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I Was Afraid Medication Would Change Me
Two years ago, at age 29, I had finally gone to a psychiatrist for a prescription to treat my depression and anxiety. I’d been dealing with depression since I was 14 years old and spent the intervening decade and a half terrified out of my mind that medication would take away my personality.
When you’ve spent your life depressed, you worry that there’s nothing inside you but the depression.
I was afraid medication would make me lose myself.
If I take meds, what if they change my life for the better?
But something had to give. I was getting worse and worse, especially in the winter. The psychiatry office first told me they’d have to schedule me in February due to being booked out. I emailed my general practitioner and asked him to write me the prescription because they couldn’t get me in, and I couldn’t go the winter without help.
Suddenly they found me an opening.
I walked out of the appointment with a prescription for Lexapro. But I waited a couple days to start taking it, wrestling with the inner monologue of medication stigma in my brain.
If you take meds, it means you’re weak and couldn’t do it on your own.
