Taking medication to better your mental health can be absolutely terrifying for those who suffer with health anxiety. In fact, not just for your mental health but any form of medication to make yourself feel better, from ibuprofen to antibiotics can cause even more anxiety than the initial problem. It’s a double edged sword taking medication if you suffer from health anxiety, as on one hand you are so concerned with the initial illness/ symptoms and will do anything to relive them, but on the other hand you are so scared what the medication will do to you, and what side effects will affect you the most.
I’m going to tell my story, so those who suffer with health anxiety and are considering taking medication to better their mental health don’t feel as alone with the feeling and the worry. As a side note, this is my personal experience with medications and they may work for you! If you are on any medication mentioned in this post, dont stop taking it before consulting a medical professional.
I have suffered from health anxiety for a long long time, and usually I am willing to do anything to lessen the effects of that sense of dread. If I have a cold, I feel consumed with the feeling of illness and I just want it to go away quickly, however, sometimes when I’m offered medication to lessen the effects of a cold I am quick to refuse. This may sound ridiculous but sometimes the notion of taking a pill completely freaks me out. The size of the pill, how many i have to take and especially the side effect profile, can send me over the edge. *This will all make sense as you read further through the blog post*
After a long winded battle with anxiety and depression I was offered by my GP an SSRI (selection serotonin reuptake inhibitor). The SSRI I was offered was the box standard of all antidepressants: Sertraline. This was back in 2021 when my health anxiety wasn’t that present. I didn’t really think of what would happen if I took it, I just decided to take it. I tried to stay away from reading the side effect profile of Sertraline and dove straight in. After 2 days of being on the medication I felt absolutely awful and was almost begging to be back in the same position before I took the medication. It felt like I would rather be depressed and anxious then be completely anxious and physically ill. Something just didn’t seem right, that i shouldn’t be feeling so completely awful, bed bound as well as various physical symptoms. I had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right and my body shouldn’t be reacting this way. I decided to call 111 (my best-friends) and I told them what I was feeling. Immediately they asked me to go to A&E and after numerous tests they concluded that I was experiencing serotonin syndrome. I was told to stay away from this drug, and so from that experience I decided that I didn’t want to take any form of antidepressant.
I continued to take my regular medication (propranolol), and attended regular therapy sessions, whereby I felt like I could get on with life without any form of long term medication. However, experiencing bad mental health is not linear. I found myself again feeling rubbish, being pressured to be on medication to deal with my constant anxiety, and so I sought to find a psychiatrist to prescribe me something different to Sertraline. I explained that I couldn’t be on any form of SSRI and so I was offered an SNRI as well as RTMS. If you read my previous post on RTMS, you can learn the ins and outs of the route of no medication to better the effects of depression and anxiety. Even after that I still felt like I needed short term medication and so I was offered diazepam on top of the propanolol that I was already taking.
After months of feeling alright and capable of dealing with my anxiety and depression I fell into a major blip, whereby I was experiencing an extreme depressive episode as well as extreme heightened anxiety. I needed to be on a long term form of medication that would better the two mental health conditions. I spend hours upon hours looking up different medications that I could take that would allow me to live my life properly. With my negative experience of taking Sertraline mixed with my emetophobia, I searched which medication would have the least and most tolerated side effects. I would read medical journals whereby I understood nothing as I am not a psychiatrist. I scanned the internet for personal experiences of taking certain medications. I soon realized that everyone experiences medications differently, which made me even more anxious because all I wanted was a definite answer that I was going to be okay.
I think since November 2023 I have been prescribed 4 different kinds of antidepressants, some of which were never taken because the experiences I found on the internet seemed horrible. However, after finding an amazing psychiatrist and working alongside my GP they found a medication that would work for my specific needs and symptoms. Mirtazapine was my new medication. I was absolutely terrified of taking it, putting it off day by day because I needed my circumstances to align with how much I was going to be affected by it. I took the first pill, and again I felt awful. I kept telling myself to push through the bad feelings and that it was normal to feel this awful. However, what I was doing was gaslighting myself into putting myself in a situation my body didn’t want to be in. As the days went by I was getting increasingly worse, experiencing side effects that were rare. Again I called 111 and was seen by a doctor who told me to stop taking them. I had now been advised that medication that dealt with serotonin did not agree with my body and that I had to find an alternative option.
