Many Mormons are on Prozac. I know that Prozac gets rid of anxiety, but does it get rid of anxiety so completely that its Mormon users no longer care whether or not the Church is true?

Does anybody know? I have felt "pressure" to take Prozac and other antidepressants. It is almost as if people look at these drugs as more than just medicine. "Prozac pushers" seem to be trying to use Prozac as a form of social control.

If Prozac is being used for social control, it fits perfectly into the Mormon mindset, which also strives for social control. Don't want to go to the temple? Take Prozac! Don't want to stay on your mission? "Take Prozac," says your mission president.

You are joking, right?

watched people testify in court on youtube that Prozac caused their loved ones to commit suicide. It scares me, and it scares me that my loved ones have tried to influence me to take antidepressants. They think I might need them. I am currently not financially successful, while my parents and siblings are, so my parents tend to think if something is wrong it is with me rather than with their Mormon religion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2012 09:23PM by behindcurtain.

obviously some people benefit from it. My ex wife took antidepressants, not prozac, but it helped her to lead a normal life.

I was prescribed prozac in an attempt to control chronic pain.
It affects everyone some what different, so keep that in mind.
I took it for 6 months. I hated that stuff.
My experience is that it removes your emotions to the point you don't care about much of any thing.
The bishop is an asshole? Eh, who cares?
Husband is gone 4 nights a week at church? Eh, who cares?
The dog wants out? Eh, who cares?
I couldn't stand it! I felt like it removed my personality, and gave a free pass to any butt heads that passed my way. I caught myself just sitting on the sofa staring into space. That was it! I want to live life, not just numb out and endure it. I couldn't wait to get that stuff out of my system.

I'm not saying that Prozac and its family are not ridiculously over-prescribed. Personally, I'd rather live on the street than take any of the lot. My point is, it's rather naive to think that it's aimed at Mormons, it's aimed at everbody in developed countries.

My DH is on Zoloft for depression relating to a business failure/ us losing our home as a result. His family also has a history of depression. He has not "checked out." Not like the woman in Primary who we noticed was allowing a Sunbeam to scribble on her leg with a pen.

That being said I feel that there is a valid argument for overuse and abuse of prescription drugs within LDS inc for behavior control. My parents had a rather unscrupulous doctor who after finding out via testing that *one* of my brothers had severe ADHD was willing to prescribe Ritalin to anyone in our household at my parent's request. At one point everyone but my mother was on it, and my dad told my husband that he ought to get me on Ritalin to make me "normal."

I feel like many LDS women especially feel sad or legitimately depressed because of the impossible standards the church sets for them. Not only do you have to fit the 1950's SAHM mold, but you *have* to be wealthy (or look that way), look happy, and fulfill countless callings and commandments. Food supply, geneaology, journaling (WTF, journaling?), Book of Mormon reading, Visiting Teaching, and on it goes. Plus a near-requirement to raise a brood of perfect happy LDS children. It's overwhelming and Prozac or whatever available drug seems like an easy solution rather than the church or it's requirements being the problem.

Thou art a subject of the divine,

Created in the image of man,

by the masses, for the masses.

Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill.

Work hard; increase production,

prevent accidents, and be happy.

Let us be thankful we have commerce.

Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And...be happy.

behindcurtain Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Many Mormons are on Prozac. I know that Prozac
> gets rid of anxiety, but does it get rid of
> anxiety so completely that its Mormon users no
> longer care whether or not the Church is true?

I think there is a differance between getting better from clinical anxiety and not caring about important issues, such as "is the church true."

In other words, taking Prozac doesn't make you feel the same way one might when high on, say, marijuana.



>
> Does anybody know? I have felt "pressure" to take
> Prozac and other antidepressants. It is almost as
> if people look at these drugs as more than just
> medicine.

I don't know anyone who thinks that Prozac is more than medicine but perhaps we run with different crowds.




>"Prozac pushers" seem to be trying to
> use Prozac as a form of social control.

Well, I've alway thought insulin is being used a form of social control.


> If Prozac is being used for social control, it
> fits perfectly into the Mormon mindset, which also
> strives for social control. Don't want to go to
> the temple? Take Prozac!

Never hear this advice myself.

> Don't want to stay on
> your mission? "Take Prozac," says your mission
> president.

Nor this either.

I was on Prozac when I learned the church was a fraud. Within a couple of months I quit taking it and then pushed harder in my marriage for the right to worship as I please. I stayed active for another 6 months, but it was hell.

Life it good again now that I'm off of it, but sometimes I take the occasional Zanax for isolated anxiety situations.

In case anyone was wondering I was on it for mild postpartum depression and continued on it when my parents died that very same year. I actually stopped taking the Prozac so that I could properly grieve my parents, although I am glad I had it to get me through the first few months. None of it was due to church stress.

This is proven by science.

For someone suffering deep clinical depression, these drugs are very effective and are enormously helpful. Depression can be debilitating.

It's very sad that people who don't understand depression or pharmacology give Prozac a bad rap and scare people who really need it from it's use.

Like with any prescription drug, patients need to be monitored and counseled. But the suffering alliviated by SSRI's is a positive thing.

I just read recently that people who have a smaller brain hippocampus are much more prone to depression.

That being said, my personal experienc with Prozac was beyond positive.

My late husband suffered from clinical depression. He was very successful and respected in his profession. He worked hard in his profession as well as in the church. And yet he was never happy and not just unhappy -- it was a dark depression. It was always there to some extent and sometimes swallowed him whole.

He finally sought help and was put on prozac along with counselling. I have to say that prozac saved our marriage as well as his relationship with our children.

