May is Mental Health Awareness Month, which has become dear to my heart. If you’ve spent a lifetime fighting a battle no one can see, getting a chance to talk about it can be cathartic, especially if some fear or stigma prevented you from discussing it before.
In my case, I simply didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what has been going on inside me for as long as I can remember, nor did I have any idea there was help available. Learning the language of psychology as well as its history and application gave me great relief and paved the way to finding a treatment that worked for me.
Last year, I made a list of not-so-helpful things I was told about mental illness, and a list of responses I wish I’d had at the time. This year, I’d like to expand upon one of those items in greater depth: how it felt once my medication started working.
I once read a memoir by someone with OCD for one of my psychology classes, and her description of her experience with medication was one of the most helpful things I ever read. It replaced fear with fact and did so from the personal perspective of a fellow patient. So I’d like to add my own two cents, just to build up the body of anecdotal evidence available to anyone searching for answers.
The First Few Weeks
Medication, especially psychoactive medication, can take around six weeks for you to fully feel its effects. For the uninitiated, “psychoactive” means something that impacts the functioning of the brain.
I’ve met people whose meds worked faster than that, but mine took the full six weeks. However, during those first weeks, the side effects were at their strongest.
I went from constantly feeling like I had dozens of tabs open in my brain at any given time to feeling like I was down to one tab. Unfortunately, I think I need at least two tabs to function: one to hold the to-do list, and one to pick from it. One particular evening while my body was still adjusting, I was trying to decide what to do next and my college roommate found me stalled out in the middle of our room, eating cheese and staring straight ahead. (For the record, her response was to laugh and say, “No judgment!”)
The other major side effect I experienced was a sort of spinny feeling when I turned corners too fast. When I went to band rehearsal, I would reach the bottom of the steps and turn 180 degrees, and my brain would momentarily be like, “Whoa! Where’s the sky?” It was only a split second, I didn’t lose my balance, nor even break my stride. You wouldn’t be able to tell what I was feeling from the outside.
Fortunately for me, as my body adjusted to the medication, those side effects faded away. I am happy to say I’ve been allotted enough tabs to keep my grades up and my own projects going, and I no longer get the spins when I turn. However, each time my does increased, those effects would return briefly, though less strongly than they did at the beginning.
The only side effect that has remained has been an increased sensitivity to heat. I overheat quickly and easily, so I have to be mindful of that, especially in summer or in stuffy environments. I’ve been able to keep this under control by adding a water bottle and neck fan to my arsenal and practicing listening to my body as soon as I start to feel too hot.
An Ongoing Conversation
It took about eight or nine months of ongoing communication between me and my doctor to get my dosage where I needed it. I would describe my experience and what I had noticed, and we would decide where to go from there. When I began to experience a bit of emotional blunting (where your other emotions begin to feel less strong), we agreed that was as high as we should go.
That conversation is ongoing. My doctor continues to monitor me, and I keep a list of things I notice in the notes on my phone. I’ve gone years without needing to adjust my dosage or anything, but it’s good to make sure that what has worked in the past is still doing the job, as well as address any changes that arise.
A Brief Wrong Turn
A few years ago, I was miserable. Even with the medication that had done so well for me over the past seven years, I couldn’t find the energy to cook for myself, visit my family, or do any of the things I cared about. I came home from work, worked out until I couldn’t feel, Doordashed dinner, laid on the couch watching The Office, then scrolled till way past my bedtime.
I brought it up to my doctor, and we ended up shifting to a sister medication of the drug I’d been taking. Because they were so similar, I wouldn’t have to taper off of one before starting the other.
However, my experience with this medication was completely different. I never experienced any positive effects. I had what I call “glitches” or brain zaps, thousands of them, especially when I was hot or agitated.
I barely lasted a month before moving back to my old medication, after which the glitches slowly decreased until they only happen once every few months.
What ended up ending that period of depression was quitting the job that was making me miserable. Since then, I’ve written tens of thousands of words after years of nothing, taken up my favorite hobbies, tried some new things, spent lots of time with my family, and regained a level of normalcy in my physical and mental health.
