I love you, Zoloft
on fixing the bugs in my brain
Greatness is programmed into us.
When I was prescribed antidepressants for the first time, it came as a total surprise. “Is it hard for you to get out of bed sometimes from feeling hopeless or unhappy?” asked my doctor. Of course, I answered suspiciously. I assumed it was developmentally appropriate for a 17-year-old to skip class to wallow in bed and dread contact with the outside world despite a soul-crushing sense of loneliness. I was incorrect.
Several weeks into dosing my senior year with 50 mg of Zoloft, I became the picture of mental health. Every single day, I was overjoyed to realize that I could get out of bed without trouble. I enjoyed being social and creative again. Most importantly, I didn’t want to die anymore.
Back then and persistent to this day, I’m flabbergasted, dumbfounded, amazed that a single pill could make me completely reverse my suicidality. That the chemicals in my brain and the atoms making up my being can be altered, and, I'm careful to use this word, and it comes with a lot of asterisks, but I ***fixed*** it. My depression and a significant amount of my anxiety had evaporated in a few short weeks with a happy little pill.
Medication for me was an instrumental tool in the kit I used to build a life for myself and have hope. It even gave me the mental fortitude to smash my life into bits and pieces, throw it all away, and start over, over and over again. I had the strength to make every difficult choice I've ever had to make in part because of Western medicine's total success in mending my neurochemistry.
How is there a chemical that can be made into a pill, that hacks my brain code and deletes suicide from my daily ponderings? Eliminates ninety percent of the intrusive thoughts that used to plague me before Zoloft? This same chemical turns other people into zombies, sweating fiends, sexually deficient, or more depressed than they've ever been. Everyone has a body that is miraculously unique, and I ascribe Zoloft’s efficacy on a massive stroke of luck, that not only do I experience absolutely no side effects, but that it was the very first antidepressant I had ever been prescribed. Everyone I know who takes some type of psychiatric medication had to plow through trials and tribulations on the hunt for a medication that makes them feel normal. I tend to quip that I am the Zoloft poster child. It’s perfect for me, and I’m grateful for it every day. If RFK Jr. or any other White House cuck comes for my medicine, there will be fucking hell to pay. Mark my words.
When plugged into my mental circuitry, Zoloft enabled me to install the updates necessary to upgrade my life. I sought fulfillment and self-improvement, making myself live up to the values I knew and proclaimed. I've been able to slowly remove the blinders programmed into me. Since my creation, born into the family that I was, I have had software primarily installed by two adults whose trauma didn't allow them to be the most expert programmers. My mom and dad uploaded years of guilt and anger and repression and gender roles and shame into my being and I'm working to purge it all. Deleted. Trash can: emptied. My upbringing wasn’t all bad, but there was some significant damage control that I had to do following my emancipation from their “care”. Anyway.
When I am acting outside of what I know to be my personal values and goals, even morals, it evokes a lingering sense of confusion and frustration. It’s easy to feel like a failure when you’re falling short of your own expectations. It’s peculiar how human nature seems to sabotage itself.
Life is a strange but often predictable thing. If I procrastinate on my responsibilities until the last possible moment, I’ll feel stressed. Knowing this, I still sometimes procrastinate anyway, fully understanding that there will be consequences. Many Ted Talks and self-help books espouse solutions to these issues, and I guess I’ll join them. All voices in the choir.
I'm a reasonably smart person with internet access, a vehicle, and a community of resources at my disposal. I am a fully autonomous adult in control of my actions and choices, so why do I still choose incorrectly? I’ll procrastinate on essential tasks, put off making appointments or doing the dishes, et cetera, et cetera. Why do I resist it? Chores and errands aren’t necessarily “fun” in the moment (albeit a perspective shift can change any mundane activity into a meditative one), but I have an intrinsic, deep-seated desire to be good to myself. Allowing inner conflict to build leaves me spiritually out of alignment with who I want to be.
I ask this question of myself multiple times a day: am I acting in alignment with my values and goals? Yes? No? Why the fuck not? Why on earth do I make choices that aren't good for me?!
There is a caveat towards innocent oversights that can happen to anyone, momentary lapses in judgement, or just plain old bad luck.
Ah fuck, that chicken was sitting out for too long, I shouldn't have eaten it because I got sick as shit.
I knew I shouldn’t have gunned that stupid fucking yellow light, I’m definitely getting a ticket.
I went too hard at the gym this morning, my back is killing me.
There’s a margin of error that we should apply to our perspectives and opinions on ourselves, others, and the world. I’d rather not use the word “grace” because I have some hang-ups surrounding its religious connotations, but I suppose that's the word to use.
The particular flavor of self sabotage that perplexes me is the toxic kind. It’s one thing to lock your keys in your car, or absentmindedly chuck your phone in the dumpster. I mean throwing away a years-long friendship over minor jealousy. Or overspending and destroying any shred of financial stability multiple times despite knowing better. Or walking home alone at night without a weapon or a companion.
That's what I want to emphasize. Why do I self sabotage despite knowing better? There must be a bug in the system. I need to do some forensics, some mechanics, to root around my psyche to figure out how to patch the bug.
