My Longest Relationship: A Love Letter To Lexapro
They say most relationships don’t survive your 20s. Mine did… but it wasn’t with a person. It was with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. For nearly a decade, Lexapro has quietly walked beside me: through career chaos, situationships, relocation spirals, and my ever impending doom of the unknown.
This isn’t a clinical breakdown or a self-help pitch. It’s a thank-you note. A love letter if you will. To the tiny white pill that made my world feel a little less jagged and a little more manageable. To the decision I’d once put off like it wasn’t even an option, and now, ironically, one I likely wouldn’t have lived without.
✨ WHERE IT ALL BEGAN ✨
My first romp with SSRIs was the first year of my 20s. I had just moved back in with my Mum to save money in preparation for a new life in Sydney.
On the outside, I was excited, I was driven, I was brave, and above all things: 🌟 I was successful 🌟 I was making it out of the small NZ life for bigger, greener pastures across the ditch. But internally, I was a shaken soft drink, slowly building up, waiting to explode.
It also probably didn’t help that my weed dealer had disappeared. Being an everyday smoker, this was… less than ideal. So not only was I navigating a full-blown identity crisis, I was also riding the dopamine comedown of an abruptly ended coping mechanism.
Suffice to say, my first experience with Lexapro was cut short as I stopped taking them abruptly when I moved to Sydney the following month (cold turkey is NOT advised). It’s also important to note that these things can take up to 2–3 months to properly kick in so I had barely felt the good effects the first time around. Good things (and SSRIs) take time.
🎬 A GUY WITH A DREAM… AND ANXIETY 😅
Fast forward five years in Sydney and I’d finally cracked into my dream industry: film. But it wasn’t all glitz and glamour. Instead, it was an environment of high pressure, creative chaos, inflated egos, and wildly unrealistic expectations. Not exactly the warm welcome I’d envisioned.
It was during this professional transition that my anxiety ⬆️ PEAKED ⬆️ And although up until that point I had done significant things like moving countries, survived redundancies, and built a new life from the ground up, I still found myself not believing I deserved a seat at the table. I felt like a school kid playing pretend in a room full of adults, just waiting to get caught out. That’s when I knew; this wasn’t sustainable.
So once again, I was in my GP’s office, being asked the same quiet questions I’d once been asked years earlier. But this time something was different. I WANTED to be better. I WANTED to be like my professional counter-parts that showed up every day with a smile regardless of whatever internal demons and outside madness they were dealing with. And this time I was going to make sure I waited out the initial 2-3 months before making a call on whether they were right for me.
While I can’t say they ✨FIXED ME✨ (not that they’re ever promised to do so), it did effectively shift the end of the world type internal monologues into more of an ah well, it is what it is situation. And that alone, felt INCREDIBLE.
Fast forward another seven years, and my long term relationship and I are still going strong. Better than ever actually. I’ll admit that I’ve had a few moments in between where I’ve decided to wean myself off of them, but have inevitably always gone back. (Yes, one of those relationships).
And if I’m being totally honest with myself; the times I’ve weaned myself off were driven by pride, and not wanting to be someone who has to take these things. But that right there is stigma, and the biggest takeaway here is; if you have to pop a tiny pill each day to feel like there’s a proper space in the world for yourself, THEN YOU FUCKING DO IT.
💡FINAL THOUGHTS 💭
The world can be an amazing and horrible place at the same time. And sometimes we just gotta do what we gotta do to make it make sense
Until next Dispatch,
LGM