I have depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety. This diagnoses was made by a medical doctor, with a bunch of fancy medical degrees, after I went through years of talk therapy. My psychiatrist did attend the college I dropped out of, but I didn’t know that when I had her recommended to me, so there.

I get asked when I’m going to stop taking my medication pretty regularly. When can I go on without my antidepressants? When can I sleep without my sedative? Pretty soon, someone will ask me how I plan to keep myself calm without my as-needed anxiety medication. Because nobody takes an addict seriously. Because there’s yoga and bootcamp and green juice and gluten-free diets and also my dog should relieve my stress.

I haven’t actually tried going gluten-free, but there’s no way in hell my dog would relieve my stress. She’s definitely trying to kill me. Also she has her own medical credit card. There’s no therapy there.

Anyways, I do exercise, and occasionally eat vegetables, and go to talk therapy, and have a supportive group of friends and family. But I also pay a disturbing amount of money each month to refill my prescriptions. Because I enjoy being a functional member of society, and no amount of internet sensationalism or concerned talks with semi-strangers will change that.

What Do The Drugs Actually Do?

Here’s a basic breakdown of what my medications actually DO.

Paxil 35.5 mg. This treats my depression, OCD, and anxiety in one fell swoop. Basically it stops my brain from going nonstop and getting hung up on things like whether or not the clerk at payless was looking at me funny and oh god do I look like a boy today and why couldn’t I just keep my long hair well becuase it’s a pain but I don’t want to be a boy…nope. Nope.

I have shit to get done. I don’t have time for that. I also don’t have time to want to spend all day in bed thinking of all the ways I’ve ever messed up and all the ways I hate myself and all the ways laying in bed and hating myself makes me a pathetic loser who deserves no friends.

Oh, and it’s nice to go out in public and have fun and not suddenly have those unwanted thoughts pop into my head and ruin my mood completely and for the next two days, ruining the party and causing me to ooze depression out of my pores. In this metaphor depression is a gas, kinda like how dry ice makes smoke, not a liquid. Oozing liquids is bad.

Ambien CR 12.5mg. I don’t sleep at night. I don’t always really even nap very well, but between the hours of 9pm and 9am I find the act of getting to sleep and staying asleep impossible. And there is a finite amount of Netflix you can watch. Sad, but true.

I take the ambien once a night, as prescribed, without alcohol, and I go to sleep. Sometimes I stay up too long and text my friends and my phone totally turns into a fish and the letters on the keyboard start arguing about international politics but that’s a lot better than tossing and turning or getting up and dusting the apartment for the 50th time.

Lorazepam 0.5mg. Sometimes I freak the hell out. Usually when I get triggered. Triggers for me are strangers touching me, getting stood up (which leads to me thinking that person is mad at me), my mother (sorry), and the occasional work overload from crazy clients. Previously, I dealt with this by just, flipping out for a few hours and crawling into bed, then texting my support group. Because I do not calm down.

But it might be nice to be calm on occasion, so my doctor gave me the as-needed, once per day tiny white pill. So when I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin, and I can’t breathe, and suddenly everyone I have ever known absolutely positively totally must hate me, I take my Ativan (the brand name for Lorazepam), and I sit down, and I put things in perspective. I also get kinda sleepy but I can work with that since I’m at home a lot.

Seriously, You’ll Be on These Forever?

Ideally, with enough therapy, I’ll no longer need to take the Ativan. Which is good, because it’s expensive, and it your body can become dependant on it. Also Ideally, I won’t have to use ambien to get to sleep every night, but I’d have to establish a normal sleep schedule for literally the first time ever, and I don’t see that happening for at least another few months (not to mention daylight savings time is awful).

The Paxil I’ll probably take forever. It doesn’t get me high, it doesn’t change my personality, it just makes me better. I know people who’ve taken it and couldn’t tolerate it, but I’m way past that hurdle. So with diet and exercise it could be the only thing I really need to keep using, the same way some people need to remember to take their blood pressure medication or iron supplements.

The critical thing here is that I’m better on medication than I was without it. And there’s no shame in that.