my genie in a blister pack

When Hayley Williams released her album Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party last year, there was one song that jumped out at me: "Mirtazapine", her ode to her antidepressant medication. The chorus, in particular, is very relatable:

Here come my genie in a screwcap bottle
To grant me temporary solace
I could never be without her
I had to write a song about her
Who am I without you now?
Mirtazapine
You make me eat, you make me sleep
Mirtazapine
You let me dream, you let me dream

I did not take mirtazapine and am no longer currently on SSRIs; still, this song magnified my appreciation for my own medication. Its release is very timely, considering that this year marks a decade of my being on medication for bipolar disorder. Well, to be specific, I was on antidepressants for depression first, then switched to antipsychotics once my psychiatrist diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. 

Needing to be on medication used to scare me. It meant that there was something wrong with me, something that I couldn't muscle through, that needed external intervention. Medication would wreck my body, my mind; I would become dependent on it, like an addiction. And for what? For an illness that's all in the head. Nothing real. I could just think it all away.

That's what people around me said. That's what I believed. I was skeptical even as I took the medicine; so when I started feeling better, I stopped taking them. Rookie mistake. I immediately began feeling worse — I badly wanted to die. I wanted to jump in front of oncoming traffic, to drink bleach, to open my wrists with a knife, more intensely than before.

I was promptly given a higher dose. Shaken by the sharp, sudden downturn in my mood, I took the pills obediently, every day, until the dosages were reduced and my mood stabilized. Eventually I went down to half a pill of the lowest strength available. Hurrah.

I am still on the medication. I understand, now, that what is wrong with me is a chemical imbalance in the brain. That I am not uniquely awful, worthless, and unworthy of love and life. That I cannot just think positive and will the darkness away. I need help. I need these pills to be a relatively normal, functional being. 

What my medication does for me is nothing short of magic. I used to spiral into self loathing at the slightest thought. I used to isolate myself and wonder why no one came to ask after me. I cried myself to sleep. When I couldn't stop the tears and the bad thoughts, I cried in public, too. Now, I cry from laughing too much. I'm feeling better; less prone to be affected by the all-consuming emotional seesaw of depression and mania that is bipolar disorder. Now I want to sing and dance and make art. Now I want to live. 

I know that I need medication to balance the dopamine and serotinin levels in my brain, and that this is not something to fear; it is simply science and medicine and chemistry come together in a little pink half-pill that I take every night before bed. The fact that pills like this exists is miraculous. In the past, the mentally ill were sent to madhouses, lobotomized, driven to violence towards others or themselves, or else suffered in silence. Medication like the one I'm taking could have helped them. Medication certainly helps me. 

 

Now if only they weren't so fucking expensive.