We Need to Talk about Antidepressants

The fall of my senior year in college, I had a nervous breakdown. Until recently, I didn't even know what happened to me could be considered a nervous breakdown. When I hear that term, I think of a padded cell and a 5150 hold. I think of a complete psychotic break -- like running around the streets naked and smearing feces on cars, or something. That didn't happen with me. Instead, I spent a week huddled under my electric blanket, feeling like my heart was going to beat out of my chest, convinced I was dying of Swine Flu, crying and eating cereal and watching Frasier on an endless loop. This was triggered by the PTSD I developed after studying abroad the previous semester.

Accurate. 

A "nervous breakdown," according to MayoClinic, refers to a stressful situation when someone is unable to function in day-to-day life. It's really helpful for me to read that definition out loud to myself. It helps me realize, to this day, that yes, things were that bad. Until recently, I kind of just referred to that time in my head as the week I binged on Lifetime Original movies and drank a lot of wine and missed a lot of class. As it turns out, I wasn't just "having a bad week." I wasn't just "feeling stressed" or "feeling sick." I had completely ceased to function in the world. I had a full-on nervous breakdown. And maybe had I known I was careening toward a breakdown, I wouldn't have been so reluctant to start taking some medicine.

Pretty much verbatim what I told my roommates and coworkers

So after my full-on, hiding-under-the-covers nervous breakdown, I finally admitted that yeah, maybe I wasn't doing so well with just therapy and a bottle of wine. And perhaps -- just perhaps -- I needed to kick it up a notch.

Up until that point, my therapist had been cautiously suggesting that I try an anti-depressant. And for months she had respectfully nodded and hadn't pressed me when I all but laughed in her face. Well, I didn't quite laugh in her face, but I made it clear that the thought of taking medicine was ridiculous. Hello? I thought. Haven't you been paying attention? I freak the fuck out when I have to urinate, and I've been urinating for my entire life. If I start getting weird symptoms because of these pills, I'm going to have a heart attack. I'm going to start obsessing every time I take them. I'm going to start feeling imaginary symptoms. I'll over-think every twinge, every cramp, every unfamiliar ache. It'll make my anxiety worse. So for months we'd do a cat-and-mouse where the subject of meeting a psychiatrist (for medicine) would come up and I'd awkwardly try to side-step. And by side-step I'd be like:

But after that week in October, I felt like it was very literally my last option. Either I could take some medicine and hope that it worked, or I'd cease to function like a normal human. And that kind of panic -- that flu-like feeling of sickness -- is simply unsustainable. I'm not saying I was suicidal. But I really don't know how much more of that I could have taken. So when I went crying to the campus nurse about how I had the Swine Flu and all my "Swine Flu" symptoms turned out to be anxiety induced, that blessed nurse scheduled a therapy session for me immediately. And from there I saw the psychiatrist.

Psychiatrist guy gave me two things -- and I feel like it's important for me to tell you what they were, at the risk of sounding like a druggie, because every week or so I'll get an e-mail or an instant message with someone asking me about anti-anxiety drugs and what they're like. There's a definite undercurrent of shame, and fear, and, well, anxiety about what the side effects are going to be -- which was totally my preoccupation before I started trying them. So. Psychiatrist guy (who looked curiously like Tobias Funke) gave me xanax, which has short-term effects and calms you down in the midst of an anxiety attack, and started me on Zoloft, which is an anti-depressant. Basically, untreated anxiety or PTSD feels like you've got your hand on a hot skillet and you can't take it off. You're expected to function as though everything is fine, but inside you're thinking HOLY SHIT THIS HURTS I CANT FOCUS ON ANYTHING ELSE BUT THE BURNING IT BURNSSSSSSS!!!! Xanax is like splashing some cold water on the skillet -- a temporary relief, but your hand is still on the skillet, and it'll heat right back up again in a few minutes. Zoloft is like someone coming up behind you and turning off the burner -- gradually, the anxiety goes away, and you start acting and feeling more like your normal self.

Seriously. Can you tell I was an English major? 

So I started the zoloft that day. And I'd be lying if I said I had about a million tiny little anxiety freakouts and IBS flareups wondering what the side-effects would be. And I did get side-effects -- nausea, primarily -- for a few weeks until it started to kick in. And boy, did it kick in.

About a month after I started taking it, sometime in the first week of December -- about ten months after the incident that spurred my PTSD -- I woke up one morning and I felt lighter. Physically lighter. My limbs were looser. And the biggest difference was that I could breathe. It was a totally unparalleled feeling and I'm sure I looked like a complete dumbass, because I would just walk around campus and take deep, long breaths, sucking all the cold air into my lungs that I possibly could. It felt wonderful. I hadn't even noticed until the anxiety went away how completely crushing it was. A weight had literally been lifted, and I felt joyously free. Right in time for finals. And then winter break.

When I went home for winter break, the primary feeling I felt was utter bliss. I'm not kidding. It always really irks me when people refer to anti-depressants as "happy pills," because they make me functional, not happy. But this period was the exception -- I had been living under the crushing weight of PTSD for so long that I had forgotten what it felt like to just feel normal. I could take big, deep breaths. I could  hear the doorbell ring or the blender turn on without hiding under my covers. I could wake up and actually feel excited about the day, instead of dreading all the millions of little noises and random events that would trigger an episode. I spent the whole winter vacation in my parents' house, absolutely blissed out, reading books and lying on the couch and just feeling like I had gotten my life back. I could talk about my anxiety triggers without actually feeling triggered. I could think about India without feeling like I was dizzy or short of breath. I could ride in a car or a train without willing myself not to jump out of it. It was heaven.

Oh, it felt so good

I kind of sound like a druggie, don't I? Obviously, anti-depressants aren't for everyone. And Zoloft, specifically, is not for everyone, I'm sure. I wasn't high or anything, but getting your life back after ten months in hell? Oh, it was wonderful. I couldn't breathe deeply enough.


And then -- I got depressed.

Stay tuned.