People have strong opinions on medicine these days. Particularly, it seems, people with no medical qualifications whatsoever.
One Sunday recently, I had a script to fill at a nearby chemist. This required both travel and human interaction, and yet I found myself unable to leave not only home, but my bed, too. Turning to my mother – whom I live with due to the practically Pentecostal obsession I have with the culturally ubiquitous smashed-avo-on-toast – I asked her, “Could you venture to the nearby chemist and pick up my script?”
You see, I’ve lived with depression and anxiety for my entire life. It’s alleged that as a child I was the bespectacled personification of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird. At one point, though, something shifted. I became afraid of virtually everything; nothing more than the prospect of death.
I went from being a thrill-seeking toddler boldly journeying where even adults fear to tread – the scenic carnival at Luna Park - to being a terrified youth fearing the most benign of social interactions. As an adult, I’ve had a history of drinking, both to manifest peculiar destinies and to soothe crippling anxiety. But later down the line, my anxieties transformed into panic disorder so strong that a gin and tonic couldn’t calm its screams. I found myself unable to leave the house for months at a time, because doing so sent me into fits of migrainous terror.
So in late 2015, I started taking medication.
That weary day of my request, Mother turned to me, and uttered words I’ve heard so many times before: “Look, I’m not going to do that for you, Brandon,” - Okay, fair. I’m 26. I don’t pretend to have my life together.
There’s a . It’s a two-parter; one image stacked on top of the other. On top, a photo of a lush and beautiful forest, and on the bottom, a snapshot of an antidepressant pill. Laid over the wooded top image are the words, “This is an antidepressant.”
Over the bottom? “This is bulls**t.”
I hear this sort of rhetoric all the time. Make one utterance about your medication and people will tell you, “Why do you take that stuff? Doesn’t it make you cloudy?” Mention the taking of your antidepressants and eyes widen, as though they weren’t witnessing your true self, rather a robotic caricature carefully crafted and stealthily released into the world by the notorious Big Pharma. Tin foil hats aren’t so easily removed when people are convinced you’re a Borg.
At a glance, such social faux-pas might present themselves as indicative of mere interpersonal barriers – but it’s been shown that the collective disdain towards medication and towards mental illness at large, fuels negative stigma and cautious second-guessing that could actually be driving large numbers of people away from seeking medical care.
It’s a unique blend of anti-establishmentarianism and unscientific paranoia which brings these arguments to the fore. It’s one thing to question whether agencies alleged to work towards the public good are in any way ethical, but it’s quite another to challenge modern medicine in its entirety because you’re convinced that trips to the bushland have the power to balance and revolutionise someone’s brain chemistry.
I tried everything – every form of alternative medicine, every ancient Chinese secret – to quell my psychological horror. I saw hypnotists, went for runs, and ruminated on the idea of becoming a yogi. I breathed deep, in and out, to challenge the grip of anxiety – but breathing can’t cancel curses, they can only hinder their attacks. I even saw a peculiar old man in the back of a “health food store”, who looked deep into my eyes for a cause – an iridologist - before “prescribing” me magnesium supplements that later made me vomit. He also concluded I had Lyme disease.
And yet nothing worked. Not until I found the right medication.
So when these doubts are aired, and people look at me like I’m siding with an invisible enemy, I find myself feeling dismayed. I don’t think about my allegiance with Big Pharma or my lack of faith in iridology.
I think about all those times I feared walking to my neighbourhood shops – a mere three-minute walk away – because I might be struck down by panic. I think about when I was lying in a hypnotists chair, being actively sedated by her lulling words, only to have a frankly historic freak-out. I remember fleeing meetings and failing to meet deadlines because I was at the mercy of mental health spirals. I remember how small and exhausting my place in the world felt before I started taking my medication.
And I just don’t live that life anymore.