His being on prozac bothered his mother (I think for a multitude of reasons) and she was always asking him when he was going to get off of it. He finally said to her, "If I was told that prozac had side effects that would KILL me I still would not stop. I would rather live only one more year on prozac than 40 more years without it."

He felt that it allowed him to finally be who he was.

I agree with behindcurtain and Mia.

I had a "Regional" calling, which put me in the middle of large groups of RS women. I was very curious about antidepressant use, so I did informal polls, in various groups. I was STUNNED by how many women were taking Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Valium, Xanax, and other drugs--about 30% of them in our region. One clique of women said they "swore by" Vicodin! They were not injured or in pain or old. They were upper-middle-class, non-working, married mothers, usually with Type A or narcissistic husbands. (They drove cars on Vicodin! One, a plastic surgeon's wife, who always ran stop signs, ran into a telephone pole one afternoon, and was killed.) Some of these women were very difficult to work with, and would have extreme mood-swings, the like of which I've never seen in any other group of adults, before or since.

The person who most interests me is the Mormon female who is not officially clinically depressed. This was me. A GP gave me a prescription for Zoloft, because I asked for it, and told him, "I think I'm depressed." The drug definitely numbed my emotions. My thinking was muddled, too, like there was cotton in my head. I could barely function at work, and at home with my children, but I didn't feel as "invested" in the outcome of things. "So what." When I fell asleep in a business meeting, that was the last straw. Just like Mia, I couldn't wait for it to get out of my system. My brain chemistry didn't require it.

An antidepressant or a tranquilizer would definitely make the 3 hours of meetings easier. It would make the Joseph Smith garbage easier to swallow. A fogged-up brain doesn't question.

Anyway, in my experience, I was "depressed" because I was oppressed! As a divorced single mother who worked, I had no social standing, no respect, and definitely no love. I also had no RIGHTS, even though I was functioning as a male as the head of my household and sole support of my children. You might not believe this, but the moment I walked out of the Mormon church building for the last time, my Sunday depression vanished, and it never returned! Of course, I was sad when my TBM parents and my brother and SIL died--but I was not depressed. I didn't have to deal with all that judgment-by-Joseph-Smith and polygamy-in-the-celestial-kingdom tripe that went along with Mormon deaths.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2012 08:20AM by forestpal.

Oh not this again... I've said this alot for people that it helps great dont be afraid to let it help but it does have side effects and it isnt for everyone yet some doctors think it is. Although it might help some people I'd strongly sudgest trying a non drug route first.

The first thing that made me check my mothers drugs and the side effects was one of the pills in the prozac family was one of her meds for nerve pain. After months of stories about killers suddnely being off their meds then killing there was a news story here about a guy that jumped from a window wile he was on holaday a holaday he hoped would save his marrage, he jumped with his two children thinking he'd die with them. The children died and he lived. It turns out he was desprate for the drugs to work and had wated a cople of months with the side effects. So for him it didnt work and our national health there was no other thearapy offerd.

At the college I used to go to I didnt reaslise what did it before but I noticed about half the people in college had slurred speech so yeah it fogs peoples minds a bit also makes thair hands feel a bit odd sort of like the residue of dried cheap hand creame.

I've almost been put on anti depressants myself but refused as I was being beaten up and well to be given stuff to make me feel bettter about being beaten up I thouht that was an insult to my inteligance and could end up being very dangrous.

Yes I do beleve it is used as a form of soshal control but not as bad as you think. Theres no conspiraccy just people not prepared to deal withsome of the unpleasantness of emotions. It can be used to fiddle abuse figures if some GPs just cant deal with another cort case or those of us with doble dissabilites see the hell our life will be it's used to just shut us up.

Perhaps not the Prozac brand, but one of them out there. You wouldn't believe some of the conversations we've had about the "righteous Brethren" and all that. Dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb. But she feels she needs to take them because otherwise she is overcome with anxiety and depression. Go figure. I once told her that if she cut the church out of her life she will have also excised the anxiety and depression, and she got all pissed at me.

I just started on Cymbalta for debilitating pain. I am not clinically depressed; more like a situational depression because I am always in pain and feeling lousy- too lousy to do what I used to do.

No results yet, but I was told it could take two weeks or so. I'm afraid to hope to tell you the truth; so far nothing has helped.

I wouldn't consider medication for depression if I didn't think the alternative was far more dangerous and damaging.

Strong opinions against taking Prozac are based largely on scary news reports, rather than on sound medical advice. I didn't WANT to put my child on Prozac, but she was suffering tremendously, and nothing I could say was helping her to cope better. I feared she was heading toward destructive behavior.

It has helped. A LOT.

Many people take this medication safely and effectively. And many doctors recommend therapy along WITH the medication, so the person can learn better coping skills. But the medicine brings faster relief than therapy does.

It will work better for some people than others and some people have side affects that they can't tolerate. That doesn't make the medicine BAD. It just means it's time to try another kind of treatment.

BTW, we hear a lot about depressed Mormons taking Prozac here, because Mormonism makes them depressed. That doesn't make Prozac bad or make taking it a sign that you are living wrong.

Depression is not just a Mormon problem. Non-mormons and even EX-mormons get depressed. Surprised, right? And they take Prozac, too. That doesn't make them dumb, drugged up, or lazy for not working it out on their own.

I know a couple of people who are vocally OPPOSED to anti-depressants. And therapy. And all they can do is complain about life and how powerless they are. And others who like to dish up judgement for people who are depressed. Being depressed is their own fault for not living right.

Personally, I respect people who want to do whatever it takes to get better and move their lives forward.