Let’s Talk – My Medication Journey
Hi Friends!
Today I’m going to get really vulnerable. The stigma against anti-depressant and anxiety medication is not great. We have come a long way in making talking about mental health easier, that being said I still get uncomfortable talking to most people about medication. Time for me to get comfortable in my own uncomfortable.
Let me begin by saying that my journey with medication is long. It took too long and that had a huge part to do with not just my state of mind and age at the time but also my nervousness about the stigma against medication.
Disclamer, I am not a health care professional. This is just my journey. Please speak to your doctor if you have any questions about starting/stopping any medication.
When I was 17 years old, I started seeing a Social Worker, during my first visit they had me do an assessment to determine where exactly I needed help. After completing it, the social worker advised that I ‘scored’ very high in both the depression and anxiety section of the assessment.
All I could think to myself was well what wen’t wrong? I had a good life, supportive and loving parents, good education, great friends, so how could I possibly have this happening.
Let’s pause there for a second, mental health is never something to be ashamed of! NEVER EVER EVER. And just because you have this wonderful life does not mean you can’t be depressed, it very well can be a chemical imbalance. So please, if you ever get a diagnosis please please please don’t beat yourself up about it.
I digress.
Since I was under the age of 18, she needed a parents consent to put me on medication. I brought my mom and after a discussion with both my parents we decided that a 17 year old who is about to live on her own for the first time and is going away to univeristy should not be on medication. The social worker did not agree but it was not her choice.
I think that was the best decision for me in the long term. I did go through an extreme depression during my first year of univeristy and in all honesty I’m not confident that medication would have helped because I was still at a place in my life where I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about medication and even mental health.
A few years later, when I was 21, I went to see my family doctor about depression and anxiety. After my talk with her, she recommended seeing the social worker again and going on a low dose of anti-depressants. I was not inclined at all to see the social worker but I did take the prescription for anti-depressants.
The first medication I tried, was awful for me. It made every single symptom I had worse and I knew almost immediately that I needed to try a different one. I did give the medication a whirl for about two weeks but the side effects were too extreme to continue. I contacted my doctor and told her about it and she changed up my medication for me.
I gave that medication 6 weeks before I gave up so to speak. In the 6 weeks I didn’t really notice any improvements so I just stopped taking it. Which is NOT the right thing to do. Please always consult with your doctor.
I decided medication might not be for me, so I casually started therapy. I did fall off that pretty quickly, because well it’s quite costly.
Fast forward about a year, I was really letting my mental health slip a lot, and I was really noticing the impact. I went back to my doctor, and decided to take her advice and try both medication and therapy. So back at square one, new therapist and new medication. This round, I did stay on my medication for a number of months rather than a number of weeks so that was a step. But I realized that I was cheating myself during therapy. I was so concerned about what the therapist would think of me that I would lie to them and tell them that I was feeling better, or that I was achieving the goals we had set out even thought I wasn’t. I mean I did that up until recently, when I realized what’s the point of using my time and money going to get help and not actually get help.
Here is the trap I fell into a few times over the years, I would start to feel better and more in control of how I’m feeling and then I would decide that I no longer need medication or therapy because I was ‘fixed’. Wrong. So wrong.
After a few more years of the same cycle, earlier this year I decided to change the pattern. I have successfully been on medication without the thoughts of going off for six months now. Longest run to date!
All in all I think I tried 6 different types of medication, I can’t even remember the number of therapists I have seen over the years. Every single one of them was beyond worth it. It may have taken a while but I am finally in a good place when it comes to my mental wellbeing!
We need to get to a place where people don’t feel belittled based on medication. The more open we are about our mental wellbeing the more confident you will be with it.