In 2004 I sat in a psychiatrist ’s office watching him draw a picture of a leaking bucket.
He was trying to explain why I couldn’t stop crying and felt so utterly bereft.
Why I couldn’t eat or sleep, couldn’t think through the white noise in my head – why I thought I was going mad.
He told me I had a bucket in my brain, filled with chemicals like serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine.
These “neurotransmitters” carry signals between nerve cells, keeping the brain firing correctly. But I had got a hole in my bucket so the contents were leaking away.
And this chemical imbalance was causing my illness – clinical depression.
It was a huge relief. I wasn’t mad, or weak or worthless.
And the shrink’s analogy helped me to accept I needed drugs – drugs, I now believe, saved my life.
Antidepressants helped plug the hole in my bucket, so the neurotransmitters could replenish naturally.
And talking therapy helped me understand how it got damaged, and how to protect it in future.
Despite the many potential side effects some 8.3 million people in the UK were prescribed antidepressants last year.
But this week we all got a nasty shock when a study by University College London claimed the “chemical imbalance” theory is a myth.
After decades of careful research, psychiatrists say there is “no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities”.
They think it’s down to stressful life events – suggesting serotonin-boosting drugs could just be powerful placebos.
What? No leaky bucket? Have I been pointlessly popping pills for 18 years when I should have just pulled myself together?
Of course not.
Because while the anti-antidepressant brigade were shouting “we told you so” I read the UCL study more closely.
And it does not claim antidepressants are useless or that big pharma sold us a dummy.
It just shows that scientists don’t understand YET how they affect our brains.
Antidepressants clearly DO work for millions of people, especially when combined with psychological therapies.
But I fear this bombshell study could bring back the stigma, causing some patients to dump their drugs with devastating consequences.
Will experts ever get to the bottom of the chemical imbalance debate?
Don’t know, don’t care, as long as drugs keep me balanced.
I tried several antidepressants when I was diagnosed – citalopram to boost serotonin then venlafaxine which helps with noradrenaline.
But the only one that suited me was bupropion, which works on noradrenaline and dopamine.
After it was first prescribed in the 1980s medics noticed patients were suddenly giving up ciggies.
So in 1997 bupropion was marketed as Zyban – the first non-nicotine, anti-smoking drug in the world.
It helped millions of people quit their habit, escaping heart disease and cancer.
And it has helped me fix my leaking bucket – meaning life’s a whole lot better.
