“[My doctor] asked if I thought other people who take medication are weak. I shook my head immediately. Of course not. Then why did I think I was?”
Photo-Illustration: Photos: Getty Images A few years ago, after being on the same medication regimen for depression for several years, I told my doctor I wanted to try to go off of one of my meds. I was taking three at that point and I felt bad about how many medications I was on.
I remember her looking at me carefully. She asked if that idea upset me. I immediately said yes. Then she asked why. I didn’t have an answer right away. Maybe it was money? I hated that it was more expensive to keep me alive than it was for “normal” people. She nodded; that’s understandable. But were there any other reasons?She asked if I thought other people who take medication are weak. I shook my head immediately. Of course not.
There are certainly people who can take antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication short-term. It’s frustrating that for those people, there are few options in terms of medication that can be discontinued without issue. But there are many of us who need to be medicated indefinitely, and that the default belief about medication is that it is meant to be used on a short-term basis is extremely harmful. It’s stigmatizing. It perpetuates a notion that to take medication is to somehow be weak.
The go-to analogy in this situation is usually diabetes. Would anyone judge someone with diabetes for taking insulin? Maris Kreizman, who wrote a Longreads essay about her experience growing up with diabetes, supports this analogy, and said the fact that she had to accept that her diabetes was “a lifelong condition” helped her come to terms with the same realization about her anxiety.
She listened and murmured comforting things, then cautiously said that she hadn’t heard me in this state in a long time. She is one of those invaluable friends who keep people like me alive: She can witness this kind of pain and not get scared or overwhelmed. Something she said in our conversation jogged my memory.
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