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In my recovery from psychiatric illness, doctors have commented that I responded well to medication. To me, this is an indication that my illness is biologically based.  

Psychiatric medications essentially saved my life. Had medications not been discovered before I became mentally ill, I might have lived in a primitive "insane asylum," under horrific conditions, and I certainly wouldn't have survived to the age I am now. If you look at me, "on" versus "off" medication, it is like day and night. Off medication, I was badly psychotic.  

The long-term neurological result of untreated psychosis apparently includes deterioration of brain structure. In untreated schizophrenia, there is something called the "burned out phase." This is where the illness has essentially wrecked the patient's brain, and the person has become an empty shell. (This is one argument supporting the stance that persons with schizophrenia who are noncompliant should be forced into treatment without excessive delay.)  

Yet, despite the fact that I believe medication is an essential, I also believe it is only applicable to the illness. It is applicable to keeping an individual stabilized, but it doesn't solve a person's problems. Medication doesn't solve the human predicament. Medication is not the answer to the normal suffering that can come about through life events and common habits of thought. Medication should not be thought of as a bringer of well-being, or as the ultimate answer.  

The purpose of psychiatric medication is to get patients into the ballpark of what is rational, and to get us out of clinical depression, extreme mood swings, or being a danger to self and/or others.  

In the old days, more than thirty years ago, I'd heard about a psychiatrist at a funeral who was passing out Valium tablets. That wouldn't happen today with our consciousness about the misuses of prescription drugs. It is a misuse of psychiatric medication when it is taken to avoid the pain of normal and expected life situations. Mourning for a loved one usually should not be suppressed through medication, unless the grief is exaggerated, and is to the point where it is putting one's mental stability at risk. (I should qualify this: It is a nonprofessional opinion, coming from a non-M.D.) 

It is not unusual for a psychiatric consumer to fall into the habit of looking to medication to fix emotional pain. When emotional pain is tolerable, is not debilitating, and if it is not accompanied by other symptoms, the consumer should look to psychotherapy, cognitive techniques, and other types of mindfulness, rather than taking medication to escape from it.  

When mental health consumers rely too heavily on meds in the vein of getting someone or something other than oneself to repair oneself, it can be a miserable existence.  

(Psychotherapy can also create problems, because some of the techniques that therapists often use sometimes make an individual worse off than he or she would be without therapy. However, that is an entirely different can of oysters that I won't open this week.) 

When anxiety, depression or other symptoms are extreme, it can be time to look at taking medication to remedy these problems. Someone once said, if you are miserable and a pill can fix it, take the pill. We shouldn't be masochistic, or try to tough it out, when symptoms get too big to handle.  

I've heard of some people who are extreme in their unwillingness to even take an aspirin for a headache. Sobriety and being "clean" are just fine. However, if there is a real illness that necessitates treatment, such treatment does not impinge on an individual being "clean and sober."  

People who have an extreme stance of being against all drugs, such as an expectorant if one has bronchitis, or Penicillin if one has an infection, are not being realistic. Antipsychotic medication for someone with schizophrenia is essentially the same idea as taking thyroid pills for hypothyroidism. These are medical issues.  

I'll go even farther to say, if someone suffers from psychosis, being willing to take medication is analogous to sobriety. Antipsychotic medications do not get you high. Antipsychotic medications aren't an escape. The willingness to take antipsychotic medication is a sign of bravery and of maturity.  

These medications can do awful things to the human body and mind, and they aren't fun to take--not in the least. They have uses, however. If the alternative to being medicated, and thus experiencing suffering created by side effects, is that you can't live in society and can't even process information normally, then taking medication is the lesser of two predicaments.  

Getting on medication and being compliant with doctors is usually a good idea. If you think your doctor is an ass, and she or he seemingly wants to inflict pain on you, then by all means, get a second opinion from another psychiatrist. Psychiatrists aren't all the same, and some have a better manner with patients than do others. Even if the prescriptions are the same from one psychiatrist to the next, a patient could be better off with a doctor who isn't as rude.  

Taking medication and being compliant with treatment won't make life easy, but doing this will possibly make life workable, where, without treatment, we've got nothing--not even the ability to think. However, medication shouldn't be perceived as a solution to normal suffering.