DFW struggled with depression his whole life (If you’re looking for a fantastic biography, read D.T. Max’s Every Love Story is a Ghost Story). Wallace himself was prescribed the monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) Phenelzine (Brand name: Nardil) which combats anxiety and depression. Nardil allowed Wallace to experience the most balanced time in his life, but turned fickle after Wallace decided to abandon it. Jonathan Franzen described his struggles in his elegy:

About a year later, he decided to get himself off the medication that had lent stability to his life for more than twenty years. Again, there are a lot of different stories about why exactly he decided to this. But one thing he made very clear to me, when we talked about it, was that he wanted a chance at a more ordinary life, with less freakish control and more ordinary pleasure.

DFW’s experience is important to me for many reasons, but the one that lends itself best to the point I’m trying to make is that he was averse to the drug even while it was saving his life. He felt that taking the drug was indicative of his tendency towards “freakish control,” and that, without the drug, the pleasures of life would be more “ordinary.” Wallace’s depression returned.

So the year was up and down, and he had a crisis in June, and a very hard summer. When I saw him in July he was skinny again, like the late adolescent he’d been during his first big crisis … He was in horrible, minute-by-minute anxiety and pain. The next times I tried to call him, after that, he wasn’t picking up the phone or returning messages. He’d gone down into the well of infinite sadness, beyond the reach of story, and he didn’t make it out it out.

My own experience is far less drastic but it follows a similar arc. When I felt that I was “in a good place,” I forgot about the medicine’s effectiveness. I was ready to “experience life again.” For months, the anxiety stayed at a manageable distance, but my old problems returned.

Before I first started taking Pristiq, I had days where I couldn’t leave the house. When I weaned myself off the drug, the problems weren’t less severe, just different. I began to think about my anxiety constantly; it dictated my life, closing doors and defining my personality. I held off going back on medication even as significant depression set in and I forgot about all the wonderful things in my life worth waking up to.

One day, I was looking through old entries in a journal and I realized that for over a year I had been thinking of going back on Pristiq. I didn’t (and still don’t) know what was holding me back. Maybe it was a lasting belief that medication was not the way you live your life, or maybe (as a friend who’s thinking of trying medication explained to me) that medication is your ace in the hole; you think “If it gets bad enough, I can always go on medication” but as soon as you do, you’ve played your last card.

A little over a year ago I went back on medication and I was able to start living again. I think people who don’t have mental health issues (and even those who do) have a hard time accepting that a mind-altering mood drug can actually make it possible to be more like yourself: more outgoing; more confident; more engaged; more alive. It’s an incredibly hard thing to explain, but I saw it explained perfectly in a throwaway post on Reddit.

May is National Mental Health Awareness month and it would be a shame if I didn’t share my own story for fear of judgment. The Reddit post concluded, “Thank you Xanax, you have given me my life back.” I wish this was said more poetically, or with some metaphor that masks the harsh look of the word “Xanax”, or the cliche of the gift of life, but it didn’t. I share the same gratitude felt by the author towards my own medication, but I often lack the courage to put something I really believe so bluntly. I think I’m getting better though.