My Journey with Medication

Trigger Warning: Discussion of suicidal thoughts. 

Please Read: These are my own personal thoughts, opinions, and my own journey with prescribed medication. Please do not take any of this as medical advice. Please consult with a licensed and trained professional.

You would have had a hard time giving me Tylenol as a child, let alone an antidepressant.

When I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at 10 years old, I was told that I would live with this diagnosis for the rest of my life. After about a year of individual therapy and a round of OCD group therapy, I was sent to a psychologist where I was told that I should be on medication. I was not making enough progress in their eyes and it was suggested that I start to explore different options for medication. It was an immediate no from me. I had many reasons at the time for this decision. 

I was at the start of my journey. At 10 years old, I felt the need to discover my disorder a bit more before going straight into medication. At the time, I felt like if I was going to have this disorder for the rest of my life, I was going to figure out how to live with it without the help of medication. More than this though, I think I had it stuck in my head from a pretty early age that I wanted to do it on my own. Maybe in a way, I felt like I would rather fight against my own mind everyday than “take the easy way out”. At the time I didn’t see medication as a tool in my tool box, but more of a way to shelve my disorder and ignore it. Another reason was that I wanted to feel like my most natural self and I felt like medication would not allow me to feel that way. Maybe at a super deep unconscious level too, the feeling of being out of control in my own mind made me want to have a sense of control in my external environment. At least I could control whether I ingested these medications or not.

It's such a hard topic for many people and there's a lot of emotions surrounding the decision to take medication. I feel like many people with mental health conditions have felt the same way at some point. That medication will “alter you” in some way. That taking medication is the “weak” way out of your mental health condition. There are so many horror stories on the internet from people who slander and hate on medication as well. It's hard to decipher ones own feelings on the subject. Plus, who really knows how medication will affect YOU. Its kind of a scary endeavor. Many people don’t even have the choice in the matter, having to go on medication whether they want to or not. I recognize that my privilege was that I had a choice at the time. 

I didn’t realize that fast forward 13 years, I would have no choice. I had to take medication to save my own life. It was either take medication or perish to my own disorder.

At age 23, I started developing themes around moral scrupulosity (Real Event OCD, POCD, Harm OCD, Religious OCD, etc..), I started to notice a steep decline in my view of self. I was so confused as to why these intrusions were happening and my only conclusion at the time was that I was a bad person. Only bad people would have these thoughts right? I started to feel like I was someone who needed to be locked away in a prison cell.

At the same time, these thoughts were extremely terrifying to me and I was so fearful of them and what they said about me as a person. At the time, it felt like paranoia. I started to question whether this was truly me or my mental illness. Did I even have OCD? I was eaten alive by this idea that I was a bad person and it consumed my every waking moment. The more I let the OCD themes spread and gave into my compulsions, the worse I would get, leading me to a point in which no one could reassure me enough. No amount of googling would help. No amount of "checking" would change how I viewed myself. I was a danger to society in my mind and these thoughts of self started to really influence thoughts of suicide. I just wanted to be out of this loop of pain and suffering. I thought suicide would eliminate the threat I was to society as well as the pain I was suffering from. Looking back, it's shocking how my brain believed so heavily in the delusions that I was experiencing, but in the moment, they felt so imminent and real. I was so scared.

When I saw an OCD therapist for the first time in 7 years, I was a shell of myself. I was on the brink of death and no one knew it at the time. It is then that I finally sought out medication for myself. It took me a while to really talk myself into it because I had these ideas about medication that were so ingrained in me. At the same time, I knew there was no better time to try out medication than where I was at mentally during that time. 

I was first prescribed Escitalopram (Lexapro) at a low dosage and continued to do weekly visits with my OCD therapist, focusing on exposure response prevention (ERP) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). At first it felt like nothing had changed. It felt slow to start and then finally I realized that I wasn’t as sad or depressed anymore. In fact, I can confidently say I really didn’t feel much of anything at all. While not feeling sad was nice, not feeling anything felt almost worse in a way. I was enlightened by the fact that I didn’t feel like there was this pressing shadow of doom around every corner, but I also felt like I was just an amoeba floating through space, experiencing the world like a robot. The side effects were intense to say the least. 

I could argue that the ERP was what helped me, not the medication, but I would be lying because it was a combination of the two. Even though the medication produced some horrible side-effects, I truly believe that the medication helped save my life. It took me right out of whatever rut I was in. After about a year and a half on the medication, I slowly came off of it and it took a good 9 months before I felt like I was back to my original self. 

After going through what I have these last few years, I can really recognize the importance of medication now and the space it can have in my life. I now view it as a tool for when things could become dangerous. I think I also have the confidence that I can still handle this on my own, with ERP and a trained professional. 

I think a lot of people have this black or white view about medication and I was that person too. I also feel like people with OCD generally hold this kind of mindset about a lot of things. We usually see things as never being in the gray, when the reality is, most things fall on a gray scale. I hold grace for my previous mindset and my previous beliefs. We all learn, grow, and change based on our experiences. Its okay that there's differing opinions about it and medication affects everyone differently. There is no black or white answer. I think it can be a great tool, but ultimately it is always up to the person to advocate for themselves and what they think they can handle. I don’t regret not taking medication at such a young age, and I don’t regret the decision to take it as a young adult. It helped me save myself and I can confidently say it will always be there if I need it.