So, I’ve been prescribed anti-depressants. A shocker for my millions of readers I’m sure.
I’ve pushed medication right to the very end of the solutions list for my mental health problems, and here we are. No more cards left to play. I’ve dieted, exercised, journaled, meditated, yoga’d, gratituded and ‘taken time for me’ as much as a human could realistically be expected to. Time for the big guns of big pharma.
The 20 minute phone call with a GP I’d never met went well, he said there’ll likely be side effects but as long as they weren’t intolerable I should keep taking the pills (50mg Sertraline for those Prescription Pokemon catchers out there) and should make another appointment in 4 weeks to see how I’m getting on.
Cue a whirlwind of additional and crippling anxiety after reading the instruction leaflet in the box of pills, and another where I worry the GP won’t pick up the phone and leave me hooked on mind bending drugs with no way to get off this crazy ride.
I went for a 14km walk by myself on my last day before starting the pills. Either my last experience of ‘reality’ or my last day without ‘normal’ brain chemistry, whichever way you want to look at it. The drugs will either work, or they won’t. But I have to take them because I don’t have any other options apart from staying how I am, which isn’t an option at all.
But at least there’s delicious space eels.