I Can't Believe I Need To Say This, But SSRIs are Not A Slippery Slope That Lead To Murder

Hi there! I'm going to get candid today, because I am Done.

SSRIs are trending on Twitter because of this [incredibly stupid] tweet, and many others like it:

(Marjorie Taylor Greene also said something to this effect, but I am not giving that woman any more airtime than she already gets.)

Let's set aside the fact that drugs, broken homes, and godless homes (read: homes where the author's religion isn't a major feature of family life) have definitely been around for way longer than guns have; let's also not focus on the fact that the link between violent video games and real-life violence has been shown, time and again, to be mostly insubstantial; I want to talk about that ridiculous claim about SSRIs.

What Are SSRIs?

Time for a quick crash course: SSRI stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor - which is a perfect description of what this medication actually does.

SSRIs, like Zoloft and Lexapro, are commonly perscribed as antidepressiats or anti-anxiety medication.

What SSRIs do is control how quickly your body reabsorbs serotonin. Serotinin is the chemical in your brain responsible for things like mood, sex drive, digestion, and sleep, and healthy levels of serotonin are thought to create a calm, happy, balanced mood. Serotonin imbalances have been known to cause depression and anxiety disorders.

(Photo : Melanie/Enstarz)

When someone has a serotonin imbalance, one of the most common issues is that their brain is reabsorbing serotonin molecules too quickly to actually use them effectively - they don't stick around in the brain long enough to do their job keeping you calm and happy. SSRIs use different methods to help keep some of that serotonin in your brain, ready for use, for longer. This helps many, many people feel less anxious and/or depressed.

Can SSRIs be dangerous?

SSRIs do not work for everyone. If you take them, and your issue is not that your brain is reabsorbing serotonin too quickly, the extra serotonin might make you feel weak, tired, nauseous, or even more anxious and irritable - it can also make you suicidal, especially if you are under 25 and your brain is not yet finished maturing.

Unfortunately, as we are still in the very early stages of the science of psychology and psychiatry, much of how we treat mental illnesses is trial and error. Doctors have no recourse to help someone who is mentally ill other than listening to their symptoms, trying something that their years of research has led them to believe will work, then closely monitor and work with their patient to see if they're improving and watch for red flags.

It's an arduous and sometimes torturous process, and the fact that lives are sometimes lost in the process is not a tragedy anyone should take lightly - but that doesn't mean that we should just stop trying, or that medication itself is evil.

I'm all for a nuanced discussion about some of the more dangerous side-effects these medications can have on people who are given them when they don't need them; what I'm not here for is the one-dimensional conversation happening on Twitter right now, in which right-wingers (in a desperate attempt to find anywhere to place the blame for YET ANOTHER mass shooting that isn't on their precious guns) are trying to imply that all mass shootings are caused by people on this one specific class of medication...that over 38 million Americans take.

Let's set aside the fact that it's easy to make the leap from "takes medication for anxiety and depression" to "is anxious and depressed and has a gun in their hands" to see what the real issue there could be. I think it's more important to quash this notion before it spreads and makes people overly nervous, because SSRIs have definitely saved far, far more lives than they have claimed.

Hi! My Name Is Melanie, and I Take SSRIs.

As you can probably see in my byline, my name is Melanie Weir. I am a 26-year-old magna cum laude college graduate with a partner, friends, and an editorial position at an online publication. I also have ADHD, and due to the fact that it wasn't diagnosed until two years ago, I also suffer from depression and anxiety. I take SSRIs for that.

I've also never committed a mass murder - or any murder, for that matter.

(Photo : Jess/Enstarz)

Two years ago, I was more lost than I'd ever been. I had already been getting depressed before the pandemic hit - finding out you had ADHD your whole life at age 24 sucks for a whole host of reasons I don't have time to get into here - but when I had to quarantine away from most of my friends and family, and started fighting with the ones I did have, I really started to lose it.

I was crying every day. I began to believe that all my friends hated me for inexplicable reasons. I barely ate. I simultaneously became agorahobic and stopped caring about everything because I wasn't talking to anyone anyway. And the anxiety that I've had my entire life only got worse as the status of the virus changed every day.

I felt worse than sad and angry - I was totally numb. I was just going through the motions of living my life, and it felt so hellish and pointless that there were moments that I truly wanted to die. Then I finally called a therapist and a psychiatrist, and within a couple of weeks they had assessed my symptoms and determined I should take SSRIs.

Adjusting to this medication was no picnic - they started me on a very low dosage and slowly stepped it up every couple of weeks, and each time they did it was the same symptoms: Extreme fatigue, nausea, and sudden, intense crying spells; but each time my body did finally adjust, I felt better and better. Suddenly I could feel again; I was feeling talkative; I had enough energy to do more than wake up, eat, look for a job, and go back to bed; I could finally go for more than one day at a time without crying. Life finally didn't feel pointless anymore.

I also remember the point when it felt like I was taking too much, and we stepped my dosage back down - but I didn't feel anything that was likely to make me want to wield a gun. If anything, I felt manic, like I was way happier and more peppy than I ought to be in most situations - and occasionally I was more easily annoyed than usual. Uncomfortable, but nothing at all rage-inducing.

And when we stepped it back down - and on days when I forget to take the meds - I felt similar symptoms: Nausea, confusion, fatigue, crying, and strange sensations in my hands and feet - but never was I filled with enough rage to force me to kill even a bug, let alone commit a mass shooting.

Why are you telling us this, Mel?

Thank you for asking; I'm saying all this to make a point that I couldn't really make with the character limits on Twitter, and that's that situations as real and complex as human psychology cannot be broken down into "these meds good, these meds bad." As easy a solution as it would be to point your fingers and one medication and go "that's the one making people crazy," it's not only inaccurate, it's incredibly harmful to people whom the medication actually does help.

It's not a secret that the science behind psychiatry and medicating mental illnesses is in desperate need of advancement - but returning to the stone ages and outright panning medications that have been shown to help millions of people is deeply irresponsible, not to mention ignorant.

I am a [relatively] happy, successful young woman who takes SSRIs every day to balance her mental health. I am not ashamed of that, and having experienced their effects, I'm baffled at how anyone thinks they could be the cause of a mass murder.

I could share literally hundreds of anectdotes from people like me on Twitter saying the exact same things - and even some incredibly different stories that make the same point - but I'm not going to, because I shouldn't have to. I encourage you to read the thread yourself, but we all know this is a placebo arguement meant to distract from the real issue:

You know what's involved in 100% of all mass shootings? A gun.