A friend of mine recently told me, "you don't have to take the pills." She was referring to my anti-anxiety medication that generally makes too tired to function and think clearly. Sometimes it prevents anything from getting into my short-term memory. I buy things online only to forget what they are when they show up at my door a few days later. I could try switching to a different medication, but the majority of immediate anxiety relieving medications have similar side-effects and I happen to live in a state with so many people on prescription medications that sometimes I wonder if my doctor actually cares about helping me, or if he is just throwing pills at me until I leave his office.

I have several prescriptions in my medicine cabinet, some of which I have only to counter the effects of others. I started having seizures when my doctor increased the dosage of my anti-depressant, a possibility that he did not warn me about. It took months of blood tests, x-rays, and other medical exams to rule out anything other than the medication as being the source of the seizures. And if you've never had a seizure by the way, let me just tell you they are terrifying. Imagine losing several minutes of your life as you wake up on the floor inside your school's student center with dozens of people standing around you. Your brain still hasn't figured out where you are, there's vomit and/or foamy saliva around your mouth and your muscles feel like useless bags of tissue.

And after all of that, your doctor prescribes you a new medication to prevent you from having seizures. The only side effect is that you lose your temper more quickly. And by that I mean, you start screaming at your cat when it accidentally knocks over a roll of paper towels onto the floor. My doctor also put me on a new anti-depressant less likely to give me seizures, but it makes it incredibly difficult to sleep, so he also changed me to an anti-anxiety that will make it easier to sleep. They are constantly battling each other. Sometimes I wake up at five in the morning, other times two in the afternoon. One curbs my cravings for cigarettes, the other enhances them.

So I should just stop taking the pills right? As my friend so simply suggested. Well why would I be taking these pills if I didn't feel that I needed to in the first place? People with anxiety and depression are often blamed for their own issues. I can't tell you how many times someone has told me "just go meet up with some friends and take your mind off of it," "go outside and take a walk," "listen to your favorite album or play your favorite game," all of the things that anxiety and depression replace your willpower for.

I don't take pills for these things because I like having extra problems in my life to manage; I take them because in some cases they actually do make things easier. That almost makes sense, right? Of all the forms of mental illness in the world, anxiety and depression are the easiest to blame the victim for because their effects aren't as visible to other people, and other people love to lack empathy. As far as psychology and pharmacology have come, there is still a long way to go before people can get help for their symptoms without having more symptoms created for them. It certainly doesn't help that pharmaceutical companies clearly have a lot to gain by making a pill with side-effects requiring more pills to handle, but it particularly doesn't help that people without these issues don't know, don't care and don't care to know about the lives of people on these medications.

So sure, I could just stop taking the pills. I could let my depression take over and never have the confidence or motivation to make serious attempts at anything I'm passionate about. I could let my anxiety keep me locked up inside my apartment and staying up late at night in bed just so I can wonder about how terrible the future could be. Or I could learn to manage the side-effect instead. And management is the key word here. This is where therapy comes in.

A good therapist may not be able to solve my problems for me, that isn't their job you know. But I have found people who are able to make me more aware of the situations which have created depression and anxiety for me in the past and are likely to do so in the future. Being aware of when I really need to pop a pill and when I just think I do are extremely important, especially to steer away from addiction. This is why a combination of medication and therapy are the most effective.

Of course, hey, maybe my doctor should tell me a drug he's giving me could give me seizures, too.