I’ve written previously about my struggle with anxiety, how I initially used CBT as a coping strategy, that field’s roots in stoicism, and how ultimately, I wanted to find a new way of managing. It’s been nearly three years since I published that post and the path I ended up taking did not get to the root cause that I had envisioned.
Antidepressants: Sertraline, 50, then 100mg taken daily. And yes, it really did work. It worked amazingly. Gone were the intrusive thoughts that used to consume my days, the panic attacks that those thoughts would sometimes cause. I was happier, and more pleasant to be around. However, after some time I started to get a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right between my SSRIs and me – I started to realise that I hadn’t cried in over a year.
‘Numbness’ is a fairly widely reported side effect of antidepressant medication: you don’t feel the crushing lows, but also some of the euphoria of life is blunted. Where a movie or song or even a breakup might usually have made me weep, I’m stuck sitting there, begging for my body to release the emotion.
This caused an entirely new anxiety, one more rational and I might say existential. Am I resigned to taking mood altering drugs for the rest of my life? In the grand scheme of things, will I be experiencing the world in the fullest possible way? And am I stuck in a trade-off of being shattered by anxiety so that I can properly enjoy joy and sorrow and grief and lust?
Confronted by this, I decided I’d try my luck. A slow ween off the meds and I’m now at my base state.
And now, it’s all come crashing back, albeit manifesting in a different way. I’m no longer captured by the thoughts of sudden death that swallowed me during covid. Whereas my first battles with my mental health were during a global pandemic and my university studies, I’m now in a job that is too stable. I’m now met with dread feelings of ambition never realised and being sucked up into a life I find dull.
And now I return to the question that I started with. If my anxiety is indeed ‘disordered’, meaning that it is not normal, not the usual human experience. What is its root cause? And indeed, what is the normal human experience like? To be happy all the time? I don’t want to be happy all the time, I just don’t want to be anxious all the time. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m trying.
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