The Struggle: Lessons Learned From Overdosing On Antidepressants In Law School

Even though mental illness can feel alienating, you’re not as alone as you think.

depressed lawyerWelcome to the latest installment of The Struggle, a series where we examine the mental-health issues that students encounter during the oftentimes grueling law school experience. We are posting these stories because sometimes what law students really need is to know that they’re not alone in their pain. Sometimes what law students need is to know that they’ve got a friend who is willing to share not just in their triumphs, but also in their struggles. These are real e-mails and messages we’ve received from real readers.

If these issues resonate with you, please reach out to us. Your stories need to be heard. You can email us, text us at (646) 820-8477, or tweet us @atlblog. We will share your stories anonymously. You may be able to help a law student who needs to know that someone else has been there before and survived.


I didn’t go to a “top-tier” law school. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good school, but I want to dissuade from the idea that students outside of T-20 schools don’t experience soul-crushing levels of stress that the students of Harvard or Yale do. Law school is hard. It is stressful and overwhelming and can reduce even the toughest of people to tears. So I think it is important to emphasize that your feelings are legitimate, and probably shared by more people than you realize, regardless of your school’s ranking.

Depression has always been somewhat difficult to explain to others, for me at least. Being unable to point to a specific reason for feeling a certain way seems to make people uneasy.

Friend: “Why are you sad?”

Me: “ I don’t know.”

Friend: “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Me: “I just am.”

I’ve had variations of this conversation more times than I can count. What’s more, depression doesn’t just manifest itself in the classic “just being really sad” way. It can show up in the form of excessive crying for seemingly no apparent reason, increased agitation, changes in appetite, lack of concentration, and a whole host of other equally inconvenient ways. It’s not as concrete as other diagnoses, there isn’t a blood test or x-ray that can tell you what’s wrong with you.

I was diagnosed with clinical depression long before I entered law school. I lived the majority of my life with clinical depression; I spent decades in therapy, on medication, and perfecting a battalion of tools to manage my depression. So when I started law school, the thought that I would skip class to just lay in bed because I didn’t want to do anything — let alone sit through an hour and a half of cold-calling — never crossed my mind. But alas, that’s where I found myself the beginning of my 2L year.

Mid-semester of my 2L year I overdosed on antidepressants, was hospitalized for three days, and didn’t tell anyone aside from my parents and a neighbor who drove me to the ER. When it came time to explain my absence to my professors, I simply said that I was sick. I didn’t tell them the whole story because I was embarrassed; I was worried that they would think I was just making up an excuse. I internalized the stigma surrounding mental illness; I saw my depression as a weakness and thought that no one would take me seriously as an attorney if they knew, so I kept my overdose a secret.

After my overdose, I regularly started seeing a psychiatrist and psychologist, got my depression in check, and was in a much healthier place. I spent my 2L summer working for a nonprofit doing mental health law and started 3L with a renewed passion for mental health advocacy, though that isn’t to say that everything was smooth sailing. At the end of the first semester during 3L, I found myself in one of my professor’s offices tearing up over a missed the deadline for a written assignment. I wasn’t so much upset about missing a deadline as I was freaking out over my overall ability to be an attorney if I couldn’t even complete a written assignment on time.

I started to ramble everything that had happened over the last year, I told him about overdosing, depression, suffering form panic attacks, and echoed my concerns about my ability to be an attorney and advocate for others. At one point I said, “I keep wondering if I would have these kind of issues if I was ‘normal.’” He pretty bluntly said, “Probably not,” but then quickly followed it up with, “You probably wouldn’t have the insight, empathy, or drive you have now if you were.” That is something that has really stuck with me. I have spent so much of my life feeling ashamed about depression, I never considered it could have positively impacted my life.

So I guess I’m sharing all this for three reasons:

1. You never know what someone else is going through (I didn’t tell some of my closest friends about my overdose until more than a year later).

2. Even though mental illness can feel alienating, you’re not as alone as you think, and so many people care about you. Depression and anxiety are much more common than people realize, and the first step of breaking the stigma surrounding mental illness is to talk about it.

3. Sometimes what you think is a weakness may actually be one of your strengths.


Most colleges and universities have counseling and psychological services resources that students can turn to if they are in crisis or would like counseling, even after hours. If these services are not available at your school, and if you’re depressed and in need help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) or a lawyer assistance program in your state. Remember that you are loved, so please reach out if you need assistance, before it’s too late.


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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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