> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://fessup.mymidnight.blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Chasing the Holy Grail of Meds: Part 1 of 3 - URL: https://fessup.mymidnight.blog/chasing-the-holy-grail-of-meds-part-1/ - Published: 2026-05-08T13:21:13.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-07T16:11:18.000Z - Description: The grail wasn’t what I thought it would be. - Author: Jerry Fess - Tags: serotonin, psychiatrist, SARI, insomnia, prozac, superman, SSRI, depression, blog, mental health, holy grail, trazodone, therapy, meds, anxiety, Newsletter, #Migrated-1791389245739, #Import 2026-10-07 11:10 Before I get into this, I want to make a few things clear. I’m not sponsored by, paid by, or affiliated with any pharmaceutical company or treatment center, and I’m not giving medical advice. I’m not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t take, and if you’re considering starting, stopping, or changing a medication or treatment, please talk to your doctor or prescriber first. ![](https://cdn.mymidnight.blog/faafda66202d234463057972460c04f5/2026/10/50ddc406-86c9-457e-841a-7eec13cd05ed_600x260-jpeg.jpg) Which is the real holy grail? [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) I’m also not encouraging anyone to ask for the medications or treatments mentioned in this post, and I’m not saying medication is required for recovery. If you’re on medication, that’s okay. If you’re not, that’s okay too. I believe healing and recovery can happen in either scenario. This is simply my personal experience with medications and what I had to learn for them to help me in a meaningful way. One of the hardest lessons for me was realizing medication alone was never going to save me. It could support me. Stabilize me. Give me room to breathe. But I still had to participate in my own healing. Some people are strongly pro-medication. Some are strongly against it. I’m not interested in shaming either side. I’m simply talking honestly about how medication can help many people while also acknowledging they are not a magical cure that replaces the deeper work of recovery. The one thing I really hope people understand is this: medications do not “fix” you. They do not patch holes in your personality. They do not magically heal trauma, loneliness, insecurity, grief, or the parts of yourself you struggle to face. At their best, they help treat symptoms. They can quiet depression enough for you to function. They can lower the volume of anxiety. They can help stabilize moods that were previously unmanageable. But they are not a replacement for healing. And trust me, this is coming from someone with an extensive history of medications, medication cocktails, and alternative treatments. If there were a magic combination that permanently fixed every broken feeling inside me, I probably would’ve found it by now. Healing still has to come from within. The best way I can describe medication is this: imagine the scene in *Superman (1978 - the only real Superman)* where a train is speeding down damaged tracks, and right before disaster, Superman swoops down and physically holds the broken section together long enough for the train to safely pass over it. That’s what medication can feel like sometimes. Not rebuilding the track. Not erasing the damage. Just stabilizing things enough to keep you moving forward while everything else is at risk of coming apart. But here’s the important part: in this example, Superman is not just the medication. Superman is also *you*. It’s the combined effort of treatment and your own resilience working together to hold things up during the moments when life feels unstable. The medication may help support the weight, but you are still the one enduring it. You are still the one waking up every day and continuing forward despite whatever condition, disorder, trauma, or struggle you are carrying. [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) When I was first diagnosed with depression, after working with my therapist for a while, he suggested I talk to my doctor about trying medication to help support my treatment. The first medication I was prescribed was Trazodone. When I started taking Trazodone, Prozac was still relatively new and rapidly growing in popularity after its release in 1987\. SSRIs were becoming the “big thing” in depression treatment at the time. But many doctors and psychiatrists were still using Trazodone as a first-line treatment, especially for people like me dealing with anxiety, constant worry, insomnia, and depression all at once. So after I got the prescription filled, I honestly had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know anything about pharmaceuticals, much less antidepressants. I didn’t understand how they worked or what they were supposed to feel like. Trazodone works on several different systems in the brain involving serotonin. In simple terms, it’s somewhat similar to medications like Prozac because both affect serotonin, but Trazodone is considered a little more “dirty” pharmacologically. And by “dirty,” I don’t mean bad. I mean it interacts with multiple receptor systems instead of acting very selectively. ![](https://cdn.mymidnight.blog/faafda66202d234463057972460c04f5/2026/10/785f72e4-7f34-45f3-a338-4900ec7ac4e0_750x419.webp) Trazodone is an SARI - **serotonin antagonist and reuptake inhibitor**. Prozac is an SSRI - selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Along with affecting serotonin pathways involved in mood and anxiety, it also interacts with histamine receptors, which is a big reason it tends to be sedating and is often prescribed to help with sleep. It also mildly inhibits serotonin reuptake. Prozac, on the other hand, works much more selectively by strongly blocking the reuptake of serotonin without significantly affecting many other receptor systems in comparison. I took my first dose of Trazodone and went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I could barely move. I genuinely thought something was wrong with me. I called my mom panicking, telling her something felt seriously off. I was groggy, nauseated, exhausted, and felt completely drained. Part of me thought I’d take the medication and wake up feeling like a million bucks. Instead, I woke up feeling emotionally and physically overdrawn. My mom told me to stick with it. So did my doctor and therapist. They all kept saying the same thing: give it time. The side effects would improve. And honestly, they were right. Within about two or three weeks, the change was dramatic. The anxiety that had constantly lived inside me suddenly wasn’t dominating every second of my day anymore. My mood shifted into something lighter, calmer, more hopeful. I felt lighter. Connected. Excited about life again. ![](https://cdn.mymidnight.blog/faafda66202d234463057972460c04f5/2026/10/b9cdd2ef-c4df-47db-a39d-a58bb037b6fa_371x404-jpeg.jpg) [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) At the time, it honestly felt like the holy grail. Like I had finally gotten my life back. I couldn’t believe something could make that much of a difference. That summer, after starting it, I fell in love, loved life, and for a while genuinely felt like I was finally living the kind of life I had always wanted. I was living my best life. The side effects were still there, though. Most mornings I felt incredibly groggy, and it definitely interfered with my summer job. I pushed through it, but it wasn’t easy. I was also only taking a relatively small dose, around 75mg. If you look at the literature on Trazodone, antidepressant effects are usually associated with much higher doses, often somewhere around 100-600mg. Looking back, I honestly think it worked so strongly for me because my brain had never really been exposed to anything like it before. I had never taken psychiatric medication at all, so even that lower dose was enough to “tickle” those systems just enough to create a major shift. But even with the improvement, I was still dealing with morning grogginess and some stomach issues. At the time, those side effects felt frustrating. Ironically, compared to some of the things I would battle through during later treatments over the years, they were actually pretty minor. When I went back for my follow-up appointment, my doctor told me I could stop taking it because I seemed to be doing so much better. I was “back on track.” Two weeks later, everything crashed. My mood collapsed harder than it ever had before I started the medication. The anxiety came roaring back. Depression hit even deeper. Everything in my life started falling apart again, and if I could go back in a time machine and change one thing, it would probably be staying on that medication at all costs. ![](https://cdn.mymidnight.blog/faafda66202d234463057972460c04f5/2026/10/e6566a1c-5a14-44cf-96a0-7e675bb4469c_345x146-jpeg.jpg) [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) My doctor restarted it. I waited for that feeling to come back. I waited and waited. And that devastated me, because it never fully returned. I never reached that same “perfect” feeling of recovery again. Incidentally, that was also the moment I began chasing another medication that would work the way Trazodone had worked for me in the beginning. I became convinced there had to be another “holy grail” out there somewhere. Another medication, another combination, another treatment that could recreate that feeling of finally being okay again. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the real holy grail of recovery would eventually turn out to be something completely different. --- *To be continued…* [Leave a comment](#ghost-comments-root) [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup)