The Medication Experiment

I never really thought I had mental health issues.

I knew I was melancholy sometimes. A little depressive, sure. But I always figured — who isn't?

I'd just quit smoking and was looking for something to take the edge off. I thought the irritability was nicotine withdrawal. Later I realized it was something deeper: my raw, unfiltered reaction to being surrounded by people who needed so much and gave so little in return.

Enter Wellbutrin.

Flash forward a few years, I move from Georgia to Arizona, and the medication just… stops working. Or maybe I stopped working. Either way, I wasn't okay.

I don't remember if the therapist or the doctor came first — sounds like the setup to a bad joke — but my primary care physician was the one writing the scripts. She'd prescribe whatever she thought might help. A pharmaceutical tilt-a-whirl. We swapped meds so often we never even waited to see what one was doing before jumping to the next.

Then came the therapist. Two questions about my childhood and she had a diagnosis: Bipolar.

Part of me felt validated, like finally someone was taking my struggles seriously enough to give them a name. But another part kept thinking, ‘Really? That's what this is?’ It didn't quite fit, but hey, she had the degree. I trusted her.

Let me just say: if you're not bipolar and you get put on bipolar medication?

It was like putting jet fuel in a car that ran on water — everything misfired.

Fast-forward again — now five years into living in Arizona. I'd been on a different medication nearly every year. And they were getting worse. One stacked side effect on top of another until I barely recognized myself.

Then I had a motorcycle accident. That was a low point. It was like my body decided to mirror the wreck my mind already was.

My brain was a hot, medicated mess. I didn't know if I was coming or going some days. I couldn't handle people — not their voices, not their faces, not their small talk. And when you work in tech support? That's kind of a problem.

Let's just say we parted ways amicably. I don't blame them. I wasn't me.

I took a couple months to get back on my feet. Took a short-term job at a badly run company. Then landed a gig at a startup. I switched therapists.

And that's when I heard it:

"You're not bipolar. You have major depressive disorder."

I took a DNA test to help match the right meds to my biology. For the first time, I thought, okay — maybe this could work.

Then two more years passed.

My provider had moved on to a new practice. I hadn’t seen him in over a year, which meant no refill without jumping through hoops. I'd also stopped seeing my therapist. I had a leftover 7-day refill. Teledocs couldn't renew it either.

So I made a decision.

I just… didn't refill it.

I want to be clear - this was a risky decision that happened because of circumstances, not because I think medication is bad. For many people, the right medication is life-saving. But I'd spent years on the wrong medications for a condition I didn't have.

I figured I'd try going without. See what happened. Give it a few days.

At first, not much changed. But slowly — almost imperceptibly — something started to shift.

The fog began to lift.

Light started getting in.

I had been trapped in medication hell for eight years. Diagnosed, rediagnosed, numbed, zombified, reset. The problem wasn't medication itself - it was being on the wrong medication for a condition I didn't have.

And somehow — through an insurance glitch and a quiet dare to myself — I woke up.

And for the first time in a long time, I felt like me.