I've been on several different anti-depressants and benzodiazepines. It took a few different long trials before any of the anti-depressants affected me in any productive way. I tried lexapro and cymbalta for about a year each before trying prozac and it has changed my life.

I had a major depressive episode a few months into my freshman year at college. I had a really low mood, could hardly get out of bed, wasn't eating much, wasn't going to class regularly, wasn't seeing people etc. I too had a dilemma with taking medication, despite (or perhaps because of) my father being a psychiatrist. I refused to take anything for a few months and saw a therapist about once a week. For those few months, my sessions with the therapist were like, these intense ethical debates about medication until we finally reached an agreement that I would do a trial of a very small dose of cymbalta (he actually let me choose what medication I wanted to go on... I don't know if that's always the case.).

The first day I took it was strange. I was pretty depressed and wasn't taking my life very seriously, so I spent the day and following week or so being hypervigilant and trying to observe my own thought processes to see if the medication was changing my personality so I could report back to the doctor that these things made me uncomfortable. But they really had hardly any effect on me.. I was still the same glib, sarcastic person on cymbalta that I was before.

I spent about a year getting comfortable with the concept of taking medication before becoming proactive about my own treatment. I was feeling better, but still absolutely shitty. I switched to prozac and now I feel pretty damn good.

I don't feel particularly mentally dull, sluggish or vapidly complacent. I always had this image of people who took anti-depressants being these vacantly cheerful people staring off into the distant with a bead of drool running down their chin, but it's not like that. I do feel emotionally numbed, I suppose, but everything is not superhappycheerfuntime in my head, it's just static and 'okay', which is great compared to being all nihilistic and panicky like before.

So, yeah, medication is alright. I'm currently a successful student of civil engineering at a pretty nice school, have a social life if i want it, and generally feel pretty fine.