We left Brandon’s treatment for depression with him having found the right kind of therapy, but still struggling with finding the correct medication for him. At this time, he was still working part time in retail. The store he worked at passed him over for a full time position despite being qualified. He was shunted sideways into a seasonal warehouse position on the night shift. This change made Brandon’s panic attacks even worse. At the end of the season, they decided not to keep him and he became unemployed.

Unemployment wasn’t good for his depression at all. He took a lot of temporary jobs for a while and then worked in the printer section of a store leaving him alone and isolated for much of the time, especially with driving from store to store. The medication he was on at the time caused some auditory and visual hallucinations. It was so bad he worried that he was developing schizophrenia in addition to the depression and panic disorder. It was a few months before his psychiatrist realized that this was an incredibly rare, but known side effect of the meds that he was on.

His next medication caused extreme apathy. Most people don’t realize that this is one of the most dangerous side effects some depression meds can have. Apathy takes away the concern for what will happen if you do kill yourself. Brandon says, “there was no crying, no sadness. It was pure logic at this point. Thoughts went something like this: Hey, I don’t like my situation and it isn’t likely to improve and even if it did, you don’t have many likes and no passion, suicide is a reasonable option.” He remembers a time when he was driving from one store to another and thought how he could just swerve off the road and just end it all. He recalls, “then a thought came in: I don’t think this is normal.”

He ended up in the ER, and was told to stop the medication immediately.

Brandon was next given a new medication for anxiety. This medication made him drowsy to the point where he was falling asleep while standing in a store. At one point he also forgot where he lived. Since these were pretty serious side effects, this medication was stopped as well.

The next medication was even worse as it caused severe suicidal thoughts. He had to walk out of a shift for his work, it was so bad. Brandon explains, “I was not in control of my actions. I had to call my dad, keep him on the phone as I drove to the ER for the second time.” A few weeks after this incident, his job fired him.

This left him jobless and struggling right before the holidays. Family asking him about his life over the holidays only made things worse. He ended up on food stamps and unable to pay his grandma any rent.

His luck finally turned when he landed a new full time job where he supported technicians in the field for Comcast. This was a job that fit his life better. “The training was exciting. I got to feel something I used to feel in high school, structured learning. It was a little stressful, but a good stress, this-is-a-challenge type stress,” he says. At the same time he was placed on medication that improved his mood with no side effects. He started dating a wonderful person who soon joined his workplace as well. They were able to save up money quickly.

After several months, the excitement of the job started to wear off. It became monotonous and once it did, the depression came creeping back. Since the medication had been working previously, the psychiatrist upped his dosage to help manage the new symptoms. At this point he and his girlfriend, had decided to use money that they’d been saving for a house. “I convinced myself, I could push through with my job because it was letting me afford things I wanted,” Brandon explains.

They ended up buying a house, making sure it had an extra room since they had a friend who was looking to move to the area. This roommate situation soon turned toxic as the roommate and their significant other started to complain about how much they were being charged for rent. At this point, all four people living in the house were working in the same place. This made Brandon’s home uncomfortable and this on top of depression coming back in waves due to his work situation led him to call suicide hotline a few times.

The whole situation came to a head with an expensive attic project that required access through the roommates’ room. The roommates didn’t clean their room or clean out the closet for the workers coming to work on the project. Near the end of the project, Brandon learned that his roommates were planning on moving out. They ended up leaving two weeks after the project was finished, not paying rent, and initially refusing to give keys back. The contentious split caused more problems as well as these people were now bad mouthing him at work.

His workplace started to feel like a hostile environment, which only made his depression about his job worse. On top of this, he and his now fiancé were struggling financially due to the lack of notice from the roommates on top of expensive payments for the attic project. They ended up forfeiting their deposit for their wedding and couldn’t take a honeymoon either. At this point, Brandon was maxed out on the dosage of the antidepressant. So it was time to start looking for the right medication once again.