A caller into NPRs Talk of the Nation on December 19 2007 was concerned that how Elizabeth explains how she went off the anti-depressants makes it sound as though Elizabeth went off them without supervision which is potentially harmful to people who need these drugs.
In Liz's response, quoted below from the show, she never specifically states which paragraph (this will make more sense when you read it) but we believe that she is probably talking about this one (Bead 18, Page 52 -- paperback edition) which you can read in the box above.
Liz's response to the caller on NPR's Talk of the Nation --
"It would be that very paragraph to make it more clear. It's a complicated topic...and I was slowly weaning myself off them, actually under the supervision of my therapist back in New York.So it was not like one day I woke up and just stopped taking everything.
"I cut down very gradually over the course of a couple of months. And then finally, one day, I kind of came to my last Wellbutrin, and then dealt with the consequences and the results of that afterwards, which I write about in the book.
"It wasn't the easiest or most comfortable thing, but I did feel like I had used the medication as a bridge, to get to the other side of a really difficult time and that I was ready to take it on, on my own and ready to go back to it or go back to counseling if I needed that.
"So if it seemed in the book that I sort of cavalierly, you know, threw the pills down the toilet, that wasn't the case. What I wish I had said in there was that I have a lot of reservations about what I consider to be the vast over medication of Americans in general and specifically with, any sort of mood altering medication, which gets handed out, I think, a little more carelessly than it ought to.
"But I do wish that I didn't come across quite so much as somebody who had just tossed it. I agree that's not anything that should ever be done lightly. I also don't think that you should go on those medications lightly which is what I was more interested in writing about at the moment. But it's a complicated; it's a complicated issue. I have complicated feelings about it, and I was trying to get to the bottom of them. But I do wish I had put a couple of more sentences in there to be more clear about it."
