My therapist suggested medication for the fourth time in August 2022. The first three times I sai…
T=0: The Decision
Clinical depression since at least 25. Therapy every week. Functional — working, socialising, maintaining — but with a consistent baseline of low-grade suffering I had accepted as the ground state of my personality.
My therapist suggested medication for the fourth time in August 2022. The first three times I said "I want to try to manage it without." The fourth time she asked what exactly I was managing toward. I could not answer. I made an appointment with a psychiatrist the same week.
Finding out whether the person I have been is the person I am, or whether she was mostly the depression.
3 Months Out
Months 1–2 were rough — emotional blunting, fatigue, intermittent nausea. The psychiatrist said this was the adjustment phase. By month 3 I was sleeping through the night for the first time I can remember as an adult. That alone was worth the first two months.
“Work with a psychiatrist, not just a GP. Medication for depression requires adjustment and monitoring — the right dose and the right type are not always the first ones you try.”