I remember after a year of marriage, raising children and keeping callings (while holding a 50 hour a week job) I was frazzled and very unstable emotionally. I had a hard time focusing on even the most mundane tasks because I was burning the candle at both ends. Plus there were SO MANY women who seemed SO perfect, and i'm horribly competitive. I didn't want to seem like I didn't have it all together too.

I was very heavily medicated for depression and adult ADD. I realized years later that I did not have ADD, just was so overwhelmed from the stress that my mind began to wander. I must say, I enjoyed the energy I got from the pills for ADD, but recognize now that I was very addicted to them. If I forgot my pills one day, I was a wreck. I felt like shit for weeks after I stopped taking them.

Did anybody else deal with the need for medication while a member? What did you get medicated for? Did you see any of your friends or family deal with this?

Did it ever strike you as odd that while obeying the Word of Wisdom you were simultaneously breaking it too? I never thought about that one til much later...I was practically abusing prescription drugs. How is that worse than coffee again?

Yes, BIG TIME!!! They also stuck me in the Utah State Hospital for 3 FULL months cause of depression that was caused by the morg. Maybe my inner self knew it was wrong from the beginning. I was also forced into several other hospitals as well during my 20 years in UT. Once I was in the mental care system, it seemed like they bounced me from one hospital to another. All the meds did was make me fat and ugly. Now I have left UT and the morg and am only on meds because of bad anxiety problems due to backflashes of what happened to me there. I am also excersizing to get the weight off that UT and the morg helped me gain while on all those psych meds.

I wasn't on any meds, but I attended a RS book group where, one evening a woman brought up the fact she was on anti-depressants. This kicked off a discussion where we discovered that out of twenty-three women only three of us weren't on some kind of medication for depression. No-one seemed to think there was anything odd about this, except for me and my unmedicated friend.

Anti-depressants can be invaluable, but this percentage of women needing them? Another alarm bell rang.

I dont know if it is relevant but I was the only british woman there, the others were all american. Was it cultural? military? Or Mormon? Or perhaps coincidence?

Was in the branch presidency, was the branch clerk, taught classes, organized temple trips, was working and going to school full time.

The anxiety attacks became so bad I had to see LDS Social Services (aka, bloodletters from the dark ages) and they refered me to a born again Christian Psychiatrist who was nuttier than a fruitcake himself.

I was put on Amitriptyline and Alprazolam for depression and anxiety.

What I really needed was to get the hell out of the LDS Church before they sucked me dry.

Even after all these years I still get depressions from time to time. Sometimes they are pretty bad. I trace it all back to the LDS Cult.

What medicated me was leaving that damnable cult.

and so was every adult and teenage member of my immediate and extended family. It never really seemed to work for anyone, but they keep experimenting with whatever they can get a prescription for.

I left the church, changed my life accordingly, and no longer need drugs to get out of bed in the morning.

That's not to say I wouldn't go back on meds in a heartbeat if I needed it-- I just don't need it in the way I used to.

Oh yes. I take daily medication for depression since my mission.

Took medication for my last 5 years in. As soon as I left, I stopped taking them and never needed them again.

I remember sitting under the table clutching the phone talking to the woman down the street desperate to keep the conversation going so I wouldn't have to talk to my three children age 4 and under (I was 24).

Then I pulled myself together and went back to school (At BYU actually, but it was out of the house.)

I hated it though because I just felt numb, not happier. But it was better than feeling panicky or feeling completely wiped out, which was what the postpartum stuff was doing to me. Once I got my hormones sorted out, I went off them though and wasn't tempted to try again just to combat Mormonism. I know they help some people and they were helpful to me while I needed them but getting out of Mormonism is what actually made me happy. Anti-depressants made me numb.

With alcohol and caffeine and food...yeah, I was drugged as a member.

Toward the end, I had to have at least two cups of coffee to get me up in the morning, get the children persuaded, dressed, and ready for the three hours, and to face all my dreaded Sunday callings. I would take chocolate to chomp on. After church, we would order a pizza, and then I would go to bed! I'd pull the covers over my head, like I was trying to erase a horrible experience.

In everyday life, during the weekdays, I never drank coffee or ate chocolate, because I didn't like the crash that followed. The kids and I got up very early, for their early morning paper routes, and life was great! Sometimes we were sleepy, sometimes there was a ton of snow--but those were the usual, expected set-backs of normal life--and life was beautiful!

There is nothing as defeating, hopeless, and soul-sucking as the type of Mormon depression I'm talking about. They take heaven away from you, they tell you God will punish you, they even take away your precious children in the hereafter! When I was temple-married to a violent wife-beater, I wanted to kill myself! TSCC is not God's church! It is an evil cult!

Yes, European View, about the same percentage of our Utah Relief Society sisters were on antidepressants, or tranquilizers, or heavier psychotropic drugs such as Lithium and Depecote. I don't know how some of them functioned--well, they didn't function normally. They were glazed over, spaced out, and yes, numb.

During my last years as a Mormon, I would have "Sunday depression". Then it would begin Saturday, when I had to prepare for Sunday, and last until Monday afternoon, when I was at last back in the groove at my job, as an equal woman of value at the workforce. If I had a church meeting or activity in the middle of the week, the depression would return. I was depressed often enough, that I didn't have a clue that the cult was the cause. I thought it was midlife crisis, overwork, the kids starting to leave the nest, loneliness. NOT!

The second I walked out of the bishop's office and that church for the last time, my depression ended, never to return! Even after the initial feeling of freedom wore off, even after people started spreading gossip about me, judging me, accusing me, harrassing me and the kids, then shunning us--I was still much happier than I'd been as a Mormon. "The worst day outside of church is still better than the best day in the Mormon church."

No antidepressants were necessary.

Interesting, but, like orangecat, I had to be on Lorazepam for a while, and get help with PTSD. My Mormon parents allowed my older brother to beat me and torture me whenever he felt like it. He got away with it, because my Mormon Royalty parents denied it, to keep up Mormon appearances. I am scarred for life, and I blame the Mormon philosophy that males have supremacy over females, and that psychology is bunk, and that giving a child unconditionall love and affirmation will "spoil" a child.

I ought to be medicated for anger--LOL--but I exercise a lot, work hard, laugh a lot, and rant on RFM a lot.

I previously told you that I was hospitalized for 3 mos due to the morg and me refusing to become a Stepford Wife....One of my first assignments by TSCC was to be a visiting teacher. That went over me like a lead balloon!! My now exDH caught me hiding in the bedroom closet crying and sobbing uncontrollably almost going into hysterics cause I did NOT want to do it, so I made him lie for me and tell my VT partner that I was still at work...I think she knew I was at home, as she only lived a half a block away,but my company vehicle was in my driveway...I remember my exDH saying..."I've never seen you like this". That was a moment right after they baptised me. I must have known it was wrong then. I still get panic attacks.