{"id":502165,"date":"2026-03-04T00:17:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/502165\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T00:17:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:17:15","slug":"youve-taken-antidepressants-for-years-has-it-changed-your-personality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/502165\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019ve taken antidepressants for years. Has it changed your personality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your Mileage May Vary<\/a> is an advice column offering you a unique framework for thinking through your moral dilemmas. It\u2019s based on value pluralism<\/a> \u2014 the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. To submit a question, fill out this anonymous form<\/a>. Here\u2019s this week\u2019s question from a reader, condensed and edited for clarity:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been on antidepressants on and off (mostly on) since I was in my late teens. I\u2019ve struggled for years with depression and anxiety, and the medication has seemed to help. But I\u2019ve often wondered what it would be like if I tried to stop. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s still a lot we don\u2019t know about how antidepressants work. How much of what I felt to be them \u201cworking\u201d might have been a placebo? And I\u2019m a very different person now than I was back then. What if I don\u2019t need the medication anymore?<\/p>\n

I feel pretty happy in general, way happier than I was in my teens. But I just can\u2019t shake the feeling that I\u2019m medicating myself unnecessarily, without great evidence to back up the decision. Do I owe it to myself to find out what it would be like to be off medication? Did I make a mistake going on meds so early without thinking about how difficult an offramp might be?<\/p>\n

Dear Antidepressant Ambivalence,<\/p>\n

You\u2019re in good company: One in six<\/a> adults in the US currently takes antidepressants, and many wrestle with this question. That includes me; I take an antidepressant for chronic anxiety. And the wrestling makes sense, because antidepressants come with a lot of unknowns \u2014 both scientific and philosophical.<\/p>\n

I have no medical training, so I can\u2019t give medical advice, and decisions about psychiatric drugs should absolutely be made in conversation with a mental health professional. But let me offer you some framing thoughts that might help you get situated in this confusing landscape.<\/p>\n

On the scientific level, we do have strong evidence<\/a> that antidepressants are more effective than a placebo, though their effectiveness varies<\/a> from person to person. On average, people are 25 percent likelier<\/a> to feel better if they take the real drug than if they take the placebo.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019re not really sure why antidepressants work. The old \u201cchemical imbalance\u201d model, which proposed that depression arises because there\u2019s not enough serotonin floating around in the brain, is not taken seriously today<\/a> among experts. Instead, scientists now have other hypotheses, like the idea that antidepressants work by boosting neuroplasticity. But you\u2019re right that there\u2019s still a lot we don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Have a question you want me to answer in the next Your Mileage May Vary column?<\/p>\n

And then there are the philosophical uncertainties. Antidepressants shape our thoughts and emotions, which make up a lot of what we think of as the self. So they can raise big questions about identity, about who we \u201creally are,\u201d especially for those of us who\u2019ve been taking them for years.<\/p>\n

Most psychiatrists, with their meager 20-minute appointments, fail to help their clients explore these deeper questions productively. Yet the questions are extremely important.<\/p>\n

The anthropologist Alice Malpass and her colleagues offer a useful framework<\/a> for thinking about this. Based on a lot of ethnographic research, they report that managing antidepressant medication involves two interconnected dimensions. On the one hand, there\u2019s the \u201cmedication career,\u201d which consists of your decision-making about whether to take meds, how much to take, and for how long. On the other hand, there\u2019s the \u201cmoral career,\u201d which is about how you make meaning out of all those practical decisions. What story are you telling yourself about your condition? About yourself?<\/p>\n

Notice that to Malpass, the moral career is a full half of the equation, and rightly so: We know that the meanings people assign to their medications<\/a> feed into their treatment outcomes. So I think it\u2019s important to tackle the moral dimension of your question head-on. You ask, \u201cDo I owe it to myself to find out what it would be like to be off medication?\u201d<\/p>\n

I believe the answer is no.<\/p>\n

A common trope in the discourse on antidepressants is the worry that taking psychiatric medication means you\u2019re moving away from your \u201ctrue self\u201d or \u201ctrue personality.\u201d That leads some people to wonder if they\u2019re failing that self by not seeing what they\u2019d be like off the medication. But I don\u2019t think any of us has one \u201ctrue self.\u201d We are always being shaped and reshaped by everything we encounter.<\/p>\n

When I consider my own identity, I don\u2019t see one preexisting essence \u2014 I see myself being constantly co-constituted by the influence of my family and friends, by the articles and videos I encounter online, by the yoga and meditation I do, by the coffee I\u2019m drinking as I write this.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s no preexisting one true self, then you can\u2019t \u201cowe\u201d it to that self to act in this way or that.<\/p>\n

Instead, your task is always to look forward \u2014 to choose what sort of self you want to become. That means weighing the pros and cons of each option life offers you, and picking the options that you believe, based on the knowledge available to you in the current moment, will move you closer to the version of yourself you wish to be.<\/p>\n

As the 19th-century philosopher S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard once observed<\/a>: Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.<\/p>\n

