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I started taking Prozac in December because, quite frankly, I was in the midst of a “nervous breakdown.” This an old-school term that is no longer used in psychiatry, but I have yet to find another one that more accurately conveys the process of losing your marbles, so I’m bringing it back.
After a three-day Adderall stint (prescribed, for the record) to study for an exam last September and a particularly traumatic trip to Big Bend National Park (which is, in itself, a long story for another time), I found myself entangled in an Obsessive-Compulsive episode that, to this day five months later, has never really ended.
When I think back, I’ve had OCD tendencies for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I would save scraps of paper and plastic around the house in fear that bad men may come to murder my family and would only stop the attack if I provided them with an offering of sacred trash. I also was already convinced at eight years old by the Southern Baptist church that I was never a good enough Christian and was likely going to hell. I’ve gone to multiple doctors multiple times for illnesses I am absolutely convinced I have after hours of online research, only to be told time and time again that nothing is actually wrong with me.
If I start getting too voluptuous, I begin to hate myself, weigh myself multiple times a day, and actively restrict food until I end up binge eating. And when my cousin’s especially catty husband interrupted my brother and me cutting up at a bar with, “Okay that’s enough with the twincest,” it freaked. me. the fuck. out. My cousin’s husband is a true bitch and was likely acting out because he wasn’t the center of attention, but nevertheless, I contemplated endlessly about what I could have been doing that warranted his comment so that I could avoid ever doing it again.
OCD is like experiencing your own personal hell on repeat. But, for the most part, my OCD episodes wouldn’t last for more than a few minutes in the past, maybe a week, if my brain was in a particularly vulnerable state.
But this time, post-Adderall binge and Big Bend terror, was different. My brain was running around in a loop, constantly preoccupied with dying, having medical illnesses, hurting people against my will, and the other worst possible fears I could imagine, and I couldn’t seem to break away from it. I am convinced that the Adderall damaged my basal ganglia specifically (I have done EXTENSIVE research on it, of course), but I’m ultimately unsure if that’s the reality of what happened or if it’s just the hypochondriac part of my OCD.
I have scheduled an appointment with a neurologist just to check it out. The neurologist will probably tell me there is no obvious damage to my brain. Maybe I’ll believe it or maybe I’ll obsess about the quality of the diagnostic tools used and schedule an appointment with another neurologist. Or maybe, I contemplate, they’ll find that I have a brain tumor.
After this recent unraveling of my mental health started, I continued on a downward spiral. I was in a constant state of fear and would have several panic attacks per day. Even though I slept nine hours at night, I would be so exhausted that I needed another three-hour nap during the day. I preferred to quarantine myself in my apartment, and if I had to go anywhere I would start to get very irritable because my anxiety would be so bad that I needed to escape wherever I was immediately. I found myself frequently crying and trying to break up with my boyfriend who loves me unconditionally. I compulsively spent the majority of my days doing online research to try to figure out what was wrong with me, what caused it, and what the cure was.
An avid problem solver, I went to my regular therapist who is amazing but is not an OCD specialist, and this unfortunately made things worse. I started going to an actual OCD specialist, and the homework of writing down my fears and reading them aloud was so anxiety-provoking that I was terrified of each appointment.
I meditated, did yoga, and listened to a Buddhist podcast every day. These were helpful for easing my mind but were only temporary solutions. I went to my doctor and got my B12, Vitamin D, folic acid, and thyroid checked (as abnormalities can affect your mental health). They were normal, surprise surprise, but I started taking supplements anyway.
The list goes on and on. I tried everything short of medicinal psychedelics, which I seriously considered for a while because the research behind them is fascinatingly positive. But I was afraid that, since I was unable to find a medical setting to administer them, I would freak out during a trip with some shit I bought on the street and make things worse. Nothing was really helping, and I began to add killing myself into my rotating list of potential solutions because I was so miserable every second of every day that I knew I couldn’t exist like this for the rest of my life.
Out of fear that I would be committed to a psychiatric hospital, I made a safety plan with my boyfriend that if worst came to worst, I would just come live with him in New York. He would take care of me while I did an hour or two of personal assistant work for him and spent the rest of the day/my life hibernating in his apartment. True love, y’all.
I had held off on actual psychiatric medication at this point for a few reasons: 1) I didn’t want to be medicated for something I thought I could fix on my own through self-work and therapy 2) I knew medication was more of a band-aid than a cure, and I was afraid I would become dependent on it/it would be detrimental in the long run/it would turn me into a shell of myself 3) I was very concerned about the potential side effects, especially the paradox of worsened depression and anxiety (Buddha knows I had enough), weight gain, and nonexistent sex drive.
But look, I told myself, when you’re off your fucking rocker, sometimes you have to bring in the big guns. All of the psychiatric providers in my area were booked for 6-8 weeks, so I decided my Primary Care Provider would be the fastest bet.
But how could I trust a PCP to make adequate psychiatric decisions? This was not their field.
Cue more online research.
After weeks of literature review, I decided on Luvox, an SSRI specifically tailored to OCD, and got a prescription from my doctor. Then, I never took it because, aside from having interactions with a lot of other meds, it can cause severe drowsiness. I was convinced I would become a zombie and be even less able to function in my day-to-day life. So, after more lit reviews, I decided on Prozac because it’s a tried and true drug that has a lot of research behind it, and my friends who are on it have found it to be very helpful with minimal side effects. I rolled up to my PCP and got another prescription.
For the first couple weeks, I was extremely nauseous and sleeping even more (which are common initial side effects). But then I began to gradually notice that I was starting to have days that weren’t absolutely insufferable. My energy was slowly increasing, and my depression and anxiety were slowly decreasing. I started to feel hopeful. Maybe life could be worth living. What an idea.
