I started taking an SSRI last week.

I’ve had some problems with anxiety for a few years now, and I’ve seen a therapist about it for 3 of those years.

Most of my anxiety I think comes from perception and expectations about myself and how those collide with how my career has been going these last few years. On paper, things are moving along pretty well, but the day to day experience of it has been pretty tough and I’ve often been disappointed with myself in my career.

Anyway, over the last year I’ve noticed a shift where this anxiety has started to spill over into travel and general food anxiety. I’m sure some of it is delayed covid bleed-over. Usually, what sneaks up on me is a sudden fear I’ll make myself sick eating something I shouldn’t have. I usually can convince myself that I’m on the precipice of food poisoning at least once a week.

I think I’ve just gotten fed up watching the problems shift and evolve over the last year. I’ve lost confidence that I’m getting “better” at dealing with it solely through therapy.

So, I decided to try an SSRI. I feel like I’ve heard a lot of stories where people get on medication, feel better, and then become frustrated that they spent so much time feeling worse than they had to. I guess I finally succumbed to the curiosity of wondering whether I’d be one of those stories.

So far, I’ve only been taking a low dose for 6 days (what I understand is the starter 10mg dose used to see if you have any significant negative reactions.) My experience hasn’t really been that interesting yet. But I suppose I’m being impatient. Here’s what I have experienced so far:

• On the first day, I felt like I woke up feeling sort of different. Tired but still more able to get out of bed and get moving. I think I remember feeling somewhat optimistic about the day though it was pretty fleeting.
• On the third day, I woke up with a pretty wonky stomach and had to take the morning off work. I napped until after lunch and got back to work.
• All other days, I haven’t noticed anything that different. I feel a little logier. But I suspect part of that is just that I’m operating on significantly less coffee than usual (1 cup of decaf rather than 1.5-2 cups of regular per day). My medication mentioned a potential caffeine interaction, so I’ve been trying to go a little easier on it, so I don’t falsely attribute any negative interactions to a general negative experience with the medication. Today’s actually the first day I’m drinking a bit of regular coffee. Only a half cup.

I don’t really have any useful takeaways at this point, but I wanted to log the process as I go through it. You only get to try something new once after all. And I’m hoping it’ll be a useful tool, when making decisions about how long and whether I want to continue this medication after the first few trial months.

I would generally describe myself as “not excited” about taking a daily medication like this. And I think that’s part of why it took so long to humor the idea. I feel some amount of disappointment that I couldn’t figure this all out entirely with therapy. It feels like all of my problems are circumstantial and that I just haven’t yet figured out how to deal with the circumstances. Not that there’s anything wrong with my brain chemistry or whatever. But, whatever, here I am now, and I’m going to make a good faith effort at this. To do otherwise would be to waste my own time.

One interesting (perhaps inadvisable) thing is that I’m starting this medication only a few weeks before traveling abroad. I was really nervous about starting an unknown medication before an international trip, but I finally came around to it.

I guess I’m out of things to say at this point.

Wish me luck!