Quick Take
After years of medication for anxiety, UC Santa Cruz student Veronica Morris thought she was “over it,” healed. Then during her second year on campus, her anxiety returned in unexpected ways, forcing her to restart taking medication. Here, she reflects on stigma, control and what it means to recover and heal.
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“Have you considered going back on Lexapro?” my doctor asked casually, the words slightly tinny over the subpar cell connection to my UC Santa Cruz dorm.
“Not really,” I replied, my voice hovering above a whisper. It was 9:15 a.m., and I was huddling in the corner of my small bathroom, the only place in the apartment where I could be guaranteed privacy, if I kept the volume low. “Except for what’s happening with my hands, I haven’t been very anxious.”
It felt ridiculous to consult her about something so seemingly inconsequential.
The problem started at the beginning of my second school year. I was sitting in my first poetry lecture of the quarter when I noticed my palms were sweating. As the minutes passed, the smooth plastic of the mechanical pencil in my hand became irritatingly slippery, and note-taking grew impossible without leaving moisture on the page. It was odd – normally this happened only when I was worried about something, and Emily Dickinson wasn’t exactly a specter of horror.
I wrote it off as a fluke, something that would go away once I left the cavernous lecture hall and stepped back into the golden haze of early fall.
Only it didn’t stop.
From that point onward, my hands were always sweaty.
I couldn’t work, couldn’t be in class, couldn’t even enjoy a night in with my friends without being constantly aware of it. For months, I didn’t talk to anyone about the situation. Partly due to embarrassment, but also because saying the problem out loud made it sound so small. But when I started skipping classes because I was afraid of participating in group activities, I knew something had to change.
Which brought me to the bathroom phone call.
“I’ll give Lexapro another try,” I said in as cheerful a tone as I could muster. I didn’t want to be a difficult patient, and anti-anxiety medication seemed like the only promising option.
I got a 10-milligram prescription – and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I kept it together until that evening when I was on FaceTime with my mom, and hot, unwelcome tears slid down my face. She didn’t understand why I was so upset. The doctor offered me a solution.
Why didn’t I want to take it?
I had stopped taking Lezapro seven months earlier. Getting off had been a big achievement for me. It was my sign that I was ready for college; tangible proof that I had finally beaten anxiety – as if mental illness was something you could complete as easily as a course requirement.
I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder at age 11. Each therapist I visited walked me through the same cognitive behavioral therapy tools – breathing exercises, grounding, techniques and naming distorted thoughts. Over the years, medication was something I always refused to consider. I saw it as a sign of failure. Needing to be medicated meant admitting my inability to combat my mental illness with therapy. It was the ultimate loss of control.
Losing control terrified me. When I was having a panic attack, I felt like a wild dog I’d once seen in an online video, caught thrashing around helplessly in a barbed wire fence. Once freed, it had a bemused expression, like it couldn’t believe what had happened. I hoped to one day look back on my own mental illness with that same level of incredulity. Whenever things got difficult, I consoled myself with the mantra that someday I would recover and put this all behind me.
I could be fixed, I just had to try hard enough.
My last major flare-up happened in junior year of high school; a week-and-a-half-long panic attack where I became convinced I couldn’t breathe properly. On a call with the Kaiser advice nurse a few days into the episode, I was unable to speak without sobbing.
For the first time in my life, I believed I was mentally ill.
The call led to a psychiatrist, who promptly prescribed Lexapro, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) used to treat depression and anxiety. Just like that, I had crossed the “acceptable” level of mental illness I’d so desperately clung to.
Still, I trusted my doctor and my parents, who encouraged me that this decision was best. And to my surprise, it worked. With the drug in my system, it was like someone had smoothed down the sharp corners of my thoughts. Despite the intense relief this freedom caused, I couldn’t help but also feel embarrassed and, more than that, disappointed.
What did it say about me that therapy alone wasn’t enough to cure what was wrong?
After about six months, my symptoms dramatically improved.
Instead of relishing this newfound stability, I immediately considered weaning myself off Lexapro. I told myself it was a necessary tool that had run its course. I said the same thing to my psychiatrist, who smiled and agreed to stop refilling my prescription. It was the neat, happy ending I’d been hoping for.
Only, as I was now starting to learn, it wouldn’t last.
When my new prescription arrived, in its familiar garishly orange bottle, I had to tuck it into my bathroom drawer for a few days before I could open it. I didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to admit that my polished mental health narrative needed a rewrite – that what I thought was recovery had just been a brief remission. Part of me hoped the pill wouldn’t work, because if I felt better on Lexapro, that meant that there was still something inside me that needed to be fixed.
But as the drug swam its way back into my bloodstream, things started to get easier. I could actually use the therapeutic skills I had long since written off as useless. Mistakes didn’t feel like the end of the world anymore. My hands stopped sweating.
I was stunned. It felt magical.
After a few weeks, I realized I wasn’t experiencing a medical miracle but something much simpler: I was no longer in a constant state of low-grade anxiety. I found myself reflecting on the past year. Up until now, I’d thought my mental health had been at its best. I’d grown close to both of my roommates, was doing well in my classes, and had become part of the Santa Cruz community, all without medication or therapy.
I’d told myself anxiety was no longer part of my life, even though I’d lost over 15 pounds, because eating alone at the dining hall filled me with dread. I clung to the idea that I’d fixed my brain despite not being able to ride the bus or go downtown on my own without spending hours psyching myself up. And after constantly repeating these mantras, I still cried at least once a week because I felt like no matter what I did, I felt I was doomed to fail.
For so long, I’d clung to the idea that the only way I could consider myself healed was if I permanently eradicated my anxiety. But recovery doesn’t mean anxiety disappears forever. All my obsession with fixing myself did was make my mental health worse.
I don’t know how long I’ll need to be on Lexapro. It could be for a few more months or for years. Either way, I’ve learned that healing isn’t about finding a permanent solution. It’s about finding what helps you in the moment.
I’m starting to realize maybe that’s enough.
Veronica Morris is a third-year literature major in the creative writing concentration at UC Santa Cruz. When she’s not reading or writing for school, you’ll likely find her doing it for fun. Outside of literature, her hobbies include exploring the university’s campus, watching bad rom-coms with friends, and petting all the cats she can get her hands on. She wrote this piece as part of Community Voices editor and UCSC professor Jody K. Biehl’s opinion writing class.