Just be glad you don’t live in the US and get to experience the flat-out gong show that is taking place in our cities. (*Function checks 1911*). Sometimes glad to live in the rural areas 🙂 Though driving ~240 miles through a snow storm to get to the State Supreme Court for oral argument is a real pain.

Medications help, but they aren’t the end-all-be-all. The most effective I was ever prescribed was the Xanax, Klonopin, etc. family. Too bad they are now viewed as the equivalent of something like heroin these days; good luck getting a script for them in the US. Last time I wanted about 10 pills for flights, I got treated as if I asked for crack cocaine or something.

Before law school, I was diagnosed with major depression and GAD (also GERD, but something different). Before and during law school, I was prescribed virtually every flavor of anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication available at the time. Prozac blew my stomach up; tri-cyclics turned me into a highly constipated individual who wound up losing hours long blocks of time. When I took Zoloft I hallucinated and had out-of-body experiences. The best overall effect for anxiety came from Klonopin for me. Klonopin and its relatives didn’t seem to have a ramp-up process that things like SSRI’s, etc.

Strange thing started to happen: when I knew I had something that simply worked, there was a certain power in that. I think I used a total of ~5 out of my last refill, mostly used with bouts of anxiety accompanied by migraine headaches (turn off the lights, shove a towel under the door, duct tape black trash bags over the windows, and turn off the phone type migraines). Once I grasped that I had something that would work when SHTF, then I could manage the lesser instances.

As far as coming out of the end of it, I guess you could call it a success. Graduated law school and now work as a prosecutor making six-figures with assets over $1M. The downside is that I went into massive work-a-holism, my social life went in the cr*pper, and I’m 39 with no SO or spouse. Still suffer from anxiety and depression, but much more of the depression side than the anxiety these days (late fall/early winter on the Canadian border and SAD).

We don’t really have much in the way of mental health services out here. It’s not that uncommon for even suicidal folks to not find mental health facilities, so I can’t talk about experiences with therapy. Lot of folks out here handle things differently. Shooting sports are very popular out here, but in Australia, probably not much of an option. A nice late spring day, a half-case of varmint ammunition, a sighted in rifle, and an endless supply of ground dwelling rodents = a mind (and field) clearing afternoon/morning.

Exercise is always good.

One thing: There’s always somebody richer than you are (unless your name is Bill Gates). There’s always somebody more knowledgeable about your field than you are. There’s always someone with a better looking, wealthier, SO or spouse than you. There’s always somebody with a better car, house, boat, than you. I don’t care what metric you choose, there is always going to be somebody better at it and somebody worse at it than you are. That type of comparison is not terribly likely to help you feel better.