My Story With Antidepressants

I don't know if there is a specific mental health day coming up, but I saw a few people discussing their experiences with antidepressants and I wanted to chime in with my perspective. I have been on antidepressants for almost the majority of my life at this point. I started when I was 13 and I am closing in on 25. My goal is to try to get off them before I pass the majority of my life mark in about a year and a half. I'm hoping maybe someone will feel like this story hit a chord with them, especially if they are going through rough times. I'm glad to say I made it out of what felt like the roughest time in my life, but I am still young so that could come later.

I was never really a depressed person or child, but what I did experience were debilitating panic attacks that would basically send my internal panic meter from 1 to 10 in a matter of seconds. Antidepressant medications usually work on both sides of the spectrum so someone with depression might take the same meds at someone with anxiety. If you have never had a panic attack its hard to explain but your heart rate goes through the roof like you had just been running, you start sweating profusely, you feel stomach discomfort and intestinal movements and basically your fight of flight senses hit you. Usually your mind is telling you something like “you need to get out of here now”. Its a terrible feeling and usually caused by something else in your past or something going on in the present with your life.

For me, I started experiencing them at school and slowly started shutting down. I had weird triggers where certain rooms or teachers might set me off and I would have to run to the bathroom. I ended up heavily medicating myself to just get through the day. My grades ultimately suffered, but by the end of high school I found a decent balance. The biggest drawback though is I almost always have to take a quick nap during the day because the medication drains my energy. This is something I desperately want to fix especially since I need to find a full time job.

In the past couple of years I decided that I wanted to lower the amount of medication I was taking, specifically because I had graduated from college and no longer needed the amount I was taking to function on a daily basis. I was able to cut the medication in half and remove one I was taking completely, but the one I am still on is extremely hard to get off of. It is called effexor and falls under the category of an SNRI which is notoriously harder quit than an SSRI. The side effects are brutal to say the least. Even just lowering the dosage little by little, I will experience brain zaps where I feel like I leave my body for a second, panic attacks, weakness, nausea and an overall out of body feeling while it adjusts. Needless to say its a struggle to do it, even with the help of a doctor.

The antidepressants I have taken have helped me immensely but I almost always tell people that if they can function without them, then try to do it. People will often say antidepressants make you feel “weird” which they explain as sort of feeling a bit removed from their body. This becomes the norm for someone like me who really doesn't remember what it feels like to not take the drugs. Antidepressants bring your feeling to a neutral in many ways. You don't feel the super highs you get from fun, but you also wont feel the super lows. For a time this was okay for me because I needed to finish my schooling, but at this point in my life, I want to actually feel what it feels like to live. I definitely have a lot of work going forward, but hopefully I can succeed.

-Calaber24p