A New Brain: My Experience with Antidepressants
Words by Cian Johnston
In February I went to my doctor and told him I thought I had adult ADHD. I had come to this conclusion after figuring that what I had considered a poor performance in my life regarding career, social life and general attitude must have been coloured by something in my brain. I thought the only other answer could have been what I was secretly fearing. That I was just a bad person. Not that I was cruel or rude or even lazy, but that I was just one of those people who was not meant to be happy or achieve much beyond holding down a job and getting through my life.
When I told the doctor I thought I had ADHD and that this would explain my fluctuating mood, poor performance in job interviews and lack of concentration he sat me down and calmly explained that it would be highly unlikely I had ADHD given that I had managed to make it through my childhood, leaving cert, college and five years of working without it coming up.
“It sounds like you’re depressed,” he told me. Well I knew that much. But what could I do about it?
This is when he told me that he could prescribe me medication that would help with my day to day anxiety and depression. An overwhelming sense of relief washed over me.
I have had poor mental health for years. When I was a teenager I started having panic attacks. When I was in college I went through a phase where I would only sleep four nights a week and recently in the wake of not finding a job in my chosen field after college and the world shutting down due to a global pandemic, I had lost all active interest in my own life. I had taken anxiety medication when I was sixteen, but this was more of a temporary solution. I had seen counsellors who taught me breathing methods to control my anxiety and even made some breakthroughs on childhood issues that meant I couldn’t handle criticism very well. I even made a brief foray into hypnotherapy to try rewire my brain to reward positive action and ignore negative feelings. However, these all proved temporary and eventually I would find myself walking through my day in a haze, like I was underwater and could only see this after I’d been submerged for weeks or months at a time.
I was skeptical about what I could do to change things because I knew people were walking around with genuine mental illnesses, real anxiety disorders and conditions that held them back but they’d still managed to carry on. I don’t have any more childhood trauma than the next person. I grew up in a comfortable, loving home with friends and family that supported me. But I was still miserable and felt I couldn’t change that.
Art by Liam Horgan.
My doctor prescribed me Etalopro or more commonly Escitalopram or Lexapro in the US. It’s a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor or SSRI. The short summary is that it prevents your presynaptic cell from absorbing serotonin in your brain, leaving more to work with your synaptic cleft and easing the symptoms of depression and anxiety. They can take weeks to work but some people I spoke to said that the choice to take the pills can bring on a placebo effect of better mood in the first few weeks. I spoke to some other friends who I knew had taken SSRIs before. One of them warned me against the side effects, another praised their positive effects and one Friend warned me I wouldn’t be able to use the creative aspects of my mind if I took them. They were divisive.
After a week I began to feel something happening in my head. I noticed that my regular anxiety had been replaced by a different kind. I figured this must be a side effect of my body adjusting but it was still preferable to my normal anxiety. Normally my anxiety functions as a voice in the back of my head informing me that everyone I know secretly hates me, or that I’ll probably get lung cancer in my forties due to my smoking cigarettes for years or that the one poorly worded email I had sent in a rushed job application in 2017 had in fact put me on a nationwide blacklist across every single production company in Ireland. But this new anxiety was more physical, like a sudden wave of shaky hands, faster breathing and more primal fear like I was physically under attack from some creature hiding behind tall grass. This was much more manageable because there isn’t any tall grass in Aldi and I’m just buying scented candles. Other side effects followed, headaches, dizziness issues sleeping (which weren’t anything new).
The first big change I noticed was my energy. I had some for the first time in years. Normally I feel like I’m dragging my body around, even when I’m eating right, sleeping and avoiding caffeine and alcohol. But now I just feel fine. I feel lighter, stronger, like I’m awake. I’m not bouncing off the walls, but I’m not falling asleep in the corner. My mood continued to improve and my morning thoughts, which had almost always been about my personal failings or the eventual decay of the planet due to climate change, had turned to breakfast. Personal failings and climate change are more of a lunchtime activity. I was fighting with my parents less. I felt more focussed and I found myself engaging with the world a bit more. I could send a text and not feel that the recipient was secretly sharing it to a group chat about how terrible I was for changing our plans. These feelings were all still there of course, but they weren’t the same. I could see them for what they were, anxious and depressive thoughts. I felt I could see them, think about them and move on. The other big thing was realising how normal this must be for a lot of other people. I began to talk to my brother about his experience with anxiety and normally this conversation would only make things worse for me, but now I could relate to his experience and share mine, taking a positive feeling from the exchange and feeling less alone.
The big change in perspective was about my own life. I had been walking through days viewing myself as a failure in a big cosmic race to my own death. What will people say about me when I die? Will I ever have children? Would I be a good father if I did? What if I stay in my dead end job forever and don’t make it to be someone rich and famous? Do I even want to be rich and famous? Is it too late to change career? Am I too old to think about moving to another country? All day every day this was swimming around in my head while I tried to do something simple like make dinner. But now, it’s like I’m present in my own body for the first time ever. I do not currently haveany life threatening illness. I’m sitting in a chair, the sun is coming in the window and it’s warm and bright. I’m clicking away at the keys on my laptop and enjoying some music. I will die one day, but all signs point to it not being in the next five minutes. I have friends and family and I’m learning to drive, even if it’s a bit later in life. I’m even more creative than I was before, because now I can sit down and write without thinking about where the project will end up or if this will lead to my next move in my career or if this is the best thing I’ve ever written. It’s what I’m writing now and these words on this page are the only ones that currently matter. I’m less jealous of my friends who have had better career paths, I’m finally able to enjoy it with them. If I had to summarize my mental health for the last almost ten years, I would say it’s like I was in a boxing ring with my depression and anxiety going one on one. And I had all of my friends and family ringside cheering me on, telling me I was strong and could win. But I was the only one who could see that my depression and anxiety had brought a knife to the boxing match. And so I never threw a single punch. And my loved ones couldn’t understand why. They probably felt a bit left down by my poor performance despite all their help. Those days I couldn’t get out of bed or I lost it at them over the smallest issue or I refused their help. But since I’ve started taking antidepressants it’s disarmed my anxiety and depression. I still have to get into the ring with it every day and give it my best, but we’re on a more equal footing now. It’s a fair fight and I feel up to the challenge. I can’t win every round but the game isn’t over yet.
A lot of people have strong opinions about medication for mental health. I can understand the fear of chemical dependency on drugs to function. I think it’s part of what kept me away from them all these years. But since I’ve started, I can see things differently for the first time in a while. I’ve come up from under the water and I’ve filled my lungs with air and it is fresh and purifying. I don’t plan to stay on these pills forever, but I know if I have to submerge again, I found the path back to the surface and I’m eager to breathe.
If you have concerns about your mental health, speak to friends and family if you can and consult a medical professional, like a GP, about what’s right for you.
Samaritans are a 24/7 service for free non judgmental support:
Freephone: 116 123
Email: joe@samaritans.ie
Visit: www.samaritans.ie
Pieta provide a range of suicide/self harm prevention services:
Freephone: 1800 247 247
Text: HELP to 51444
Visit: www.pieta.ie
Cian is a screenwriter and videographer from Cork but his real passion is making homemade mexican food. His original screenplay Cappiricio took home the “Best Film Script” trophy at the 2018 Student Media Awards and he has been shortlisted for the GFC/RTE short film commission. His most recent project involved doing far too much research on the changing trends in road safety adverts over a twenty year period. He is currently developing a TV series about the 1919 Limerick Soviet. When not writing or making videos he likes to read history books, watch bad movies and listen to angry music while cleaning his house.
