I’ve had crippling anxiety since I was 17. I know the age because I can remember the first anxiety-fueled attack I had with crystal clarity. Couldn’t breathe. Felt like I was dying. Didn’t know what was happening. Couldn’t put a coherent thought together. At the time I thought I was having a heart attack. Everything was dialed to 11 and I was in quite a lot of pain.

Not knowing what was happening, mom took me to the doctor. We were told that it was a “panic attack” and I would be fine once I calmed down. Which I did. But I was still so rattled the next day that I still didn’t feel like myself. The best word I can think of to describe my condition is… scrambled.

I have no idea what triggered the attack. Whatever it was probably disappeared as I was trying to deal with it all.

A couple times a year I’d get hit again, but it was never as intense as the first time. Probably because I understood what was happening to me. Though it could still get pretty bad. It’s called crippling anxiety for a reason. It incapacitates you and you literally can’t function.

Eventually I visited Thailand and looked to make some changes in my life. I started meditating, and that allowed me to manage my anxiety fairly well. I did have to run to initial care a couple times over the years for help, but I was never put on any medication.

Until I was.

Caring for a parent with dementia drove up my anxiety levels every single day, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. Far worse than it ever had been. No amount of meditation would touch it. And the fact that I was being incapacitated meant I couldn’t care for my mom… let alone myself. Which probably made things even worse.

And so… my doctor ran me through the SSRI gauntlet, where you keep trying different options until something works. Or at least makes life with anxiety manageable. And we hit it on the third try.

I stayed on the pills until three or four months after my mom passed, when I slowly started to get my life back together and go back to meditating to control my stress and anxiety. It wasn’t a cold-turkey halting of the drugs. It was a medically-controlled tapering off so that the side-effects don’t get too awful. And, despite the FUCKING BULLSHIT NONSENSE BEING VOMITED OUT OF RFK JR.’S STUPID, IGNORANT, ANTI-SCIENCE, PIECE OF SHIT FUCKING ASSHOLE… it wasn’t harder than “quitting heroin.” Or, if it was, quitting heroin must be a fucking cake-walk, because it was no problem at all. My doctor gave me a schedule and advised me how to do it safely and, after a while, I was done. Back to practicing my meditation.

And then, seven years later, I was at work trying to deal with too much and there it was… an anxiety attack so bad that I was in my car thinking I was dying. All my muscles were so tight that I thought I was going to pass out from the pain. I was jumping out of my skin. My hands and feet were frozen and my fingers were bent back, leaving me clawing at my chest. I would have started screaming, but I couldn’t breathe. I don’t think that I passed out, but maybe I did. I honestly don’t remember.

I didn’t mess around. The minute I was able to pick up my phone and dial, I was calling for an emergency appointment with my doctor. YOU KNOW, THE ONLY PERSON QUALIFIED TO GIVE ME FUCKING MEDICAL ADVICE.

Given the severity of the attack, it was decided I would try some milder doses of SSRIs to see if that would allow me to get back to being able to function again.

It did not.

I was spiraling so often so quickly that I went right back to the drug which worked the best for me the first time. From there I worked myself from one pill to three per night. But slowly. Because the side-effects are horrible. Mostly revolving around explosive diarrhea from morning to night… and sometimes in the middle of the night.

Eventually things evened out. And my life started to feel like my own again. Which is to say that my life started to feel like most everybody else’s does. Which is to say that any anxiety I’m experiencing is manageable. I don’t get so overwhelmed that I can no longer function and am trying to scream while struggling to breathe.

After five or so months when things started to normalize for me, I worked my way down from three pills to two. Two pills to one. And then I was going to go back to zero when I decided that I just didn’t fucking want to. I’m old enough now that I simply do not want to spend any more of what little time I have left struggling with my anxiety. I’m done with it. So I met with my doctor and explained where my head was at. He was happy that I had taken the initiative to reduce from three pills to one pill safely (I’d been through it before), and agreed with my reasoning. His training led him to believe I was better off where I was at, so he supported my decision. Medically.

And so…

Every night I take a small yellowish-peachy pill called Paxil.

Then I thank God that Paxil exists and my doctor exists so I can have a normal life that’s not being ruled by something I can’t control. With that pill I can manage. I can cope. I can be me. And I don’t have to live in terror of an anxiety attack appearing out of nowhere and sending my life spiraling…

So fuck RFK Jr. and his stupid ignorant shit. Fuck him sideways.

I have no doubt that there are doctors who over-prescribe. I have no doubt that there are people who are abusing SSRIs. And, yeah, addressing that is probably a good idea. But for RFK Jr. to feel that he gets to overrule my doctor and unilaterally purge/reduce SSRIs for whatever stupid-ass reason (RFK Jr. being somebody who, I’ll remind you, has no fucking training for this shit)… well, he can go fuck himself.

I am not going back to where I was when there’s a perfectly suitable, perfectly safe, medically-sound, scientifically-studied solution available to me.

And some fascist junkie asshole with no medical training and not a lick of sense in his fucking brain-worm-riddled head has any fucking business telling me otherwise.