How Gardening Helped Me Quit My Antidepressant

When grocery store shelves began emptying sporadically in 2021, I started to worry in earnest about food security. I had enough land for a large garden, and I figured that 2022 was the perfect time to start producing some of my own food.

So last March, I pulled up hundreds of rocks, put down hundreds of square feet of cardboard to suppress weeds, and spread 7 cubic yards of compost. Over-ambitious and eager to produce a lot of food, I prepared more than 1,000 square feet of growing space.

When I resolved to start growing food, I didn’t know that taking on gardening would take me off my antidepressant. I had been on it since I was 18 years old. It saved me much suffering when I was younger, and maybe even my life (Lord knows how bad my depression could have gotten without intervention).

Last winter, however, I felt stable despite some more recently developed anxiety. I began to suspect maybe my antidepressant was no longer necessary. After all, the psychiatrist who initially p...

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