With a blog title like that, I feel like I need a crazy Hunter S. Thompson level story to tell. This is not that story. Well… maybe? Nah, the drugs in this story are of the prescribed variety.
A few months back, I started taking Zoloft every day. If you’re not familiar with this particular SSRI drug, it’s prescribed for depression and anxiety. I’m not positive about my potential depression, but oh boy have I suffered my entire life from anxiety. You know that show “Dexter” about the serial killer who calls his desire to murder his “dark passenger”? Well, I have one of those dark passengers too. Mine isn’t of the “let’s kill them all” variety (unless they are not using their turn signals, and then that’s a different story all together). My dark passenger is a voice in my head screaming “YOU AREN’T DOING THIS RIGHT!! YOU REALLY SUCK AT THIS!! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!”
This voice has been there my entire life, although as I got older it grew more and more powerful. I’ve been pretty successful in my career, both because of that voice and in spite of it. A screaming inner voice telling you that you need work harder is one helluva motivator. Not a healthy one, but an effective one. But it also has the side effect of making it REALLY hard to get up and do things, start things, finish things.
Over the years, that voice has had more of a negative impact, making me fear that friends/partners would leave me if they ever found out how incompetent I really was. I had an increasingly harder and harder time as a creative actually creating. Getting to the workbench was a two part process:
- Sit down at the bench and spend the first 15-30 minutes overcoming the screaming voice telling me that I really suck at this whole modeling thing and I should find something else to do
- Settle into the bench and start creating, working hard to focus on the joy that modeling brings me rather than the fear of failure I was constantly feeling.
That dumb process made it hard to even get to step 1 in the first place… who wants to go model if your brain is just going to scream at you? And finishing models at all was tough because my anxiety started telling me towards the end of a project (or even a stage of a project) that it’s terrible and I need to practice more before I screw it up by finishing it. My favorite modeling shirt says “I don’t finish anythin”. I didn’t really understand for a long time why I was so scared to finish things and instead just put in more and more practice on paint mules.
6+ years ago, my marriage fell apart in a pretty spectacular way. Shortly after, I started going to both individual and group therapy every week. I was determined I wasn’t going to repeat the same patterns that lead me to that relationship meltdown. I wanted something different. I wanted things to be different. Hell, I wanted to be different. Over the course of the last 6+ years, my (very talented) therapist moved from asking “what do you know about anxiety medication” to “what do you think about anxiety medication” to “are you thinking about it?” to “you should really consider it”.
Shortly after I noticed that last iteration of that ongoing conversation, I was at lunch with my friend Matt. He mentioned he’d started an SSRI for some things he’d been struggling with. (I’ll let him tell his own story) This was a revelatory moment for me. Something in me finally opened up to the thought of (finally) getting on an anti-anxiety medication. There was something about the way that Matt was sharing that made it OK for me to finally consider something that I had long resisted.
Shortly after that lunch, I called up my doctor, shared my desire for medication and after some lengthy discussion about why, he prescribed Celexa. A couple weeks in and one particularly annoying mid-level sexual side effect later, the doctor switched me to another SSRI: Zoloft.
An interesting thing happened after the Zoloft kicked in… the screaming voice got REAL quiet. I was able to get to the workbench easier, enjoy my time more, be more productive. This year has been the most productive to date and the year is not even over. I’m able to say “I’m proud of my work” even when I know it’s not perfect. I’ve had more fun modeling in the last few months than in years previous combined.
Matt has heard me say it multiple times, but I’m truly grateful to him for being so open about his own journey. We men don’t tend to talk about this stuff, or at least we haven’t historically. And that’s a bad thing all around. Do I have moments of feeling like I’m “weak” for not being able to rub some dirt on my brain and shake off my screaming voice? Absolutely. But generally (and no small thanks to Zoloft for this), I’m increasingly able to remain calm, reduce jealousies, reduce fears, enjoy small moments, and say what’s true for me without as much fear.
A few days back I had the distinct honor and immeasurable pleasure of being invited on the Sprue Cutters’ Union podcast recently to talk to the SCU crew (and Matt too) about a wide variety of modeling topics. But we also spent a fair amount of time talking about mental health. I was shocked that literally all 5 of us spoke openly, honestly, directly about our own struggles with mental health. I’m 49 as of a few weeks ago, and most of my entire life, men having conversations like this as openly as this just didn’t happen very often. And I’m far from a grunting jock as you can get. My friends aren’t grunting jocks either. We’re just all men who have largely been socialized to keep their pain to themselves.
It feels good to be as open and honest about this stuff. I hope that this post helps you to assess your own mental health and to reach out for help of the therapy, prescription drugs, and/or personal support variety.
And if you’re interested in hearing the Sprue Cutter’s Union episode where we talk about mental health (and other topics), check it out here:
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