Take Your Meds and Be Well

(Content warning: pills.)

Over the past 3+ years, I have taken some form of anti-anxiety medication (multiple forms) and have consistently seen a psychiatrist.

I fought this for about two years prior because I thought that my faith was enough to keep me strong and break the strongholds.

We’ve heard therapy preached from the mountaintops. But medication is taboo, especially in Black communities, indigenous communities and faith communities.

We live in a culture that praises doctors but condemns and ostracizes patients. Or chooses which types of patients to support, at the very least.

I have friends and family who cared enough for me to recommend medication as an option, in addition to all of the healing work I had been doing.

Leaning into that AND leaning on the Lord has saved my life. It was a both/and approach for me. Not an either/or.

I have transitioned off of the ones I used as a lifeline and now am more so just using it to manage difficulties as they come. It was “long-term” but not as long-term as I feared.

Please please please don’t stop until you get the resources you need.

There are genetic tests that you can take to see which medications may not fair well with your genetic makeup so as to prevent adverse side effects. Sometimes it’s trial and error.

This life is hard AND this life is absolutely beautiful.

I want us all to see the beauty.

Do the hard and scary, yet liberatory thing.

Take your meds and be well. (Or whatever resource applies. I tried CBD but it wasn’t strong enough for me).

You will still have to put in the work. This just makes the load incredibly lighter.

You have purpose on this earth. You don’t have to feel like the woman drowning in the picture. Give yourself a chance at a more mentally-balanced life.

Amen.

(Art by my friend Sharda Smith, inspired by a painting from B Peppers Art.)