Dear all,

It is Thursday, April 23, 2026. I was going to write about bond yields, but I am once more waylaid on the path. Some discussion of mental illness and anti-depressants follows.

I missed taking my medication twice this week. The first time was because I woke up late, ate breakfast, and proceeded about my day before remembering the one crucial thing I should have done. The second time was because I had to refill a pill and by the time I did everything else I needed to it was already evening.

When I first started taking medication, it was 2021. I was, like everyone else, attempting to get through the pandemic in whatever way I could. I'd spent most of 2020 in my parents' house, convinced that if I left I'd catch Covid, recover, and watch as someone else in my house died because I gave it to them. By October of that year it was clear I couldn't live like that anymore, but I really didn't know where I could go or what I could do. So my boss told me that perhaps I could go to Kutchch, where she knew an organisation that needed some help with the kind of stuff I was good at - writing in English, puttering around, and paying attention to various small details that other people knew were not all that important.

I spent four months in Kutchch. I arrived in December to a place that seemed like it treated Covid like I used to treat the prospect of tetanus, which is to say as something I knew existed intellectually but was certainly never going to impact my life. In Hyderabad I saw people wearing masks on their chins. In Kutchch I saw them being simply placed in people's bags.

By January I had decompressed enough that I was finally, properly losing my mind. It was not the first time it had happened but it was still quite harrowing. During this time I spoke to my therapist who recommended that I should get on medication. I'd always been nervous about the prospect, even though for years I'd known and said out loud that I had what one might call "quite serious" depression. I didn't want to consider the reality that my brain was itself unable to produce the neurochemicals I needed in order to function.

The standard medication many people are started on is fluoxetine, which is also what I started on. To say it fucked me up is an understatement. In that time I wept like I had never wept before, I broke down because of the way the sunlight hit the tiles in my bathroom. Obviously everyone I knew was isolated and alone, but I felt isolated and alone in a way I haven't before or since.

I take medication now that has a very different effect on me and it's no understatement to say it has radically changed and improved my life. But some days, when I forget to take it, I wonder about when and how it started. If I had type-2 diabetes no one would question that I should take insulin. But we treat the brain very differently to all other parts of our bodies.

Will next week be the week of bond yields? I sure hope so. Until then, I hope that you are also consuming the things you need to in order to continue living.

Cheers,

mvs