The bug I addressed first was my eating habits. I'm doing much much better these days and am acknowledging my progress! I paved a pathway towards my improvement and have created a Desire Path. Instead of walking on the societally suggested sidewalk towards a shitty destination, I’m forging my own paths that become easier and easier to follow the more I travel my right way.
Using the nutrition example, I visualized myself and my relating habits like so:
I know how to eat healthy thanks to my education and the internet.
I want to eat healthy.
There are healthy and affordable food and grocery options in my area.
I am able bodied and can go to these places, on foot, by car, or by public transit.
I can cook things for myself using my appliances.
Healthy eating will help me achieve my goal physique.
Healthy eating has scientific evidence and numerous studies stating its importance.
Quality food fuels me throughout the day and boosts my energy and mood.
Nutritious food can taste good and be an enjoyable experience.
I can afford to choose foods that will further me towards my goals.
The longer I go without fast food and processed food, the less I crave it.
I have discipline and consistently select healthier options over processed temptations.
I own vitamins and supplements that enhance the positive impact of the foods I eat.
I look at the aforementioned flow of thought like lines of computer code. It’s how I live. I’ve updated my code with age and experience and a continually deepening understanding of what systems work for me.
When I started Zoloft at 17 years old, my mind was filled with small bugs culminating in a near malfunction. I gained a lot of weight during sophomore and junior year. As a teenager, there were a variety of barriers and obstacles between me and eating well. This is what my programming used to consist of:
My family ate fast food multiple times a week.
I followed pro-ana accounts that encouraged starving, leading to binging.
I wanted to be skinny, not strong.
I had emotionally charged eating habits and relied on sugar for dopamine.
My low self-esteem prevented me from wanting to care for myself.
Media I consumed pushed Western beauty standards and made me feel ugly.
I am genetically predisposed to develop diabetes and weight related disease.
I lacked self-control around foods I enjoyed, which were largely processed snacks.
My parents didn’t encourage healthy eating habits or cooking skills.
Depression made physical activity especially difficult.
Anxiety kept me from joining team sports as a teen, or from going to the gym.
I had no examples in my life of how to work out and eat well.
American food is packed with sugar and is low quality as a whole.
Over time with hard work and a focus on internal development, I’ve deleted these lines of code from my programming. There are plenty of factors that act like small viruses in your system, like malware, ransomware, complete and utter pains in your ass. They can be eradicated.
Corporations, ads, and politicians all try to invade your systems. Having a strong antivirus mechanism in place protects you from having your consciousness clouded with pop up ads, brain rot and porn viruses plaguing it.
I ought to give myself a break. We all should. Firstly, there are billions of dollars tied up in manipulating the way I see health, fitness, and my body. The media will have us think that body types wax and wane in style, a crucial statement to acknowledge for how dystopian it is to commodify the female body like this. I need a strong antivirus downloaded to my system to keep out the covert messaging that leads to eating disorders, scam fitness programs, and dangerous plastic surgery. I am perfect the way I am, yet I still seek to improve on my own terms.
I choose to compare myself only with my own desires, experiences and potential. I tend to opt out of giving my money or attention towards the oppressive viruses that thrive on my destruction. I want to be part of an infrastructure that rewards itself.
We all have success in our highest potential programmed into us. It's in our hard drive and our DNA to crave pleasure in excess, to act in self-interest and to seek instant gratification. There are people, capitalists, that exploit these bugs for personal gain. I do not desire that. I want to modify my brain chemistry and fix the bugs. To rewrite the brain’s code, customize their avatar, chart a new path, and help others and complete side quests along the way. I wish to explore this plane of existence and make the most of it simply because I can. There is no “why” in Minecraft, just free will and infinite possibilities. I exist in an admittedly dangerous and complicated world, but it is filled with love because I have it.
I find the computer analogy to be the easiest way to explain my philosophies to people with a less permeable mind, vis a vis, men. In the West and per my personal experiences, women are much more spiritually open. The programming that has been downloaded into men since birth is blocking them from emotional freedom. Most men I’ve met who are into crystals, tarot and astrology were, more often than not, introduced to the esoteric by a woman. For these reasons, I think men tend to be less receptive to the more emotion-forward schools of thought such as manifestation and the power of positive thinking. Incels will have you think that a man can't love himself, because that's gay. I think that’s why red pill content appeals so broadly to young men, especially the chronically online ones, the ones most susceptible to grifting and psychological manipulation. They’re spoon-fed extremist ideologies through memes, binary thinking, and demonization of the entities that are the supposed reason for their personal failings. I hope my silly little analogy can act as a guide that speaks to people of all programming and of all stations in life.
There are people I love who have fallen into the alt right pipeline. It hurts individuals by isolating them from reality, it harms the collective unconscious by pumping misogynistic hatred into the mainstream, and it kills. Every day, women are murdered, by strangers, by spouses, by friends or by stalkers, by coworkers and incels. I hope and pray that there is a combination of words I can string together to convince even one person to be better to themselves and the world they live in. How can we expect humanity to evolve if men are several generations behind spiritually and philosophically? What happened to the age of thoughtful, sensitive, connected men? A feminist movement that encompasses all walks of life is the only kind that will survive the incoming waves of fascism. It’s time to update your software.