Coming off medication and setting fire to the safety blanket

I have been on and off antidepressants for a large proportion of my adult life, to combat both depression and anxiety, but mostly anxiety. I must admit that for a time in my twenties when I was plagued with panic so crippling, I couldn’t leave the house, I relied on those drugs to function. They were my safety blanket. But depending on medication left me in a bit of a rut, as it meant I didn’t have to think about the reasons why I was suffering in the first place.

Not that there’s anything wrong with having to rely on antidepressants, of course. They got me through some dark days. I am not at all anti-anti-depressants.But I do think doctors are very quick to dish these tablets out to people without trying to get to the bottom of the root cause of their illness. Prescribing drugs alone without any sort of talking therapy will only ever act as a plaster that’s just waiting to be ripped off at the first sign of trouble.

Over the last few years, I have made a real effort to get on top of my anxiety. I’ve had talking therapy and CBT, regularly attended mindfulness classes, and lately I’ve even taken up running again. It’s only in the past year or so that I’ve begun to really understand the triggers for my anxiety, and what I can do to manage it, without relying on drugs. For a long time, I thought that it was just a chemical imbalance, that I was anxious for no reason, but of course, there were reasons. They just weren’t obvious. This realisation gave me the freedom to start thinking about whether medication was really necessary.

Although I’ve tried pretty much every kind of antidepressant medication you could name, they’ve never really agreed with me. Yes, they reduced my anxiety, but for every panic attack I didn’t have, I developed five different side-effects that weren’t there before. Sickness, headaches, dizziness, weight gain, insomnia. If it’s listed on the small print of a leaflet, I’ve probably suffered from it. And so I began to wonder a few weeks ago, after a particularly bad week of nausea and lightheadedness, if these drugs were doing me more harm than good.

A few days ago, I made a decision. To stop taking any more medication. (I should mention that I did this safely, under the supervision and advice of my GP, after gradually reducing my dosage. It is highly inadvisable to go cold turkey.) I am pretty confident that I will feel better without it. Medication is not for everyone, and maybe it’s just not for me.

I’m not naive and I know that I’ll still have anxious times. But I’m self aware enough now to recognise the signs and use the tools that I’ve picked up over the years to manage them. There is no shame in asking for help. It’s always okay not to be okay. It’s fine to rely on medication if you need it. But it’s also okay to say ‘do you know what, I think i’m doing alright.’ So let’s set fire to the safety blanket and give this a try...