Depression and anxiety often go hand in hand. I have been anxious, especially around people, for many years. I have actively fought depression, or at least set my mind to deny it was there, for much of that time, as well. The result was a balancing act of stress, positive thinking, and hanging on by sheer will power, until I just lost it one day. I mean, I lost it while people were around. I fell apart, started crying and couldn't stop, and decided to see a doctor.

She didn't label me as having GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) or depression, but she did say that I had been under a lot of stress for a long time, and that it sounded like my brain chemicals were all burned out. She started me on free samples of Lexapro.

It wasn't long before I felt much better. I took one 10 mg. pill each morning, and that was all, for the time being. I also made an attempt to remove activities and demands from my life. I trimmed my social calendar down to a minimum, and asked my husband if I could just stay home from anything that sparked dread in my heart. He didn't really say I could, but I had pretty much already made up my mind.

Let me share a little about depression, as I see it. I felt like I had nothing real to be depressed about. Sure, we didn't have much money, but as a Christian and Bible believer, I felt like since my faith and hope were in God, it really didn't matter about our low bank balance. We had been accruing debt at the same time, and while I didn't like being indebted to credit card companies, I dipped into them more months than not. I had homeschooled my kids for years, and while I couldn't show a paper trail proving they had learned anything, they had grown into lovely Christian people. My husband was a jewel, even though he had been in the psychiatric ward on five or more occasions over the previous ten years.

I was in the middle of the "Change" and had been dealing with a sense of unreality in my emotions for a while, and often couldn't sleep well. Not only that, my husband rarely slept through the night. I had hit a major plateau in my weight loss efforts (I'd lost over 50 pounds!) and was seeing the weight creep back up.

We had been promised a new house by a wealthy relative and were supposed to be shopping around for what we wanted. That sounds good, but my husband is so heavenly minded that he let me know I was being worldly when I wanted to drive around looking at homes for sale. This strife between us caused more fights than I like to admit. It's not that I really hated the modest little run-down home we had. I would have happily stayed there forever except that it sits right across the road from a busy train track, and the trains had been making me more and more nervous over the past few years.

While all of that may or may not sound like a serious stress load, the fact was, I was stressed! And had been for a long time. So here's what I learned about depression. Any time I read the classic symptoms of depression, I felt like I had some, a bit, but not all the symptoms. Feelings of worthlessness? No! As a child of God, I knew I was forgiven and loved, and headed to heaven. Sadness? Not really. I bolstered my faith daily with a time in the Word and prayer. Insomnia? Fatigue? Yes, I had those.

Anyway, when I went on Lexapro, the first surprise I got was that I no longer felt guilty about everything. In fact, I really hadn't realized how guilty I felt about, well, everything. I had written about those guilt feelings in my journal, but somewhere inside had always been afraid to give them up. After all, what if that's really the Lord convicting me about my inadequacies? After a week or two on Lexapro, I didn't even consider that I was guilty about anything! I realized that my overwhelming guilt was that symptom the books all called "feelings of worthlessness."

Being on Lexapro helped me through some major changes in the next few months, as my husband finally broke down mentally and had to be placed in a long term care facility. I moved three hours away from our home town to live near the nursing home. The whole process of getting him from hospital to nursing home was very complicated and took a couple of months, but Lexapro got me through it.

Over the ten months that I took the medicine, I increased the dosage twice after asking my doctor. The first time, after a few months on it, I increased to 15 mg., and then a few months later increased to 20. When it seemed to be no longer giving me that good feeling, I was faced with the choice of asking the doctor if I could up it again, or trying to wean myself off and switch to natural methods of depression and anxiety treatment, such as St. John's Wort. I decided I was well, and began to wean off.

A large factor in my decision to quit the Lexapro was that I had gained many pounds since starting it - probably thirty or more, and I was already quite obese. I can't help but believe that Lexapro contributed to my gaining back all the weight I had worked so hard to lose a few years earlier.

Since quitting it, I have had a lot of depression and anxiety symptoms, but I'm hanging on day by day. I am taking 100-150 mg. 5-HTP daily as well as St. John's Wort three times a day. In addition, I have been researching stress management techniques and have added things like getting sunlight daily, gentle stretching and deep breathing, creating art, faithful journaling, etc., to my repertoire of healing methods.

I still struggle with guilt feelings, but I know they are not from God, and that helps. I'm away from the trains, living in a quiet country place, and can spend all the time I want surrounded by nature talking with God. I miss my husband, but I spend two days a week with him, and he is doing great. It seems to be a good situation as he is fairly happy where he is, and my stress load is much lower than before.

So would I recommend someone give Lexapro, or another SSRI medication, a try? You bet! Part of me regrets weaning off when I did, but the possibility of weight gain makes me unwilling to go back on. Here is the best thing that I got from my months on medication. I realized that I had a real problem that required real medical intervention. I had taken St. John's Wort before, but I was haphazard about it, and thought of it as optional.

I no longer see my natural regimen as optional! It helps me deal with my depression and anxiety, so I must do it. No, it doesn't pack the punch the Lexapro did, but maybe natural methods will heal up all my anxiety and depression symptoms in time. And if not, it's a wonderful reminder to spend time daily developing my walk with God so that I feel Him always near to help me through a rough spot.