How it felt taking my first anti-anxiety medication

I sit it at my wooden desk, silent and somber. Bright orange post-it notes and large picture frames displaying happy memories bark at me from the back of the desk. Directly in the center of this big wooden block is a tiny four-inch yellow bottle. It sits alone, completely isolated from all the other objects on my desk, and it is the center of my attention.

This bottle contains thirty, tiny, white pills that are supposedly my ticket to peacefulness. They are my new elixir of loving life, my fountain of enjoying youth… but as I remember a drink from the fountain of youth never came without a price, I wonder if these pills hold the same consequences. Technically, these pills were prescribed to me by a relatively calm man with a degree in his office. Technically, they are only supposed to supplement the amount of happiness I cannot provide for myself (so a lot of it, at this point.) Technically, they should not hijack my mental capacities and foster a dependency on prescription medication. Technically, they exist only to help me.

I unscrew the thick, white cap and put it on the desk. “Okay, you have done bigger things than this before. You have jumped off cliffs and you cannot take one helpful pill?” I reflect on how many Advil and Aleve I have taken before to try to convince myself that the action of taking a pill is not all that different. I have pain and I am taking a medication (safely) to help fix, or at least dull, this pain… But I know it is different. This pill is not an anti-inflammatory, it is an anti-anxiety drug. It will bend my mind to its will so that I feel the way it tells me to feel. I guess that should be encouraging because it will tell me how to feel happy but I still want to figure out how happy feels on my own accord.

Happy with a friend in France

I pick up the bottle and knock a few pills into my palm. I put them back in the bottle and stare at them sitting in the sea of other little, white circles. I shake a few back into my hand and continue to replace them in the bottle. I repeat this process a few more time until I place one single pill into my palm.

Okay, you’re it. Winner. Number one. The Chosen One. You’re the little green alien the claw is picking up in Toy Story.

I put the pill on my tongue before I can shake it back into the bottle. It sits there and I debate spitting it out for a couple seconds. Once that has been concluded to be a poor idea, I still can’t force myself to swallow. I sit at my big wooden desk in my big Harvard room, too scared of crossing the threshold into prescription medication with my mouth open and a little white pill melting on my tongue. I can start to taste the flavor of the pill as it breaks apart and dissolves. ‘Okay, you are already this far, you are not going to let your tongue receive all of the help,’ I tell myself. Pick up my water bottle, drink, swallow, breathe.

Within a few minutes I feel a little more focused and a little more at ease. There are no massive surges of ecstasy, I am not suddenly elated. I do not feel disillusioned that all of my problems are gone. Good. Too much happiness in the face of too much misery makes the comedown unbearable. I decide that my little, white pills may actually be pretty helpful after all.

I screw on the thick, white cap. The bottle is placed safely in the drawer, hidden from prying eyes. One small step farther into my process of healing, one small leap towards peacefulness.

I write this article several months after that moment; since then, I have taken a total of nine of those pills. I became stronger on my accord and I fought to restore my peace of mind. The issues which plagued me then have ceased to control my life. They remain only as memories and lessons learned rather than sources of overwhelming pain. My little yellow bottle of pills is still there but it is more of a safety net than a daily necessity. Taking properly prescribed medication in a time of need is absolutely helpful but it never became and never will become a crutch for me (as I had originally feared.)

Now I hear birds sing, I taste my meals, I notice colors and leaves in the trees, and I am devoted to the beautiful friendships which surround me.

Nothing is gray and I feel strong.