Help

I opened the locker next to Shelly Saltzman’s at Carl Sandburg Junior High and felt my chest tighten up. It was the first day of eighth grade at this school in the suburbs of Chicago, and I was late getting to class, and I hadn’t seen any of my peers all summer, and I was sure that the rest of the year held only panicked loneliness for me. The twisting in my stomach that accompanied the first day of every school year had only grown worse. I wasn’t sure if I needed to vomit or cry or just suck it up, get over it, trust God.

Recently, I read a magazine article about a woman who made a promise to God that she would get off of her antidepressants and start going to therapy. “God would take care of the rest,” she said. Her story ends well, as most stories in Christian magazines do. I, on the other hand, have been on medication and in therapy for about ten years now. Sometimes I wonder where my happy ending is. Mostly, I know that this is my happy ending.

The pills have come in different colors, shapes, and sizes. 10 milligrams of Paxil to begin with at 21, which worked until it didn’t and I had a horrible experience of withdrawal, guided by a psychiatrist who gave me bad advice. We tried Prozac — we meaning my primary care physician, who I trust implicitly, and me — and it didn’t do a great job, but the Clonazepam I got in the meantime worked wonders when I felt an impending panic attack. Clonazepam is generic for Klonipin, and I got nervous when I heard this lyric in an OK Go song: Play that song again, another couple Klonopin, a nod, a glance, a half-hearted bow. I didn’t want to take pills that other people sang about. I tried to go off the medication again, thinking that was the only way to be whole or natural or honest.

Whole and natural and honest ended up looking like terror. Long nights with no sleep at all and days where I was kept from functioning as I could when I took the pill. I asked all the questions:

• What was wrong with me?
• Why did I need this pill to function well?
• Am I the only person who feels so anxious all the time, so scared?

I am not, of course. Something like one of ten adults in America are on SSRIs. But the trick of anxiety — and depression — is that they make you feel alone, and make you feel like what you suffer is less real than a physical ailment. There are books and articles that promise you can get better, and maybe you can! I figure I can realistically get better at about .5 to 1% a year. Any more growth than that is wishful thinking.

Lately, I’ve had several friends confess to me that they don’t want to be on medication. This is a very personal decision, and there are plenty of reasons not to want to be taking SSRIs. But if it helps you, don’t go off of it to prove to yourself that you are strong and capable. Strong and capable are not virtues that we need if they mean the absence of kindness, of love, of tenderness with yourself and others. Strong and capable are bootstrap words, and the myth of the bootstrap has only damaged people who deal with anxiety and depression. I have learned to be grateful to live in an age in which medication is available to me and the millions of people like me, people who are anxious beyond what is helpful and live with the reality of debilitating panic attacks.

These pills are a little bit of a gift. From God, or from your doctor, or to yourself — whatever, wherever they come from, they are like a small gift you get to swallow to become more yourself. If you have heard from a religious community that God doesn’t want you to take these medications, you have heard wrong. If you have heard that it is unnatural to take these medications, you have heard wrong. The semantics of “naturality” are worth debating, but not at the expense of your wellbeing.

If you know someone who takes medication for their anxiety or depression, don’t make them feel bad about it. Chances are they never thought they would end up here. Be proud of them. If it’s you, be proud of yourself. Keep exercising and praying and going to therapy and living the fullest life you can live. That is the gift.