I remember coming home every day after school during my freshman, sophomore and junior years of high school and being completely and utterly exhausted. I would submerge myself into the couch cushions and zone out for hours on end, too tired to even pay attention to what was on TV. My mom would come to describe me as lifeless and emotionless during those years; she would come home from work every day to find me sitting on the couch in the same position with the same empty look on my face. I struggled silently those few years, but it eventually came to the point where I couldn’t just sit back and ignore it anymore.
I realized there was something wrong when I passed out at a concert in 2014. I was waiting in a large crowd to get into the stadium when suddenly everything went black and I woke up on a table, wondering how on Earth I got there. A few days later I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with anxiety, which had caused me to have a serious panic attack at the concert and pass out in the crowd. I remember that drive home being completely silent, my mom and I wondering what that meant for me and where we would go from there. I was immediately put on anti-anxiety medication and was told to start seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist on a regular basis. It all happened so fast, too fast, and I wasn’t old enough yet to truly understand what was happening or to make my own medical decisions.
In 2015 my dad passed away, and I remember having many talks with my therapist about how I felt about it. Shortly after, I was diagnosed with depression and was started on antidepressants right away to combat the negative feelings. Despite the numerous attempts to find a combination of medications to relieve both my anxiety and depression, nothing got better. The exhaustion, headaches, anxiety and depression were still there, and I felt like they always would be. I withdrew completely from my friends and school and no one knew why; I was losing myself to mental illness yet no one could see. I quit playing volleyball, a sport I loved, stopped seeing my friends and became someone I didn’t recognize — someone I still don’t recognize to this day.
After almost three years of trying different rounds of medication and therapies, I was done. In addition to the exhaustion of just my daily life, I was fed up with being treated like a never ending science experiment. I felt like a puppet; my doctors told me what to do and what medicine to take, and I did it without complaint. I never thought twice about it or even realized what the abundance of medicine was doing to my body, how it changed my personality completely. The last time I saw my psychiatrist I was sitting on the couch across from her with my head in my hands, and I remember her saying to my mom, “I’ve never seen her look so bad, she needs more antidepressants.” That was the last straw for me, and that night my mom and I decided to make a change.
I’m proud to say that I no longer take any medication and instead choose to manage my anxiety and depression myself. Even though I know medication can be great for some people, I personally don’t want to go back down that route. That being said, I wouldn’t say my anxiety and depression are cured; I definitely have my ups and downs when it comes to my mental health, but I’m in a much better place now than I was before. It saddens me how my doctors took advantage of me as a patient and refused to take the time to dig a bit deeper to find the true root of the problem. It’s because of my experience with doctors throughout those few years that made me realize how important it is to sometimes take your health into your own hands and get a second opinion. Doctors are supposed to make us feel better, not overlook obvious issues just to keep you as a patient. Your physical and mental health are of the utmost importance, and you can’t just sit back and let them take over when things get bad.