 in my last video I talked about struggling with depression and part of managing depression is for me a lot of you know, diet change and a lot of therapy and whatnot, but a big part of it that was new to me is medication. So because we're talking about medication, I need to be super clear about something. I am not a doctor. None of this is medical advice or can be used to self-diagnose or even decide if this is a good medication for you. I'm just going to talk about my experience with the medication that was prescribed to me by a medical professional. Entertainment only. So my entire life I have gone through like seasons I guess of depression in and out. I've always kind of attributed it to being, you know, more of a creative personality. You kind of go into these really deep depths and then you come out and you kind of have the answer that you were looking for and you make something of that. However, I'd been experiencing a more prolonged, I guess, dark period and I didn't seem to be coming up. So that was kind of the context under which I went to see my care provider. I was having a lot of trouble specifically with executive function, actually getting through a day and actually completing what I set out to complete. So I met with my care provider about what I should do. The nurse gave me a two question depression screening, which turned out to be a 20 question depression screening, which I excelled at. I did very good. I scored, I think, 18 of 20 and the higher you do, the worse off you are. So after some further questions, my physician did give me a plan for improving both my diet and exercise. But given the duration of time that I'd been feeling this way and the severity with which I was kind of reporting my feelings, she felt like it was important to prescribe me a medication to kind of help get me through the hump. And the one that she prescribed me is this, well, buterin or bupropion. Now, before we talk about my experience with this, I'll stop rattling that in the microphone. I wanted to talk about my history with drugs. My mom has always been a very homeopathic type of person. So we always knew the homeopathic that we were supposed to take if we got some type of injury or if we weren't feeling a certain way. It was always a big part of our life. Consequently, my dad, the entire time that I knew him, struggled with high blood pressure and effectively died because he didn't really manage his medication very well. So that was something that's in the back of my head as well. My biggest question when it kind of going through the motions of like, do I want to be taking this thing was really, is this something that I can get off of? Or is this something that once I start taking it, I'm going to have to take indefinitely. So holding that first pill in my hand, kind of felt like the beginning of a journey that I didn't know where it would take me. And found myself exceptionally grateful for people who took the time to tell me what their experience was like. And I wanted to return the favor forward by talking about mine. My experience can be divided pretty cleanly into two phases, the initial phase and then the long term phase. I've been taking it for about nine months now, nine and a half. Long term, I found it to be fairly mild. It helped me come get through some of my tasks, be able to like focus down and didn't really have for me any kind of negative side effects long term and really didn't interact with any of my lifestyle like caffeine, et cetera, et cetera. The initial phase though, that beginning two and a half, three weeks though, was pretty impressively bad. And I think that a lot of people in, you know, sharing their experience either didn't have as difficult a time or kind of forget that initial period until they're like reminded and like, oh yeah, that was pretty rough. The two experiences that I had were in insomnia, which was pretty aggressive and kind of sore muscles, particularly in my legs. Both of those side effects kind of came on pretty quickly, I think like within the first week for sure. And we're pretty aggressive. So like most nights, I would just kind of wake up in the middle of the night and be up for a couple hours. If you're already dealing with depression, being up in the middle of the night for more hours is worse. Like it's just not an immediate improvement. However, you know, you kind of, I don't know, I was committed to get through to the end of it around the same time. I had some like kind of pretty impressive like muscle stiffness, particularly the muscles in my like thighs and calves. I did end up taking magnesium. I don't know if I just kind of like outlived the symptoms, but it did kind of did seem to help, you know, pretty quickly. I have read since that a lot of people are magnesium deficient. And so I've started kind of incorporating that into my routine, both simple bending with the essential minerals and pumpkin seeds, oddly enough. Ultimately, I did find it very helpful. And I think it was responsible for kind of helping me kind of get up into my life a little bit more and actually be able to adjust my lifestyle and diet in a way that helped me move forward. No, while I've been careful to not make anything that sounds like a recommendation in this video, I will recommend this one thing. If you are considering taking a medication prescribed by your physician and you're a little bit nervous about it, I encourage you to talk with people in your life about it. I was surprised by the number of people in my life who had been taking this particular medication for years. And it just started with me being honest about what I was going through and what I was kind of trying to do to get out of it. So if you find yourself in a similar situation as me, where you're kind of like kind of weighing the pros and cons of taking a medication, I do just want to say that I empathize with that struggle. And I do hope that you will talk with people. And I hope that maybe my experience talking about making that decision kind of helps you feel like you are less alone in making it. I hope that this video meets you well. You're awesome. See you later.