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The long fight for a magic pill

I think most of my life has been me shoveling through mines looking to find a magic pill for anything. All the trial and error has got me in a rut. I go on sprees of quitting, believing there is nothing out there and sprees of searching.

Quite frankly, I'm tired of putting my body through experimental chemicals when my body is already imbalanced in that department.

How many pills have you tried to get you to a point of total and utter surrender? There are dozens of cocktails out there to try. A doctor gives you something for anxiety and you feel more depressed, so they give you something for depression and now you are a total insomniac and they have a pill for insomnia. It's like they have a pill for every ailment, yet no matter what you take it just doesn't seem to work, or it comes with a new set of problems.

I was always afraid of trying out different pills for my depression because of the very popular weight gain side effect. I didn't want to gain weight so much that I gave up quickly in finding something that could work for me. I didn't want that trial and error. I essentially put my potential happiness or at least numbing of some pain of something pretty darn deadly behind weight gain. But the pills I have tried for depression and anxiety have all put me through reactions like allergies. My face swells, I instantly feel drowsy and drunk and terrible, and I can't seem to emphasize the face swelling that would not go down for a few days.

After I got off my first medication, the longest one I had been on, and the worst, I had been turned off from seeking help from doctors for a long time. But when I finally had the courage to seek their help out again, when I was older, and year passed and I realized that the depression I suffered from was something that had been there for years and would not budge, was something that progressively got worse over the years, I was actually judged and told not to seek help with medication from the people closest to me.

And I get it, people tell you to go to therapy or try things like exercise and whatever. I was told that. I was told that it would be better after that. But they didn't realize how long I had dealt with this feeling, and when I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, I was still told the same things. I kept my PTSD a secret and decided to leave my problems to stew for another year again because the same people telling me not to try medication again, truthfully, scared me with their reasons.

It's hard to get someone who has already had a horrible experience with medication to keep trying. And I get that there are many people out there who think medication is a terrible idea, but as someone who does suffer from major depressive disorder, I have to believe there is something out there that can help me, because I, admittedly, can only help myself to an extent. With major depression, I can't control a lot of things on my own just by going on a run or using other things as distractions or talking to a therapist. I have physical symptoms that are unbearable sometimes. Same goes for PTSD. Sure, I can talk to a therapist about it and work through those problems, but I can get sent ten steps back from having to go through a flashback and feeling on the brink of death from panicking.

And there have been many times where I have thought that maybe there is no magic pill (because I am sure there's not anyway, though I keep wondering if the next one I try could be close to magic) but I've never been able to understand why it is that no matter how much I have grown and worked through myself to understand my problems and deal with memories or pain that I still suffer and still suffer from physical symptoms. No insight from any amount of self-help books or therapists or enlightening yoga camp journey or healing crystals or hard drugs can help me. And I've tried so much, I swear.

From different diets to supplements and medication and CBD oil and all the different strains of weed there is out there, from exercise to yoga to long-ass nature walks and journaling and anything stamped as "self-care" from online articles and all the fun stuff. What sucks the most is feeling physically unable to function or get out of bed or eat. And isn't it funny when the moment you feel like it's time to seek out professional help, you kind-a-sort-a-maybe feel a bit better and decide you don't need to anymore until you fall back down into the loop of feeling like doom?

It always surprised me the extent some people are willing to go to feel happy like take drugs like ecstasy or shrooms because of various articles that they "re-wire your brain", or try all these different pharmaceutical drugs, or maybe just be high all the time, like unable to function, but high enough to not feel sad. And then I'm so surprised at how the same people stay in the same place whilst doing this all. Like staying in their relationship that's clearly toxic or staying at their job that clearly makes them unhappy, or with the same group of friends that are simply just not supportive.

Maybe I'm blind to the things that are keeping me down and I haven't been able to see them. But I wonder what I keep surrounding myself with if I've felt like this for years. Maybe I'm missing something that I just can't put my finger on.

Maybe it's not searching for the magic pill, or any crutch to help me feel ok. Maybe it's searching for myself and what I really need.

Either way, I guess the search, whatever it is, goes on.