What Changed With the Right Medication?
In a word, everything.
Sometimes I forget how different my life is now until I have an uncharacteristically low day or I forget to take my pill and start to feel it by the afternoon. I find myself asking how I made it through feeling like that all the time.
I’m still me. I’ve never felt like I wasn’t myself. Granted, this can happen if you try a medication that isn’t right for you. Make sure to communicate those feelings with your doctor if you do experience them. But that didn’t happen for me.
I’ll try to break down the big changes, but I keep thinking of other, subtler changes that happened as well.
- Non-stick spray for my thoughts. When I was a kid, I would get a scary thought in my head and be fighting with it, worrying about it, and obsessing over it for months at a time. My life used to be defined by what scary thought I was obsessing over at the time, highlighting entire seasons and marking the passage of time like the rings in a tree trunk. Now, those thoughts still occur to me, but they don’t get a chance to sink their teeth in. They come, I go, “Yeah, what if?” and then they go out the way they came and I can move on with my day.
- A life jacket for my mood. I was always a sensitive child, but we came to find out it was much more. Anything bad that happened, any sad news that reached me, and any scary thought that entered my head, would keep me down for months at a time. It took me forever to recover, and as soon as I did, another wave would hit me, keeping me in a constant state of drowning in negative feelings. Now, I spend part of every day feeling content. Not euphoric, just…good. My baseline has been moved up. I still feel sad when something sad happens or get scared when appropriate, but then I return to normal.
- Room for creativity. Before I started taking my medication, my brain felt like a hoarder’s attic, so crowded and disorganized that I could barely get across it. Once my medicine started working, it felt like someone had cleaned up the place, leaving stuff for me to use, but clearing it so it could be used as a living space. The year I started my medication, I wrote the most I had ever written for my short story a month challenge. I did not lose my artistry when I gained mental health; the tortured artist trope needs to take a rest.
- My fear of animals went away. I used to be afraid of all dogs, cats, rodents, birds, fish, anything. If even a tiny, friendly dog walked toward me on a leash, I’d be panicking and climbing the person next to me. Now, I ask if I can pet people’s dogs. I might get startled if one barks or runs toward me, but I talk in a baby voice and try and make friends. I also have become a cat lady, with two fur babies of my own. I’m dearly fond of them and have learned so much about them that I don’t know how I did life without them around.
- It felt like I had quit a full-time job. I was a full-time student when I first started my medication, and I didn’t realize for a long time how much of my day was spent simply trying to be okay. Now, I still do monitor my wellbeing and take time to journal, walk, and talk to my safe people, but I no longer feel like I start the day running from an invisible enemy. Suddenly, I had so much more room in my days for life and the people I loved.
Takeaways
- Eating well, sleeping enough, exercising, and staying in contact with loved ones is healthy. Doing those things is an unequivocally good decision. But it is no substitute for treatment for a disorder when you need it. Take it from somebody who spent 21 years trying to literally “walk it off.”
- Needing psychoactive medication doesn’t make you weak or crazy. Your brain is an organ. Take it to the doctor when it’s acting up.
- That being said, medication isn’t a silver bullet. If you’ve spent your life beating on a locked door, trying to get to a healthy life on the other side, think of medication as a key. It will let you open the door, but then it’s your job to walk through. If you take the right medication but don’t make an effort to live well and improve your habits, don’t be surprised if you still feel like shit.
- Medication isn’t always the answer. Some people respond better to therapy, while others require both. Sometimes what appears to be mental illness is really a normal response to extraordinarily difficult circumstances. But if you’re struggling, it’s worth starting the conversation with someone who can help.
- Don’t assume there is no help available. So often, I talk myself out of asking my doctor a question because I’m convinced I know what she’s going to say about it. It’s important to remember how seldom that actually happens in real life. Give them the chance to surprise you. At least then your concerns will be documented.
- Life can be so much better than it is right now. I’m praying for you, and I’ll be cheering you on as you find the tools and methods that help you get on your feet.
