Antidepressants

The New Antidepressant: Sex

I got off the antidepressants about a year and a half after starting them. I was angry to have been put on bipolar medication with so little analysis and counselling. Though several friends I had confided in had agreed that it was a correct diagnosis, I denied it.

I didn’t need the medication anymore, I’d found the key to the happy hormones I lacked: sex.

After 20 years of having no interest in physical contact I joined Tinder, met a stranger and lost my virginity to him on our third time meeting. I’ve heard that people who’ve experienced trauma end up forcing themselves to relive it over and over again.

Sex became something I needed. Without it I would spiral into depression and experience wild mood swings. Yet, I did not remain with any of my partners long.

Sometimes being self-aware is a curse. It creates an anxiety around every action and decision. Some of the first memories I have involve me restraining my excitement. I didn’t want people to notice me. I remember thinking ‘people will think you want attention.’ Now I ask myself: is that a bad thing? Isn’t that a normal thing?

I remember as a child not wanting to feel joy. I associated happiness with disappointment. I thought happiness was foolish. It meant I trusted something enough to allow it to affect me. I thought I was being smart by denying myself happiness. If I didn’t feel hope I would never have that hope dashed to pieces. I was preparing myself for the worst possible outcomes.

I didn’t tell my parents I was skipping school. Eventually, the school stopped calling when I didn’t show up. I didn’t tell my parents I was staying up all night because waking up alive devastated me. I didn’t tell them that some nights, I would drug myself with massive doses of headache pills so I could fall asleep without having to lie awake in silence for too long.

I didn’t tell them I exercised at night because I was afraid of gaining weight or that I didn’t eat for days at a time or that I loved that feeling of hunger. I didn’t tell them that sometimes I would inflict pain upon myself. It made me feel like I was receiving punishment I deserved. It made me feel a physical hurt that was preferable to the mental agony I couldn’t give up on.

I didn’t want my parents to think I just wanted attention.

I finally sought help in my second year of university. I had started sleeping with the lights on because I was imagining demons in my room when I closed my eyes.

The antidepressants made me dozy and unable to focus. I was dizzy and my mind felt cloudy all the time. It was a different kind of numbness. Vegetable-like. I couldn’t hold a conversation. I was an English and History major but I’d lost my ability to read. I slept constantly. I stopped making eye-contact.

I Don’t Know What I’m Looking For

Is happiness so elusive?

I went to a counsellor a few years ago, after my family Doctor’s intern tried to send me to a hospital. I told the counsellor: “I don’t believe anyone is happy.”

From there, I was sent to a Psychologist. I waited for 30 minutes past my designated appointment time, in a room with people I deemed crazy and thought, am I one of them? After speaking to me for 2 minutes I was diagnosed: Bipolar Disorder. He added the medication to my antidepressants and sent me home.

My mother had emailed our Doctor to tell him I’d had a manic episode. I’d gone from hours and days of sitting on the couch staring, unresponsive at the wall, to cleaning the house, making strange jokes, and being filled with unexplained energy. I hadn’t explained it for a reason.

In a house of contained emotions, stifled sexuality, and painted on perfection, I’d discovered release. I had to keep it quiet to keep it safe.

As a 20 year old woman who’d been ‘outed’ to her Family Doctor, as a psycho, I felt betrayed once more by my mother. Creating mountains out of mole hills was her way of ‘showing she cared’ but it made me want to drag those mountains on top of myself.

“For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move”
Matthew 17:20 ESV