Effexor hadn't been genericized, either, when I had milder depression in early 2000's; it was because of ongoing rejection by women due to my ugly looks. I'm pretty sure I could have gotten Effexor back then; it'd definitely be cheaper than the plastic surgery I was considering.

You know, I've been thinking about this lately - not antidepressants, but how does self-esteem get ground into the dust at critical points in personality development. How does a baby turn into a child, turn into an adolescent, and finally an emotionally devastated adult? Let's say for some autistic people the first wound is lack of emotional support from the mother (note, I said for some). Or mum is too busy with employment or older children. For some children, school is terrifying and adults unsupportive, but for luckier ones, it's a jolly good time with lots of friends and minimal bullying.

The child enters middle school/puberty and at this point, given the existing autistic brain structure, all the other kids are doing the NT sorts of things - flirting, cliques, etc. - and the autistic child develops a sense of isolation and depression. This goes on for years with a growing learned helplessness at each embarrassing juncture. I think this may well be the place where most of us have the biggest downfall, even bigger than infancy and primary school.

Any ideas how this could go better? Do we all accept that intensive ABA etc in the childhood years, will stave off the clash with others in adolescence?

Finally there are the HFA or hidden autistics who somewhat "pass" by masking; their trajectory of autism is a bit different. They may succeed somewhat in career and marriage, but ultimately shut down, much to everyone's surprise; only after many years of failure is the person finally diagnosed with autism.

So I'm saying, I'm not sure doling out pills to teenagers makes the most sense but prevention of these predictable clashes with reality that make us unsuccessful, hopeless, and depressed. But I don't know exactly how that would be prevented, other than better awareness and acceptance of autism by everyone involved. Thoughts?

[I'm very sorry if I offended anyone by the above descriptions.]

With the blithering idiots we have as therapists today, I wouldn't recommend any kind of therapy for an autistic person. (Except for occupational therapy.) For once, many autistics are simply too smart for therapy. I mean, really, who in their mind thinks that rhetorical questions about "feelings" are of any help? Or worse, parroting back what the patient just said, and in a mocking tone to boot. If you think about it, a 10-year-old child can do all that. At least NTs have the social intuition to give the therapist the "right" answers and nip the mockery in the bud. But autistics are out of luck.

I'm afraid antidepressants are the only real solution we have right now. They can make a life-and-death difference for some autistic teens, and greatly improve the quality of life for most others, or at least keep them from picking up an alcohol habit. At least until we, as Trump puts it, drain the swamp in the talk therapy industry. Then we can implement something that actually helps, rather than puts money in therapists' pockets, by keeping an autistic teen in a perpetually depressed state and dangling the solution just out of their reach. For their own good, of course.

You didn't offend me at all. This was actually a brilliant post.

Clashes with others? Maybe. But clashes within oneself, I'm doubtful.


Very closely related, I think. It seems to me that autistic people who learn to mask have effectively been their own ABA therapist. And I suspect that, with time, we'll discover that autistic people who have received ABA will follow much the same trajectory. In either case, the emphasis on publicly observable behaviour easily results in a facade which is at odds with our innate thoughts and feelings, and which is incredibly costly to maintain. Hence the "clashes within oneself". Am I the person who I feel myself to be, or is the social being perceived by other people truly who I am? Is the "inner me" inferior? Am I broken?

I must emphasise; I am not at all against autistic people being taught as much as they are able to learn about the behaviour and expectations of the people around them, nor even some masking behaviours, as in an imperfect world they can be practically useful. But when you teach people, or they infer, that "typical" behaviours are a "desired" outcome, it's not far from there to the conclusion that the innate self is deprecated, and so self-esteem suffers.

Last edited by Trogluddite on 04 May 2019, 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's what I tried to get from my therapist: I asked her to teach me to act in "good" ways. But other than the "Don't talk about the same things all the time", she didn't help at all. Every time I asked her if doing something was "good" or "bad", she turned the question back onto me and/or gave me the runaround. She was also really naive, like: "You don't need to impress people. They like you the way you are." ("No, they don't, you moron; that's why I'm asking you for input.")

So yeah, I ended up being my own ABA therapist. And later, by studying PUA and Red Pill, which were actually more helpful with my dating life than my therapy ever was. They just weren't around until 2001 and 2012, respectively.