I went to my GP again at the end of my first term of university, and he recommended that I try sertraline (also retailed as Zoloft) to try and get myself back on track before thinking about counselling to resolve the cause of my illnesses. He prescribed me two weeks’ worth of the drug, but after the experience I’d had with citalopram I was hardly optimistic about taking them. Two hours after taking the first pill, I developed the most painful headache I’ve ever experienced, I felt sick, dizzy, and incredibly shaky, and although I had been sleeping at around 10pm in the previous weeks, yet another side effect meant that I didn’t get to sleep until 5am, and woke up three hours later. It took so much self-motivation and encouragement to take the second pill the following afternoon, and the side effects were just as bad that day, so horrific that I considered just throwing them away and giving up again.
But I didn’t. I didn’t give up, and I won’t give up. I took my medication every day leading up to my next appointment, and I didn’t realize until a couple of days before my appointment that I hadn’t had a panic attack since I started taking the sertraline, nor had I experienced one of the haunting nightmares that I usually have around 4-5 nights a week. I had gotten so caught up in the side effects that I hadn’t realized that these pills might actually have been working. I’ve only been taking sertraline for just over two weeks as I’m writing this, but right now I am on the biggest upward curve in my recovery I’ve come across so far.
Nobody told me that recovery is full of upward curves and downward curves; nobody told me that the downward curves will make you want to give it all up, but nobody told me that the upward curves will give you a feeling so euphoric that you almost forget you aren’t well in the first place.
There are a lot of things that nobody told me about recovery, but the most important is that nobody told me not to give up. This is something you have to constantly tell yourself. You have to tell yourself that it is worth it, that it will be worth it, that you will get there one day, even if it takes years. Because chances are it will, it will take a long, long time for you to reach the same level of stability you were at before you got ill, and you may never reach the same level of stability you were at before you got ill, but it is almost certain that with the right course of action laid out, you will get better than you are now. You will be happier than you ever thought you could be, and this is what will give you the motivation to carry on. This is what will give you the motivation to be strong.
Nobody told me that I’m strong. Nobody told me that I’m strong enough to push myself through some of the worst things that I’ve ever felt, even though doing that has led me to feel some of the best. Nobody told me that I can do it, but I can, everyone can, and everyone needs to be told that they can. So if you’re in recovery right now, or you’re not quite there yet, or you’re looking for the motivation to start, then you can do it. You can recover. And when you get there, you can say that somebody told you that you’re strong enough to push yourself through. Somebody told you that some things may not work for you, and that’s why you never gave up when one method didn’t help you. Somebody told you that recovery is a rollercoaster, and that’s why you didn’t get off when it started to hurtle towards the ground. Somebody told you that you had to make your own decisions and you had to fix yourself, and that’s why you did.