Why I Refused Antidepressants

In 2018, I was living in Chicago when I hit my first real low point with depression. I found myself bursting into tears before bed regularly without having any understanding of why.

I’d often be out drinking with friends on the weekends and feel a sudden tidal wave of sadness roaring up from my lower belly to my face, ready to explode with tears at any time. I’d duck out the back door without saying goodbye before the tears came out. I’d get into bed and think, “I can’t wait to not do this anymore,” as I thought about how I was living my life.

In addition to the depression, I was frustrated, confused, and ashamed that I was feeling this way. I was in tech sales, making good money, living in a great place, and surrounded by good friends. Up until that point, my life had been on a clear path. I thought I knew what I wanted, and I felt like I could figure anything out. But I felt lost and broken.

Why did I feel so terrible if my life looked this good? If I had done most of the things I wanted to do?

I’d never met anyone who suffered while everything looked great on paper. I had a model of the world that said “if you check all these boxes, your life will be great” and that model was collapsing in front of my eyes.

So I decided to get help.

I wasn’t sure where to start, but I heard psychiatrists were medical doctors, so I figured they knew a lot and it would be a great starting place for me. I booked an appointment 40 minutes north of where I lived to avoid running into anyone I knew. I didn’t want to risk being seen as mentally unwell. I walked into the office wearing a hat, hood, and sunglasses.

My appointment started easy enough as the psychiatrist kindly asked me what was going on. I spent the next 10 minutes sharing things I had never told anyone. That I was feeling intense bursts of sadness. That I had trouble sleeping. That I wasn’t as motivated as I used to be. That I was drinking more and binge eating often. That I was more anxious and experienced self-doubt that was louder than usual. That my inner voice was getting more negative.

By the end, my eyes were watering, and it was the first time I could remember crying in front of someone since I was a kid.

After I finished sharing, the first words out of her mouth were, “We can write you a prescription for that today.”

Wait, what?? I just spilled my guts to you, shared things I had been terrified to share, and the first thing you thought of was Let’s get you on drugs?

I don’t know exactly what I expected going in, but I sat there in total disbelief. Perhaps she would try to understand or connect with me? Perhaps an option to work through some of the stuff that’s coming up? No, straight to drugs.

I looked at her and said, “Fuck that.” Stood up and walked out.

I don’t know where that reaction came from. I wasn’t against prescriptions, but apparently I was against that being the first option. Because everything in my body screamed at me to get out of there. I understood prescriptions could help people feel good enough to participate in life again, but a deeper part of me knew that wouldn’t solve the root issue.

Playing sports for decades instilled in me to be careful what I put in my body. When I was a skinny 18-year-old on my college baseball team, I took over-the-counter pro hormones to bulk up. Driven by my body insecurity, I put on 20 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks, but I also tore my labrum in my pitching arm in the process. It totally sidetracked my baseball career and also caused me to have shoulder surgery and long-term hormonal issues that caused tissue to grow in my chest. It was intensely painful and required another surgery to remove tissue 3 years later.

It was a powerful teacher for me, and it was a major factor in my hesitation to take anything that would severely alter my body's chemistry. From then on, I was determined to improve my well-being by focusing on the root cause of any ailment—mental or physical.

I felt betrayed by the system and was determined to figure things out on my own. But I would end up postponing any more attempts at getting better for another 2 years until I hit rock bottom. While I was determined to do things differently, that drive also pushed me further into self-isolation. The shame and guilt I still felt about being “broken” created 2 more years of suppressing what I was experiencing. The “fuck no” that day felt clear to me, but I didn’t find another path forward for a few years.

I attempted to fix my external environment by changing jobs and moving to new cities. I continued to use Saturdays as my outlet day by drinking with friends. But well-being, drive, and motivation at work continued to deteriorate.

The stories I heard reinforced my fear that medication might help me function without helping me understand what was underneath my suffering. I avoided prescriptions because I knew that they, by themselves, wouldn’t solve the root issue. But the problem was that I had no idea what the root issue was. This wasn’t my area of expertise.

But the more I talked to people who were taking them, the more I learned there was often no clear, coherent plan to go along with them. It wasn’t like, “Hey, we’ll get you on this for 3 months while pairing it with intensive counseling, somatic work, and practices to help you regain internal freedom.” Instead, I talked to people who had been on it for 5-10 years and said they were still depressed. One friend shared, “I feel like I don’t really know how to feel my emotions anymore.”

I knew that wasn’t the case for everyone, but those were the themes I kept hearing. So after I was fired in 2020, I turned myself into my full-time job. I began exploring physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual modalities to heal what had been misaligned. What I had done up until that point clearly hadn’t worked, so I knew I had to drop what I thought I knew and be willing to be a total beginner again.

