Hold The Grapefruit
How Finally Addressing My Anxiety Got Me My Groove BAck
Over 40% of adults in the United States have some sort of anxiety disorder. Anything from generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) to panic disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder to post-traumatic stress disorder with many other anxiety related issues in between. Of those 40% of adults dealing with anxiety, as of a 2024 survey, 14.3% are on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) for it such as Zoloft, Prozac, or Lexapro. And baby, I’ve joined the club!
But let’s take it back, shall we? Anxiety has been a part of my life maybe not as far back as I can remember but for a pretty long time. The first time I can recall having a legitimate anxiety flare up was probably in 7th grade when my parents were getting divorced. For the whole first month of that school year I wanted nothing to do with going to school in the morning. Our middle school had so many students that each grade was split up into 3 or 4 “teams” and unfortunately I had been put on a team with ZERO of my friends and the teachers I personally thought were the roughest of the bunch. Add into that the whole family breaking apart thing and I was practically set up for mental failure. Oh! 9/11 also happened during that month! What a time to be me!
I skipped school a lot that first month or two, every morning was a struggle to get out of bed and when I did I’d just be crying for no apparent reason. My mom was worried and did what she could to move my schedule around and get me in classes with my friends which helped a lot. She also took me to a therapist and signed me up for some divorced kids club meeting at school that year. I only went to the therapist once because by the time I saw them I was feeling and behaving pretty normally and they didn’t see any issue with me. In divorced kids club, which met maybe once a month, I was the only kid who said they didn’t want their parents to get back together and I generally handled the divorce okay moving forward. But that month or so at the start? That was rough and unfortunately, I think it would start a trend I would come back to time and again as I got older.
Fast forward to December 2025 after an age of minimal employment and even more minimal funds, I had been in a constant state of stress, worry, and anxiety for the better part of 3 years. I was functioning through it more or less but had regular bad mental health days where I was overwhelmed by being broke and not being able to find any kind of job to fix that. Then my husband decided he wanted a puppy. Initially I was like, yeah cool whatever, I’m a dog girl, it would be nice to have a little bundle of love hanging around and a bright spot during a pretty bleak time. Lol. You know how if you’re friends with a couple who is constantly fighting and don’t seem to really like each other but then one day they tell you they’re gonna have a baby cause they think that’s the thing that will bring them closer together and fix all their problems and you’re over there trying to not let this face be the one they see staring back at them. Yeah. That’s how current Jodi feels about the past us who thought this was a good idea.
After a few weeks of scouring the internet, my husband found a family with some border collie/labrador puppies that we reached out to and were able to adopt one. We were told she was 8 weeks old but the math didn’t math on that one and we realized she was barely 7 weeks old, not a huge difference technically but a major one in puppy development. On her first night we let her sleep in the bed with us to let her feel comfortable and warm since she was just a little baby pulled away from her mom and siblings but at 5am we made a discovery. Fleas. FLEEEEEAAAASSSSSS! She came from a farm so it’s not all that surprising for her to have fleas but the people she came from must not have realized it and as a reminder we were all just snuggled up in the bed. We sprang into action. We were making emergency flea comb and shampoo orders for delivery, we were putting this brand new puppy who didn’t know a damn thing about us yet through the trauma of her first bath, the bed had to be stripped and everything washed and vacuumed. As far as first puppy days go, it wasn’t the best.
Now, I’ve had 3 puppies throughout my life and I’ve loved them all. The first I was only a pup myself but for the other two I was well into adulthood and helped with the training and caring of the puppies. But like, apparently I didn’t? Because suddenly having the responsibility of being one of the two main caretakers for our new girl proved incredibly overwhelming. I started crying the evening of that first full day with our new pup and pretty much didn’t stop for the next two weeks. I was all over the puppy reddit, I learned about the puppy blues and I was constantly looking for reassurance that things would get better. That I would get better. I wasn’t able to eat all that much from the constant anxiety pit in my stomach and lost over 10lbs. Every morning I’d wake up with a buzzing feeling in my body that started the second I opened my eyes or hell, sometimes even before. It got so bad that we almost genuinely looked into trying to rehome our puppy so I could feel normal again but ultimately I realized this was about me and not about the dog. Even without her, it was only a matter of time before I had another wild anxiety crash out about a new job or some other thing that made me feel out of control and like I’d lost my routine. I had to talk to someone.
After an emergency appointment with a random doctor from PCP’s office over tele-health that had me lightly weeping my way through it, he diagnosed me with GAD and wrote me a 30 day prescription for Zoloft. Y’all. The relief I felt just having got some kind of answer and potential solution was incredible. I picked up my prescription, took the first dose that night…and I still felt wrong. It was definitely better, but for that first week after starting Zoloft, within an hour or so of taking the pill in the morning my chest would get heavy, I’d start crying, and I’d once again start asking if I’d ever feel normal again. But like clockwork, by 3pm every afternoon it would phase out and I’d start to feel like myself. I knew it would take a little time for the medicine to work in my system the way it should, I mean it did have years of fucked up serotonin levels to compete with, and eventually I stopped having that daily hype up of anxiety. I’m now over 3 months into taking my SSRI daily and I genuinely can’t believe I let myself go so long without it.
I come from a long line of people who suffer from some sort of mental illness, I married into a family that have had their own struggles with mental illness, and almost every friend I currently have is on some SSRI of their own. We are living in one of the most difficult times in history with numerous wars, surviving late-stage capitalism, constantly rising unemployment, lack of affordable or easy to access healthcare, and the general lack of empathy many have for their fellow man/woman/non-binary pal. It’s no wonder so many of us have had to turn to medication and/or therapy to find some relief from the stress, anxiety, or depression we may be suffering from. I acknowledge that medication may not be right or accessible for everyone but if it you’ve been struggling in the day to day and have even had a slight interest in taking something for it, I encourage you to talk to your doctor and have them help you come up with a potential strategy.
In the almost 4 months I’ve been on Zoloft I feel like I can breathe again. That puppy who pushed me over the edge is now a 6 month old dog who loves watching the birds and nibbling ears and is the sweetest girl especially when she’s a little sleepy. For the first time in ages I feel like I’m able to be creative. When I was in the thick of my multi-year anxiety build up I found it difficult to write, which is why this site has gone so empty of new content for so long. Anytime I came up with an idea to write about I’d start and eventually hit the point of thinking…who cares? I barely care so why would anyone else care to read this? But even if folks don’t really care to read anything I put out, if I’m interested in writing it, that’s all that really matters to me right now. Are my financial and unemployment worries still there? Sure, but boy are they way less intrusive than they used to be. I can still feel my emotions but I don’t have the urge to cry constantly. Going on Zoloft, for me, so far, has changed my life in the most positive of ways and I’m grateful for the science that has made it possible. Thank god I never really liked grapefruit all that much anyway!
What is your experience with anxiety? Is it constantly prevalent in your life or has it never been much of an issue? Would or do you currently take any medication to handle it? What’s the experience been like for you, good or bad? I want to hear your stories in the comments below!