This article was brought to you by Celexa. I wouldn't be capable of writing anything at this stage in my life without taking anti-depressants. I should also add that I take the much-maligned anti-anxiety drug Klonopin to help me sleep.

Linda Keenan worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN...read more

The makers of Celexa and Klonopin didn't pay me to say this. They don't have to. I've gotten so much from the drugs that I'm perfectly willing to give them publicity for free. I'm a suburban pill-popper, and proud of it.

Government drug enforcement officials say that prescription drug abuse is running rampant in America, and I believe them. Let's face it; one of the drugs I take has street value. But just because a drug is abused doesn't mean it can't be used responsibly, with tremendously positive results. I am a case in point.

Since having my son four years ago, I have had bouts of acute depression severe enough that I would lose 10 pounds in a matter of two weeks. I was disoriented. I wore a sort of death mask. I would leave the house with my shirt on inside-out.

My only goal, barely achieved, was to try to hide all this paralyzing anxiety from my son. I never understood how people could commit suicide until I felt this way. Now that I know what acute depression is really like, I'm amazed that some people last as long as they do.

I'm equally amazed at the response I got when I wrote last year on the liberal website the Huffington Post about my prescription drug regimen, and that's the reason I feel compelled to declare myself an out-and-proud pill popper.

One commenter told me that therapy, not pills is the true answer to dealing with life's ups and downs (FYI, honey, depression isn't about ‘up's' and ‘down's'), another suggested Buddhism. My favorite called me a "passive drug addict" and "guinea pig" for the big pharmaceutical companies. These folks, I suspect, would likely support a women's right to choose, but apparently not how I choose to approach my mental health.

And note that none of them took aim at the very real issue of over-prescription, or the fact that it's cheaper for insurance companies to push pills, even if expensive therapy might work better for some people.

Instead what seemed to anger people was the mere suggestion that perhaps for some if not many people, depression is not a matter of will, but of brain chemistry that needs help through medication.

Lord knows no one would argue that my husband's cholesterol needs Buddhism, but when it comes to the brain, many people seem to believe you are somehow a lesser being unless you exhaust every other alternative before trying a pharmaceutical.

This is a huge issue in the suburbs and I'll be completely honest here. I do indeed know a handful of people who I believe are using prescription drugs either inappropriately or without enough monitoring.

But I also know just as many who seem to be in the anything-but-pills camp, whose quality of life is suffering. Would they be better off medicated? Of course, I wouldn't presume to know. But I know they might be. And I also know why they might resist trying a pill: as I've seen myself, the bias against using them stretches far beyond Tom Cruise.

Recently a friend attended a parenting seminar on kids and drug abuse and one attendant apparently got up and frothed about "Klonopin moms" and the example they set for young people in the suburbs.

I would have liked to have met her. I might have told her about the things I can now do that at times used to be nearly impossible, being able to read those extra books at bedtime, having the energy to be involved in my son's school, simply being able to lift my head and beam when my boy woke me up in the morning. I don't think that was the example she was talking about....read more blogs