My entire life I have dealt with depression. I have been on more medication than I care to think about. It took years to find a combination of drugs that actually helped. I have been taking these drugs for about 4 years and they have been life changing. The side effects are minimal and I am able to embrace the fact that I'll probably have to deal with medication the rest of my life.

That was until my health insurance ran out. Retail cost of the four medications together is about 600 dollars a month. Knowing that I couldn't afford the total cost of my meds, my doctor and I came up with the idea that I would slowly take myself off most of them, only remaining on the two that seem to work the best. Unfortunately, even this has proven to be more costly than I can afford. The one med that has helped the most is almost 300 dollars on it's own. Being a recent graduate and more or less unemployed I have stopped taking all but one of them and even the one remaining I have decreased my amount by more than half, hoping that a little was better than none.

At times in my life my depression has been debilitating. I once spent 3 weeks in bed unable to function in any sort of a normal way. During that three weeks, the worst of my life, I teetered on the brink of suicide just wanting the pain to go away. I wanted to be able to feel like a normal person. Finally my therapist and psychiatrist were able to work together and get me to a place where I could at least function. However, I still dealt with horrible bouts of depression and it wouldn't be until almost 6 years later that I would find a doctor that would diagnose me correctly and prescribe medicines that worked.

So I have been cutting my meds and functioning so so. Until this morning. I woke up in a panic. In a dream I had last night I was suddenly struck with the debilitating depression of my past. I became violent, destroying the room in which I was staying. About half way thru this tantrum I woke up in a state. The dream was over but the depression remained. I lay in the bed for what seemed like hours waiting for the effects of the dream to go away. It's now 1:30 in the afternoon and I am still waiting.

So I have called my doctor and am going to get my prescription refilled so that I can resume taking the amounts that I have found useful. Can I afford it? Not really. But the truth is I can't afford not to. I can't allow myself to go back to that dark place. It's just to scary to return and I may not be so lucky as to make it back this time.