The Western medical model I encountered treated the depression primarily as a collection of symptoms that could be fixed using prescription drugs.

The Eastern and spiritual traditions I became drawn to saw things differently. Some of them saw individuals as souls—not as the mind or the body.

They offered me a different possibility: perhaps I wasn’t broken. Perhaps my suffering was just trying to show me something. That it's ignorance, illusion, and attachment that get in the way of feeling joy, peace, and wholeness.

That perspective felt more empowering to me because now I could approach it like, “Okay, what am I missing? What am I not seeing here?” And I knew that if I could start to see what depression and sadness and frustration and shame were trying to teach me, then I could learn the lesson and feel better. Or at least they wouldn’t rule my life anymore.

So the more I delved into the inner landscape and how different teachers taught it over thousands of years, I found things that made sense to me. Not to my rational mind, but to a deeper space within me that just knew. Seeing myself as a soul who was here to learn and grow opened up so much for me. I was learning to trust my inner compass.

I started to explore all the ways I got stuck or hung up on my fears, beliefs, thoughts, and insecurities. Who I thought I was, who I thought I needed to be to be loved, accepted, worthy, etc. All the ways I shut off my authenticity to appease others, not ruffle feathers, or be liked. All the ways I gave my power away by judging others, not telling the truth, or not standing up for what felt right. All the ways I was hurting my body, numbing what I felt, or suppressing hard experiences.

I explored how suffering was perpetuated by resistance and attachment. Pushing away hard feelings and grasping at highs.

And I practiced surrendering and letting go. Allowing things to just be. Realizing that when I resisted things as they were, I was really resisting Reality. As if I had taken on a mini God complex thinking, “I know how things should be! And they shouldn’t be how they are!” It gives me a chuckle thinking about that.

Eventually, I explored plant medicines like psilocybin, ayahuasca, and sassafras. The difference wasn’t so much pharmaceuticals versus plants. It was the role I was asking them to play. I didn’t want a substance to be the whole plan. I was willing to use one as part of a much deeper inquiry.

In my experience, the power was in the medicines’ ability to temporarily set aside the veil of the ego for an opportunity to embrace a greater perspective. Perspective that would help me get out of the gravitational black hole of depression.

These have deeply changed my life and opened my mind to see with extreme clarity the ways I’ve kept myself in suffering. They’ve opened me up to unconditional love and the possibility that I could walk around giving that love to others.

As I learned many times, they can open the door to realization, but the real work comes from integrating those lessons into real life.

I also traveled to India, walked across America, lived in Costa Rica, and sat through 10 full days of silent meditation. They were radically different experiences, but I asked the same thing during each one: What is my suffering trying to show me? How is it trying to help me?

Mostly, my path has been using life experiences to get free. To see all the ways I judge others, close my heart, and feel separate from the whole. Because at the root of my suffering was the feeling of separateness. Thinking that I wasn’t part of the whole. That we don’t all come from the same source.

I never would have experienced that if it weren’t for all the years of depression. I hated it and was ashamed of it for so many years. It was a knock on my resumé. But it became my greatest teacher when I learned how to turn towards it.

I learned how to love myself even when I was in the fetal position crying. It taught me that what I really wanted was to drop the mask and the facade of trying to be somebody special.

Though none of this meant the depression disappeared completely.

In 2024, I experienced suicidal thoughts for 100 days straight. I was exhausted from being battered around by my mind and trying everything to get better, but nothing seemed to help. I even asked God to end my life in a way that would look natural and wouldn’t hurt.

Eventually, the weight and pain of struggling brought me to my knees. I was desperate to give up the years of trying so hard and surrender all my struggles to the Source of everything. Which didn’t feel like quitting, but instead felt like I finally agreed to stop swimming upstream and allow the current of life to guide me. And upon doing so, I’ve been answered over and over and over again by that Source.

Now I can finally say I’m grateful for depression and for whatever it was in me that stormed out of that office that day. While it taught me to find answers for myself, it also showed me how my shame around seeking help kept me disconnected from others.

And eventually I learned to let others in. That it’s not shameful to go through challenges. That it’s only the mind that casts that self-judgment and tries to keep us separate from others. But the soul loves everything and craves intimacy with life.

This path isn’t for everyone, and I’m not advising against prescriptions, but to inquire about the comprehensive plan around them. And to be open to the idea that the greatest teacher we have is within. That there is an inherent wisdom in life that guides us to learn exactly what we need to learn. To trust the internal homing device embedded in our being.

Leaving that doctor’s office, I didn’t know what I needed.

I only knew that a prescription wasn’t the whole path for me.

And that “fuck no” was just the beginning of one.

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