This kind of stuff is super scary for me. Although I don't suffer from any mental illnesses (that I know about!), I take medication for high blood pressure. A

This kind of stuff is super scary for me. Although I don't suffer from any mental illnesses (that I know about!), I take medication for high blood pressure. At one point I was taking amlodipine which eventually caused some bad side effects with swollen legs and the like, so I changed to a different medication. Pretty quickly, I noticed that my life was dramatically better and, for want of a better word, I wasn't in the least depressed. I've never suffered from depression before, so I hadn't been aware of how depressed I had gotten while taking amlodopine. After switching, I checked the known side effects and sure enough depression is one of them -- to the point where some countries have disallow its use! It really surprised me how much this drug affected my life without my noticing anything out of the ordinary. What's even more interesting is that this summer I got very stressed about work (something that has never actually happened before) and ended up having a panic attack. So now I'm wondering about the new medication! It's crazy. The big thing that I keep thinking about is, how much of my state of mind is "me" and how much is my medication (or any other things, like drinking coffee, or beer, or not exercising enough, or whatever). It's made me much more conscious about monitoring my mental state and taking some actions rather than just assuming everything is OK. But it's incredibly scary. I've had quite a few friends with mental illnesses and this helps me understand a tiny bit better what they are going through. Oh, and +1,000,000 on the journal. It's the only way I can keep track of what's going on in my head.