This sent my health anxiety skyrocketing as I knew I had to be on long-term medication, but I just didn’t want to go through that experience again and again and again. Speaking to an NHS psychiatrist (not my regular psychiatrist), they offered me Pregabalin. I read the reviews and people seemed to absolutely love it, whereby their anxiety dropped the day after taking it, making them feel somewhat euphoric. I was so excited that finally there would be a medication that would get rid of my anxiety and also have a low side effect profile. However, after reading a recently posted Times article on Pregabalin deaths and podcasts about the awful withdrawal effects of Pregabalin I was advised by everyone around me to never take it. I was absolutely shocked that I was offered this medication with the known withdrawal effects and the addictiveness of it as it is a controlled drug, often abused.
Finally I was prescribed something that I had never heard of, but is a very well known medication that belongs to a different family of antidepressants. I was taken aback at the medication I was given. I thought to myself that I would just take it, not reading the extensive sheet of side effects that came in the packet. But curiosity killed the dog. I went online and flicked through endless TikTok’s over people’s experience on this drug. Finally I saw that ‘nausea’ wasn’t one of the most common side effects. In fact it wasn’t listed on the sheet within the packet. But this still wasn’t enough to convince me that I would be okay. I decided I would go to a pharmacist just to double check and to my surprise they said that I would be okay. As a caution they had told me that every medication, even ibuprofen can cause nausea. Even the medication I have been on since I was 17 causes nausea and I was completely fine on that.
I had carved out a chunk of my diary whereby I could allow myself two weeks to do absolutely nothing. I knew that I would experience some side effects and I needed to prepare myself to have an allocated amount of time where I could feel these and not be pressured to be the best version of myself. I made sure I had all the support I needed around me, so again I could experience the side effects and the mental strain of taking a new mind altering medication. It’s a scary thing for anyone and so I made sure not to beat myself up for being afraid.
When I took my first pill I freaked out. I expected then and there to be suddenly hit with the worst. But the worst didn’t happen. What actually happened was I fell asleep an hour later and had one of the best sleeps of my life. The next day I woke up anxious that it was going to be like Mirtazapine all over again. That my body would reject the medication by breaking out in cold sweats. Instead I felt very tired and a bit dizzy. I was able to eat, my appetite came back, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However the first week of being on this new medication wasn’t all a walk in the park. There were some days where I barely felt any side effects and some days where all I could do was lie down on the sofa and watch TV, going in and out of a haze of sleep. I didn’t really even leave the house as everything seemed 2 seconds behind in my mind which freaked me out.
I had panic attacks. I didn’t like the feeling of the expected amount of unease I would feel. I couldn’t put the dizziness down to it all being in my head, it was real and therefore allowed to feel the panic. But this is wrong of me. In fact the things i usually panic over are the unknown and so if it is known that i would experience dizziness and i do, then there is nothing unknown that will happen. I had to keep convincing myself of this fact over and over again. Eventually the panic subsided gently, but not all the way there yet!
Differences I have noticed so far: even though I have spent the majority of the week alone in bed, my panic hasn’t escalated into full blown panic attacks that I usually experience. They have just skimmed past the peak, lowering the physical anxiety I feel. I have felt at times slipping into bad moods whereby i become tearful but again, it is expected for things to get worse before they become good again. My sleep has been much better, but I do wake up feeling extremely tired and that does carry on throughout the day. I do usually experience an extremely low appetite, however this medication has in fact increased my appetite which has been a blessing.
I am not out of the woods yet, and I am still waiting and hoping for the change to occur so that I can feel like myself again.
Writing this is very raw and personal, however I wanted to share my journey so far on medication as I don’t see much representation and honesty on social media of what it is like doubled health anxiety. It’s a double edged sword to so desperately want to get better, yet avoiding anything that will make you feel better for the fear of experiencing unwanted side effects. I hope whoever has read this and suffers with health anxiety or knows anyone who suffers with health anxiety and are starting their medication journey feels comforted in the knowledge that things may take a while to get better, but one day they will. Be supportive and kind, check up on yourself, don’t be afraid to be afraid, better days are ahead 🙂
Mind0verMatter 
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