I, Corporate Robot
This is an excerpt from I, Corporate Robot, an essay by Anish in Hindsight 20/Something, a collection of perspectives on the quarter-life crisis. Read the full version and learn more about the collection here.
The days flew, partly because I engineered a chemical lifecycle, stimulating myself with caffeine each morning, numbing out with weed in the evenings after work, obliterating my body and brain on the weekends binge drinking.
Over the year, my momentum skidded. I had bouts of insomnia and depression, often arriving to work after only a couple hours of sleep, paranoid that my colleagues could notice my dull performance. I never really identified what was causing my mental anguish, but decided that something was off and that I needed to find a psychiatrist to alter my brain chemistry and fix it. Luckily for me, I found one who threw prescriptions each session like Reese’s on Halloween.
My medicine cabinet filled with Trazodone, Zaleplon, Bupropion, Ambien, Mirtazapine, and Lexapro. If the Amazon thing didn’t work out I could’ve opened my own boutique pharmacy for other depressed insomniacs.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, none of these “magic” pills cured me, and mostly just made my situation worse. Some would put me to sleep but made me wake up groggy and unable to get out of bed. Others would lull me into a hypnosis that distorted my separation of dream from reality.
When I’m depressed I feel like my brain is made of dull thoughts. I have no space for clarity, creativity. No motivation. I begin to lose trust in myself and have a perpetual sense of not knowing anything.
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This makes getting through a workday tough. I’d avoid coworkers’ glances during meetings, hoping that they couldn’t tell anything was wrong with me. I’d lock myself in the office’s quiet room in an attempt to get a few more minutes of sleep.