Why You Shouldn’t Dismiss Anxiety Meds
When band-aids are needed for minor scrapes
This part of a series of articles that I am writing to explore my recently diagnosed PTSD. The experience has been bizarre, but I know I’m not the only one. I want to speak up, as I’ve hidden my depression for as long as I am able, and it has been tiring. By working through my life, my therapy, and associated literature, I hope to heal through writing and create work that connects with other survivors while giving everyone a window into some trials and tribulations.
Content warning: Due to the topics I cover in this series, the articles contain frank discussions of physical and sexual violence, abuse, self-harm, and addiction.
I was 19 the first time I tried to get help for my depression and anxiety. I was in the second year of a biochemistry degree while directing a play for the university theatre society and having just started a new relationship with a member of the stage crew. I’ve long had a tendency to try to take on as much as possible. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t. If we let ourselves try and fail a lot, especially when we’re young and have the opportunity, we learn from those mistakes. We end up learning important lessons that help us for the rest of our lives.
It was here that I was given a message that I internalised badly. My doctor at the time told me that meds were a short-term solution that only acts as a band-aid to the bigger problem. That therapy is the only way forward.
In the UK, it takes an incredibly long time to get therapy (6 hours of cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT] over 6 weeks) on the NHS (upwards of 6 months), and due to funding problems, a growing strain as mental health problems increase within the population, and remaining stigma, this isn’t going to improve any time soon. It would’ve been exam season by the time I’d be starting therapy. That’s not a great time to start emotionally deconstructing yourself. I felt I didn’t have the time to give up an hour a week anyway.
So there I was with the option of having to give up time I didn’t have or take a medical quick-fix for the moment. I could always get therapy properly later. For now, I could take university counselling.
I was started on citalopram (brand names Cipramil and Celexa), an antidepressant commonly prescribed in the UK. I was told to give it three months before coming off them. Great, I thought, these will help me keep together until I finish exams.
I was wrong. Nothing changed at all. I went back to the doctor after a month. The dose was doubled. And here is really where the fun began.
Very quickly, I began to notice a difference. I was completely numb. I had no emotions at all. No emotions except some major depressive downs, and I was no longer particularly interested in sex. I pretended to be because I hadn’t been in my relationship long. Looking back, it was sad that I felt the need to fake the feeling. A few times, it was obvious because I struggled to get erections. Low libido is a common side-effect of many psych meds.
I didn’t know what being on meds should feel like, so I accepted this as normal. That was until one night when I started researching what of the compounds I was using in my lab practicals would give me the fastest, most painless death for an amount that I could smuggle out in a 0.6ml microfuge tube. That was the moment I decided to go back to the doctor, who agreed I should wean myself off.
This experience taught me that medicating my mental health issues didn’t work. I saw various therapists over the years, each going at most through a short regimen of CBT.
Then eventually I had the support and encouragement I needed to reach out to a private therapist who specialised in what I was experiencing. Once past emotions started coming to the surface, I became much more emotionally fragile. I started dissociating like never before. One day, I sat down to work, then suddenly it was dark outside and I hadn’t written anything. Hours had passed since I left my body.
I began to wonder if maybe I should try meds again, speaking it through it with my therapist and my doctor. Sertraline (brand name Zoloft), another common anti-anxiety medication, was what was suggested tentatively. Half a pill a day to stabilise the mood, while not overmedicating so that I could still viscerally process the emotions from the past that I’d pushed down. Anything was better than losing hours of productivity to my brain shutting down to protect itself some combination of depression and anxiety (which some debate are just variants on the same condition).
After some horrendous mood swings, my emotions began to settle, just in time for a time of major turbulence. However, please understand that I’m not trying proselytising the wonders of meds by spreading the gospel of how my life has changed.
The research world is fairly split on the efficacy of medication for mental health conditions. Many studies are rushed through review very quickly. Since the 1970s, trials run by some major pharma companies often cherrypick what they publish, p-hack, purposefully misrepresent their findings and the structure of their studies, and more to build the facade that these are wonder-drugs. As a result, they’ve historically been overprescribed, and in may cases work no better than a placebo, yet have some very real side-effects. Johann Hari goes into this much better in his book Lost Connections, which I’d certainly recommend.
Whenever any of my friends asked me during the aforementioned turbulence how things were, I’d jokingly respond that things were “glad I’m on anxiety meds” wild. Then one day during the longest week of my life, I got separated from all of my belongings. Long story. I had to stay with a friend instead, only having what I’d left for work with that morning. The next day, I struggled to focus. I had so much work to get done, but my mind was so loud. It felt like my head was going to burst open from the inside. I had no idea why I felt like this.
Then it hit me. I hadn’t taken my meds. Suddenly that throwaway joke line became all too real. I hadn’t registered on a conscious level until then that I didn’t have my meds. I was concerned with other pressing things.
So some meds may be a placebo, rushed through the system on a tidal wave of money and used by big pharma to exploit vulnerable people. But some of it works. What works for one person won’t necessarily work for you. All brains are different.
I wouldn’t wish some moments of the last 7 years of my life on my worst enemy. I know because I’ve processed the outcome. I’ve lost friends. I’ve lost partners. I’ve behaved in toxic ways without realising. I’ve missed opportunities and underperformed at important times of my life because I’ve been too anxious and/or depressed.
If you’re reading this and thinking “But Will, I’ve never experienced clinical depression and anxiety”, first of all, thank you for reading this far. If you’re not chronically anxious or depressed, many people in your life certainly are, whether you know it or not. Trying to understand more about what they face and being there for them in the harder times is more helpful than you could ever know. Secondly, if you can afford it, try six weeks of therapy. If you’re in the UK, look for a therapist on counselling directory who specialises in something you struggle with.
Nobody goes through life unscathed. In It’s Not Always Depression, Hilary Jacobs Hendel argues that even if you haven’t experienced one or more major (big T) Trauma events, you’ve certainly faced many (small t) trauma incidents in your life. You may not even be aware of it, or how it still unhealthily influences your thought processes. You may have outdated coping mechanisms that worked at one point in your life, but actively sabotage you today.
I, like many, have a long journey ahead of me. I’ve been emotionally dysregulated for so long that my feelings often don’t register properly. Emotions are important feedback from the world, which with the help of medication and therapy, I’m finally starting to feel.
If you’re struggling, don’t be afraid to try medication or therapy. Ideally, start on therapy, and discuss medication with your therapist if you feel you need more help. There is nothing shameful about either. You are no less you just because you need a period where prescription medication helps you through the day. The earlier you get your mind more under control, the less time you lose in the long run. It may be time to give psych medication more thought, rather than dismissing them outright.
Things will get better, it all takes time. If you’re struggling and you live in the UK, you can speak to The Samaritans on 116 123.
If you’re a student, your university may have its own confidential nightline service where you can speak to a volunteer who understands the struggles of student life.
