This poem is about life after antidepressants. Long term use of SSRI’s left me feeling burned out and uninspired. One day I just decided to stop taking them cold turkey. Initially I crawled into a dark hole for over 6 months waiting around for my brain chemistry to repair itself. The most irritating part of the whole experience was the fact that the medical community distributes these pills like candy but won’t even use the word “withdrawal” to describe the horrible symptoms from discontinued use. And that’s bullshit.

You were an an angsty teen that felt too much

Muffled by the silence

Someone who cried at the world

 

Lack of control, lack of understanding

So angry so young, so full of hatred

But whats become of you now?

 

Once raw emotion and yet now there is none

Splatter my brain in a new way

Challenge what I thought it could be

I stood at the edge screaming

 

Filling a void

With nothing else to say

Nothing to understand

That’s what the drugs took away

 

Fighting for freedom

Fighting for truth

Fighting myself

Fighting for you

 

Can’t shake the numbness

I never knew what they meant

but now I remember

That was after the drugs wore off

 

Now all is quiet

Think Im out of my head

Wondering how I made it out

Im still not brain dead

 

Thats how it feels sometimes

Under it all

Trying to read between lines of my mind

Everything piles on at one time

 

Sifting threw the mud

And the sickness

And the ego

And shadow

 

Braving the depths

Searching for the final traces of me

There’s a piece thats hides

Far  in-between

A funeral for the part of myself that believed

 

The dirty growling dog of a soul

Cries out for something more

But they prescribe you complacency

And you stay where you are

Don’t ever change ! They say

This is fine! To say the same

Isn’t that what you wanted?

Too afraid to change?

 

Thats not how it supposed to be

At least not for me

That won’t be my reality