More than 1 in 10 people in the United States take an antidepressant. And the most commonly prescribed type of antidepressant are SSRIs – or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. That's like Zoloft. Prozac. Lexapro.

Emily Corwin is one of millions of people who has taken an SSRI.

She says she was prescribed Lexapro, "Really because of circumstantial reasons, probably had mild depression."

She stayed on the drug for about 15 years.

Until, around 2022, Corwin decided she wanted to stop taking Lexapro. She talked to her doctor and they made a plan to decrease her dose over the course of a month.

"I just, for the first time in my life, experienced a kind of excruciating existential dread that didn't make any sense to me," she says. "I never had anything like that before."

Corwin eve

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