Last year, I went to a psychiatrist for the first time because I was sick of feeling like I was constantly getting knocked down with depression and anxiety. On top of that, what I'd thought of as
"a few small OCD tendencies" were turning into elaborate rituals that made simple tasks like sending an email or leaving my apartment painfully difficult and time-consuming.
After I explained what brought me there, the psychiatrist suggested that I go on medication. She thought it would greatly improve my quality of life, and started me off with a prescription for an easily tolerable antidepressant at a very low dose. Walking out of her office, I clutched the piece of paper and headed straight for the pharmacy. Finally, I thought, my life is going to be easier! Everything is going to get better. I felt so relieved that it wasn't my fault, that I had these chemical imbalances that had been making things hard for me and now I was going to get the help that I needed.
That night I swallowed my first pill and thought, I'm officially medicated. Let the healing begin!
The next morning, I woke up thinking, Ahh, a new day! instead of my usual Ugh, another day. I bounded out my door without doing any OCD behavior. I felt like my brain was being soaked in a warm bath of well-being. My thoughts weren't racing and my mind was almost completely quiet. Is this how healthy people feel every day? This is AMAZING!!! I wanted to run up to everyone I passed on the street and shout, "I'm on medication, hurray!!!" and then give them a hug.
Day Two I was tired but I couldn't sleep, and I lost my appetite so I wasn't eating. By Day Three I was exhausted. I ran into my neighbor in the hallway and he asked me how I was doing. All I could think of to say was, "Fine," in monotone, which was weird because I was usually pretty chatty. Then I dragged myself to Starbucks and pulled out a stack of my writing to revise. But as I stared at the pages my mind went totally blank, and I felt like I was reading something that someone else had written instead of my own writing. Uh oh. This is really bad. After looking at the words swirling in front of me for an hour, I finally accepted that I couldn't write in this condition and shuffled home. I wanted medication to take away my depression but leave my ability to write intact; my biggest fear was that I'd have to choose between being creative and being happy.
Day Four was a beautiful sunny summer day, but I lay in bed with my empty mind practically drooling on myself. Hearing kids shout and play below my window, I felt like I was trapped in a bubble and the rest of the world was outside. Spaced-out and numb, I missed my familiar sadness and racing thoughts that kept me company all day. I knew how to deal with them -- I could go to Starbucks to write in my journal or take a walk in the park or curl up in a ball and cry if I had to. But I had no idea how to deal with this.
On Day Five I called the psychiatrist and told her that I wanted to stop taking the medication. She said that I was having an abnormally bad reaction to it and there were a lot of other things I could try instead. But I was so freaked out by the non-functioning haze I'd been in, that all I wanted was to be back to my old unmedicated self who could eat and sleep, think, write, and feel.
Off medication, I immediately started to feel better. I had thoughts and feelings, I could sleep at night and get out of bed during the day, I had things to say, and I could write. But then my depression crept back, along with my anxiety and OCD routines. Except it didn't feel so unmanageable anymore.
I'd always wanted to squash my depression and beat my anxiety into submission and just be normal already. I hoped medication would do that, but it took away way too much. Maybe one day I'd have to reconsider going on antidepressants again, but my extreme sensitivity to medication scared me. So for now I decided that I'd rather feel it all, even the deepest pain, than be as dulled and numbed as those pills made me.
As the medication left my system, I could feel everything again. And even though a lot of it hurt, I still felt happier than I'd been in as long as I could remember.