So, no, I don\u2019t think you made a mistake by going on meds as a teenager. \u201cMistake\u201d implies a regrettable choice, but since you were making the choice that seemed best given the knowledge available to you at the time, there\u2019s nothing you need to regret. Chances are the meds did help you feel better back then, even though they raise the tricky question of whether and how to consider an offramp now. (You know who should feel regret? The psychiatric establishment, which has failed to properly study<\/a> how to safely wean people off these medications. That lack of research is outrageous.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to imagine that if you hadn\u2019t started meds as a teen, you wouldn\u2019t have to deal with any tricky questions today. But as the psychiatrist Awais Aftab points out<\/a>, that\u2019s a fallacy:<\/p>\n

Sometimes the patients I see start psychiatric treatment for depression, anxiety, ADHD, etc., for the first time in their 30s, after years of hesitancy. When the treatment works, a common emotion I hear in such situations is regret: \u201cI wish I had started this medication 10 years ago.\u201d While people on long-term antidepressants wonder, \u201cWho would I be off these medications?\u201d the unmedicated are not immune from what-ifs of their own. Who could I be if I were taking antidepressants? Could I be more functional, more productive, a better parent, or a better spouse? Would I have been less obsessive, less neurotic, or more assertive?<\/p>\n

In other words, there are trade-offs either way. Ambivalence is a totally normal response to a situation like this \u2014 maybe even the most appropriate response. As Aftab writes, this ambivalence is simply \u201cthe moral cost of living in a world in which medical progress presents us with more and more choices, and by doing so, brings the full diversity of human values into play and generates dizzying varieties of uncertainties and trade-offs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the face of all these uncertainties, which make it impossible to know if being on antidepressants is the best possible choice in some objective sense, the best you can do might be to consider \u2014 in partnership with a mental health professional \u2014 how the trade-off is showing up in your own life: Are the benefits of being on medication most likely outweighing the costs?<\/p>\n

Be aware that even if the answer is no, and even if you want to come off the medication, it\u2019s not advisable to stop taking antidepressants abruptly or at a time of high stress; a professional can give you some guidance on how to taper gradually, which can lessen the chance of withdrawal struggles.<\/p>\n

The fact that some people experience severe withdrawal symptoms<\/a> when they stop antidepressants has made some people wonder about dependence. So it\u2019s worth noting that, although people can form a physical or psychological dependence on antidepressants, that\u2019s not the same thing as \u201caddiction.\u201d<\/a> The latter generally comes with several other features, including compulsiveness, turning away from social connections, and using a drug in larger doses even when it causes health problems.<\/p>\n

If you or anyone you know is considering suicide or self-harm, or is anxious, depressed, upset, or needs to talk, there are people who want to help.<\/p>\n

Still, I know some people hate the idea of being \u201cdependent\u201d on anything at all \u2014 even, yes, coffee. If you\u2019re among them, you might find the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt\u2019s ideas helpful.<\/p>\n

Frankfurt drew a distinction<\/a> between first-order desires (what we want) and second-order desires (what we want to want). To Frankfurt, what distinguishes the situation of a person with an unwilling addiction to some substance is that they have a first-order desire that conflicts with their second-order volition \u2014 they want not to want the substance, but they find it too difficult to act on that second-order preference.<\/p>\n

When considering my own experience, I find this clarifying. I know I have a second-order stance about the kind of person I want to be: someone capable of being deeply present with others, being kind and patient, being creative and productive, and being (more often than not) delighted by life. And this, for me, translates into a first-order desire to take my medication because I think it\u2019s helping me achieve that second-order desire. In other words, my desires feel aligned.<\/p>\n

Importantly, I feel capable of taking a step back periodically and choosing whether I want to continue taking the medication or whether I want to get medical support to taper or come off it. I recognize that the latter might be very hard, but it still feels within the realm of choice. So although I feel some ambivalence, like you do, it doesn\u2019t keep me up at night.<\/p>\n

If your experience is different \u2014 if it does keep you up at night \u2014 then I hope you\u2019re able to find a mental health professional who is sensitive to the importance of the \u201cmoral career\u201d and can help you thoughtfully explore it.<\/p>\n

Bonus: What I\u2019m reading<\/p>\n

In light of this week\u2019s question, I reread Lauren Oyler\u2019s New Yorker piece about her anxiety<\/a>. She explains that, despite her various symptoms, she\u2019s never tried to get a formal diagnosis or go on psychiatric medication because \u201cI do not want to have these problems that are notoriously difficult to solve, about which there is no professional agreement.\u201dMy mind is always spinning up a narrative about my life, and that storytelling tendency is so strong that I was surprised to learn, from the philosopher Galen Strawson, that some people don\u2019t experience themselves narratively at all<\/a>.This recent Aeon essay<\/a> explains how Japanese philosophy thinks of the \u201cself,\u201d and argues that the tendency of Western philosophers like Descartes to believe in one true self has led to a messed-up view of ethics for the rest of us. A taste: \u201cWestern philosophers succumb to the temptation to hold on to a fixed notion of the self that exists independently of that uncompromisingly polyphonic world, so that we can somehow construct a universal theory of ethics through the self-referential universalisation of individual consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve read 1 article in the last month<\/p>\n

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\"Swati<\/p>\n

Swati Sharma<\/p>\n

Vox Editor-in-Chief<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a unique framework for thinking through your moral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[3005,29584,97,259,95359],"class_list":["post-502165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-advice","tag-future-perfect","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-your-mileage-may-vary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}