This month, The American Recall Center is encouraging conversations online and offline about medication safety (check out their post on the newly-discovered side effects of Xarelto). Judy, their awesome Outreach Coordinator, got in touch recently asking if I’d be willing to write about my own experience with medication. I realized I’ve hardly (publicly) talked about the role of antidepressants in my road to recovery, and so I thought this would be a great place to start.

I’m currently taking Lexapro (or escitalopram) daily, and there are a couple of things I wish I’d known earlier. Owing to my own stubbornness, compounded by my ignorance about the nature and effects of antidepressants, I waited till I was almost 6 months into this current cycle of depression before obtaining a prescription. These are some valuable things I’ve learned over the last 3 months:

Antidepressants are not magic pills that will “make us…