When I was diagnosed with clinical anxiety right before I started my freshman year of high school, it was decided that I should try therapy before we tried any medications. After about 2 months of therapy and multiple panic attacks and frantic texts from school later, it was decided that I needed medication to try to help me control my anxiety. I was put on 20mg of Prozac to start, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t have very high hopes. I had been dealing with my anxiety all that summer, and I had trouble believing that taking a small pill once a day could magically stop the panic attacks, the trouble sleeping, and the constant worry I dealt with. It took about 3 weeks, but one night I decided that I was tired of waiting for the medicine to start helping me, and I needed to help myself. I don’t know if that decision helped me until my medicine started helping me or if my Prozac was already starting to work, but after that, I started to feel better. My panic attacks stopped, and I finally started to feel like a normal person again. It was a smooth road until the end of freshman year, when my depression came and hit me like a freight train. That summer I was officially diagnosed with a depressive episode and had my dosage changed to 30mg. That summer was rough, because not only was I dealing with my depression, I was dealing with my sexuality, body image issues, and just overall had very low self worth. With the help of Prozac and support from friends, and long nights of self-reflection, I ended that summer with an idea of who I was, and who I wanted to be in the future. Again, we had smooth sailing, albeit with some small bumps in the road, until the beginning of my junior year, when it was decided that I should try to lower my dosage of Prozac and possibly stop taking it all together. At that point in my life, there was a perfect storm of shit going on in my life. A perfect shitstorm, if you will. I was struggling with a job at Starbucks, trying to run a mental health club at my school, trying to keep my grades up (because as everyone tells you, junior year is the year that really matters), having a lead in the fall drama, and having family problems. All this, along with the lower dosage of my Prozac, caused me to sink into one of the worst depressive episodes ever since the summer between my 8th grade and freshman year. I felt hopeless and was having suicidal thoughts, but I didn’t tell anyone until I had a panic attack in the shower and almost passed out. I had my Prozac dosage increased to where it was before and got an amazing therapist at my school, and I was able to start climbing out of the pit I was in. Nowadays, I feel better. I still struggle with my depression and body image sometimes, but I have my medicine and a support network who always help me out of the pit when I feel myself slipping. I worry about the future, and if I will have to take this Prozac forever, but I have to remind myself to live in the present, and take things one day at a time.