My Short Version Story, A Happy Ending

[Anonymous 1]

I am posting anonymously for personal reasons and for the sake of my coworkers and my family.

Since I was as old as 14 years old, this is when I started to become clinically depressed, severe mood swings and hating life. My parents did not understand what was going on as I was and still am have always been very poor with communication.

What good parents would only do would be to take me to the doctor at the age of 16 to discuss my depression. My family doctor, unfortunately, did not believe in mental health and sat with me for less than 2 minutes and prescribed me with my first antidepressant - for the next ten years, I was on this same antidepressant and to say the least, it was far from a bandaid - I become very close with drug use and at age 19 I became heavily into drinking which was not fun for anyone.

I hated my life, I hated myself, I drank my early 20s away and even started to indulge in heavier / more intense drugs - I became worse and even attempted suicide 8 times and was hospitalized for 3 of them.

By the time I was in my mid-20s, I had been assaulted, I had put myself in horrible situations because of lack of self respect and at that time I had started seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist. By age 28 I had been put through hell and back of roughly 7 different antidepressants that almost killed me - it was a rollercoaster, I was no fun to be around, I could not even look at myself in the mirror for several years and I lost several friends and lost all respect from my family, friends and myself.

The last time I was hospitalized was when I lost someone very close to me and I wanted to give up, my family couldn’t bare my struggles and my no desire to help myself but the medication and the support I had been given from the hospital, to this day, I think saved my life. The next few years were a bit better than they ever had been, I started to gain back respect from my family again, although alone and not any friends, I worked and worked on myself.

I ended up moving back to my hometown and something completely changed for the better, I flipped the switch to say the least - I weaned myself off of the one medication and to this day, I have not been back on medication (I do not recommend this for anyone).

I have been in therapy for over a year now, and have been pushing to grow and work on myself - I can say, life is a roller coaster, I do have my down days, but I am the happiest I have ever been in my entire life and it is only going up from here.

My advice I can tell you is, do not give up, do not give up on yourself, you are worth it, you matter and there are resources out there that can help you whether it be friends, family, or doctors.