Newsflash: antidepressants don't make parunting tolerable

I mean, c'mon...did anyone really think anything outside the most hard-core drug would make parunting tolerable?
From my child-free perspective one would have to be completely out of their mind and not even aware of being a parunt for the drug to be strong enough. Those meany child-free could have told you nothing will help except opting out entirely.

The commentors are all regretful parunts so they are telling her the light at the end of the tunnel is when both brats are in school full-time.
They realize hope can only come from being around the brats less.

https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/comments/xd6ynb/anti_depressants_dont_make_it_any_better/

As one who has experienced multiple bouts of depression, I can't imagine ever wanting to have kids. Funny how lots of parents think we CF people are getting away with something because we took a different (better!) path than they did. I'd argue that "getting away with something" is more like taking major prescription drugs because you feel bad about the kids you had to have. Is it really clinical depression or just feeling bummed about the whole parenting experience? Because if it's the latter. drugs aren't gong to do diddly-squat to fix things.

Y'know, if I could live my life and be happy and productive without meds, I would surely do it. But I know better than to try it because I could NOT handle it. I can't feel too sorry for parents who are dealing with buyer's remorse (and I'm not talking about women with PPD because that shit is for real) and looking to drugs to assuage the unpleasantness.

Not looking for sympathy, but that's my $.02. Apologies if I'm rambling because I'm having a bad time of it right now, and it's NOT from regretting having kids.

Makes sense. Anti-depressants will correct the chemical imbalance in the brain of someone who is clinically depressed and make them able to function, and it can sometimes take much trial and error with medications to find one that works for someone. Brats are not a chemical imbalance - they are physical beings that cannot be corrected with pills.

Anti-depressants target an issue in the person's head and manages it, ideally. You can't use them to manage external forces that are causing or worsening your depression, and the only way to deal with it in that case is to remove those external forces. Some parents do just that - they abandon their kids or kill them. But most of them feel they can't escape their brats and so anti-depressants might take the edge off their emotional/mental turmoil, but they won't magically make parenting a joyful experience. Those brats are still there, stifling you, suffocating you, stopping you from living the life you want. This particular user sounds like they are having the best possible outcome for a parent on anti-depressants: numbing their emotions just enough to slog through the day and not commit murder-suicide.

If you have to take fucking pills to try and make parenthood more tolerable, then maybe that's a big fat fucking hint that parenting ISN'T worth it? I wish more people would read such experiences before breeding. It's not like it's some well-kept secret or something that costs money to learn - it's right there, available freely and publicly online. People also need to get it through their heads that their children will not be different just because it's their children too. I know there are people who will read the horror stories and go, "Oh, well, MY child won't be horrible like that!" Yes. Yes they will. They may even be worse. Assume the worst and decide from there.

I'm pretty sure I had/have depression as well, and I kind of stumbled into treatment for it when I noticed that I didn't cry and wish I was dead nearly as much when I took amitriptyline (for tension headaches), so I asked my doctor if I could stay on it for mental health reasons after it stopped helping my headaches. I know what I felt was barely the tip of the iceberg as far as what depression can do to a person too. Even with my likely mild case of depression, I would never have kids because I know it would not only get worse a hundred fold, but I'd be much too concerned that a screeching brat would be enough to put me over the edge and lead to me doing things that land my mugshot in the paper.

Brats don't have the sense to leave Mommy alone when she feels like a zombie or to back off when she's seconds away from strangling them, all they know is "ME ME ME, MINE MINE MINE, NOW NOW NOW" - they don't care about anyone but themselves because that's how kids just are with their limited scope of everything (which they hopefully grow out of). Brats are absolutely awful for the first few years of their lives and that's probably why, when paired with depressed and regretful parental units, some of them don't live to see the age of five.

Yeah, not surprising that antidepressants don't work on parental regret.

Cambion, glad you're getting stuff turned around. That's excellent.

You put it well...kids aren't a chemical imbalance. I suppose anti-D's could make a major difference for someone with genuine clinical depression who had kids, but that parent will still be in a bad way.

The super intense "ME ME ME, MINE MINE MINE, NOW NOW NOW" years are one of many major reasons I opted out of parenthood. There is nothing appealing about kids before school age. Nothing. There is not enough beer or money in the world that would make it tolerable. Ugh.

noo, brats aren't awful the first few years of life... they are awful the entire time they spend growing up...imo....

granted the toadler stages are hell on earth... it just changes form.

two cents ¢¢

CERTIFIED HOSEHEAD!!!

people (especially women) do not give ONE DAMN about what they inflict on children and I defy anyone to prove me wrong

Dysfunctional relationships almost always have a child. The more dysfunctional, the more children.

The selfish wants of adults outweigh the needs of the child.

Some mistakes cannot be fixed, but some mistakes can be 'fixed'.

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. Leo J. Burke

Adoption agencies have strict criteria (usually). Breeders, whose combined IQ's would barely hit triple digits, have none.