What really helped, though, was that therapy was becoming more tolerable. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the gold-standard for OCD, and writing down my worst fears and reading them aloud over and over and over again, although it seems counterintuitive, works like a miracle.
Our brains are hardwired to analyze things that we find threatening because this helps promote survival. But when you have a few screws loose like I do, problems can occur when this analysis becomes glued to irrational, but disturbing, fears and gets locked in overdrive, unable to break out of the cycle. That’s why repeated exposure helps. It desensitizes you to the fear so that your brain can get bored and move on to something else. It’s absolutely terrifying sometimes, but it works.
Some of the other things that come along with Prozac are curious. My best friend and boyfriend have nicknamed me a “Prozac Jumping Jack” because I have a newfound passion for organizing everything in my life and theirs. I have gone through our apartments like a tornado, getting rid of anything we don’t need anymore and putting everything else into an orderly fashion. I have revamped my skin care regimen, insisting that they join me in my nine-step routine when we’re spending time together. And I find great joy in having my shit together, such as fixing furniture that has been broken for two years, doing my homework ahead of time, and meal prep. I even do my BFF Bailey’s hair and makeup multiple times a week because it excites me to help her get her shit together, too.
I was a little concerned that my new activities were a part of the excessive perfectionism that can accompany OCD or maybe even hypomania that can occur with the boost in serotonin from SSRIs. But my therapist tells me it’s probably okay because I actually like to be a Prozac Jumping Jack, and it’s not caused by fear, creating more anxiety, or impairing my life. So I’m running with it.
The only thing that I still haven’t gotten used to is the vivid dreams. Lord, the vivid dreams. They’re extensive, and bizarre, and burned into my brain. Last night I dreamt that I had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital where Bailey came to visit me and took me on a day-trip to Target where two of my credit cards got declined. Then, I had a follow-up dream where I told Bailey that the whole previous incident had been a dream, but she didn’t believe me and convinced me that it was actually a true event. Finally, I woke up for real and was very confused but very relieved to be in my own bed, with no signs of a recent visit to the sanitarium or a negative bank account, bless my heart.
But, alas, I’ll deal with the dreams for now. I know the Prozac, in combination with therapy, is working because, eight weeks in, I am relatively comfortable living a functional life again. And I no longer want to kill myself, which is a statement I like to drop in casual conversation to open a dialogue about mental health and also to see how people react. They’re normally uneasy but generally supportive, saying things like, “Well, that’s always a good sign,” or, “Jesus Christ, Hannah,” or laughing awkwardly then launching into another topic.
So I’m still batshit crazy, but I’m slowly recovering from the abyss, and on my journey, I’m making friends, acquaintances, and strangers uncomfortably aware of mental health issues.
The modern woman really can do it all. .
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hannahrose
Excuse me, but I've got some shit to say. @xohannahrozay on IG and Twitter.
@xohannahrozay
@xohannahrozay
If it makes you feel any better, we are actually living in a controlled hell as the oligarchs use the idea of this storybook hell as being a guilt trip if you don’t give them money in order to fund their vast mind conditioning apparatus thus keeping the perpetual cycle going which feeds into every other self serving cycle wheel/profit industry…on an equally serious note, you seem very self aware and I’m glad you’ve found the right steps to take for your own experiences. It’s not easy admitting these types of things to yourself let alone put it into writing to share to others
Not a doctor, but I feel like people with OCD really shouldn’t be taking Adderall…seems like it would just exacerbate the problem of overthinking.
Thank you for sharing, and good for you for getting over your fear of the medication. It’s a tough admission that I recently made myself, that you can’t do it without the help of modern medicine, but it does get manageable, if not fully “better”.
Here I am thinking I have OCD because I get anxious if my Outlook is on the left screen instead of the right. Thanks for sharing, keep fighting the good fight.
100% can relate. I’m glad your boyfriend is so compassionate and understanding. I had a huge downward spiral after my daughter was born and my husband did not get it whatsoever. He started out as “if you know you’re being irrational, why can’t you just stop?” and through a few counseling sessions, he now realizes that’s not how it works. Somebody without a mental health issue from the outside looking in may only exacerbate the issues at hand. I’m SO thrilled about your success story. Thank you for being transparent and sharing with us!
Holy shit. It’s scary how much I relate to this one. I have OCD, anxiety, social anxiety and have battled depression on and off for years. There have been times where it got BAD. I took prozac, specifically for the OCD, for a long time throughout middle school, high school, and the beginning of college so I totally understand where you are at right now. College and joining a fraternity actually really helped for a good while for me. My OCD has been extremely manageable for years and all the other shit got to be manageable too, more or less. However, my anxiety and the depression have come roaring back with a vengeance over the last 8 months or so because of an overwhelming shit-pile of situations that I realized that I could not handle on my own about a month ago. Been seeing a therapist since. It’s an absolute slog some days but I’m back to fighting, at least.
Keep fighting and keep pushing forward, Hannah. There’s a light somewhere down the road. There has to be. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Thank you for sharing this.
Reading this entire thing was very relatable, but now I’m concerned that maybe I should also be taking Prozac instead of just doing nothing.
You should see what Kelly Brogan MD is doing for exactly what you’re describing.
I really needed this article today. I’ve been suffering from undiagnosed anxiety for years (I suspect OCD but it could be GAD as well). It’s been getting worst lately because of some major life events. I’m glad you got over your fear of medication. In all honesty, thank you for sharing this.