@ thepinkdragon - I can relate to your point above. Years ago after a nonstop series of life events no one was more surprised than I when I was diagnosed with major clinical depression. The only way to describe it would be to say it was as though a complete stranger had moved into my head in the space of a month. It was as though I'd been given strange drugs which were keeping me awake all night, making me repulsed by food, etc. (In fact, it was startlingly like what I read today about the side effects of meth, to be honest--hypervigilance, hyperactivity, poor memory and judgment.) It was a totally weird experience lasting about 2 years, and I hope to never go through anything approaching that again.
At the time I was diagnosed, I strongly resisted taking prescription medication, trying to go the 'natural' route with well-known herbal remedies. The therapist I'd reluctantly started seeing tried to convince me for 3 months to try medication, because clinical depression is caused by a major brain chemistry change in the brain, a neurotransmitter imbalance that could only be rebalanced with the appropriate SSRI combination. I can remember bringing in to her office dramatic newspaper articles of people who'd wigged out on Prozac, telling her I was afraid I might wake up and kill my kids if I tried a prescription drug. Truthfully, though, my reasoning was getting so compromised I was in no place to think clearly on the subject, so after a couple months of fearful resistance, I finally agreed to a trial period for one of the SSRIs (not Prozac

). It took a couple tries with different SSRIs, but once I found the right one, the change was dramatic, and I was on the way back up out of that black hole.
The brain and its function is an amazing, perplexing thing. Yes, there are some prescription drug side effects that can end up being harmful to some people out there, but there are also many prescription drugs that are lifesavers to broad classes of people who need them. I've learned through my experience not to make blanket generalizations about prescription drugs and their possible side-effects for people; each situation for each person should be weighed on its own merit. While not depressed today, I have friends with bipolar relatives whose brain-chemistry prescriptions are just as biologically vital to them as my thyroid prescriptions are to me. Just thankful for the science that's gone from 'tranquilizing' all mental illnesses a generation or two ago to 're-balancing' brain chemistry problems today.