By Rachel Ogbaretin

30 days of Prozac

Today marks official 30 days for me on Prozac also known fluzocine, an antidepressant used to help treat clinical depression something that I had apparently been suffering with for a very long time. I tend to try an avoid anything to do with mental health especially my mental health due to my family background. I come from a family that very much against anything to with mental health, we tend to think it’s not really real and something we should “snap” out of it, or worse it’s a curse afflicted by someone which requires you to be cleanse by your local church. It easy for us to just suck it up and keep going, I mean we very much believe in the stereotype of the strong independent black women that doesn’t need any help and until recently I thought that how it should be, but I’m glad that I did in fact reached out.

Being diabetic means I burn out a lot faster than others and since starting SCA they come a lot faster, I spend weekends in bed because the week before has wiped me out, stopping from getting on with personal projects. it’s probably why i pushed myself to seek help, with home and school it was becoming very hard to function when I’m constantly low. It’s been hard thought, trying to get better on something your family doesn’t understand has it downside my mother is skeptical and sometimes hides my medication in fear it’s doing more harm than good, with aunts giving me sea salt and blessed oil as an alternative to medication. There’s also just taking another tablet in the pile of other pills I take on the daily and I got to time it right or I might not sleep that night.

Although there are some positives to it, I don’t get as tired as used too, I was a struggle to keep myself awake during the school and even harder to be semi function in the weekends, but know i can come into school and not have to drink a lot of coke to keep myself awake and more forward with my projects during my [personal time. It’s also nice when I don’t get into a spirals of worry and anxiety which could leave me physically ill at times and sitting in the pit doesn’t seem as daunting. Now I make cool video with my creative partner Tarun, even spent time outside with SCAers which I haven’t done in while which is an improvement, not to mention I’m gonna be doing stand up comedy this Sunday something that the me from last year would be freaking out about but now I’m…kinda excited. It’s not much but I feel the year is doing a lot better for me, perhaps because I was born in the year of the pig.

I still have a lot to work on , time management…actually writing in my gratitude journal and actually working on personal projects for more than one hour a week but for now I’m enjoy the little things I’ve gain from improved mental health. Hopefully I can show my family that looking after such things will do more good than harm.

The copy scores 51.9 in the Flesch Reading Ease test