Ambition and SSRIs
2 July 2023
I’ve decided to write this in part due to the rising negative sentiment around psychological medicines in the tech community. While I can only speak to my personal brain chemistry and experiences, I hope this helps others balancing a self-imposed perceived exclusivity between medicine and ambition.
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Every morning I take 150mg of sertraline. Sertraline is an SSRI (selective serotonin update inhibitor) commonly prescribed for depression, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder; I use it for the latter two.
While I’ve suffered from clinically severe anxiety and OCD for over fifteen years, I’ve only been willing to take medicine for it for the last year. Despite the negative impacts on my personal life, I have long considered my “mental irregularities” my secret weapon professionally - an advantage I thought I would lose if I took medicine. I thought SSRIs would dull my spark, dampen my ambition, make me pleased with the status quo and deplete the jet fuel so necessary when building a technically challenging company.
In reality, SSRIs have solidified the learnings gained from my anxiety and OCD, and given me a quality of life that has made me a better operator.
Anxiety gave me willpower
My anxiety predominantly expresses itself as a fear of being away from perceived “help” and a loss of control. The most extreme manifestation of this has been a life-long fear of flying originating from 9/11.
My phobia has taught me mental fortitude and willpower. Facing a phobia requires listening to logic in face of evolutionarily-optimized physical fear signals, learning how to function normally despite the adrenaline designed to reduce your mental capacity to run/fight/hide.
Phobias give you perspective - they are such a fundamental fear, a fear of physical harm and death, that “normal” fears barely register. If you can overcome your certainty that this flight will be your end and walk the jet bridge anyhow, the nerves of getting on that stage barely register in comparison.
Professionally, this translates into the ability to make challenging business decisions with clarity and logic, not fear. I can count the number of professional situations I’ve been nervous on one hand. I am comfortable doing the uncomfortable task or having the hard conversation, allowing bias to action that is necessary in startups.
OCD taught me how to think through layered problems
Build dog longevity drugs is technically complex and requires competency in multiple tangential disciplines. A significant portion of my job is rapidly learning new disciplines as they become relevant so I am able to hire teams and assess their decisions. Due to the long feedback loop of building drugs (and even longer feedback of building longevity drugs!) we have to be able to accurately and rigorously pre-mortem how something may go wrong so we can hedge against it before it happens.
OCD can express in many ways; for me, it shows itself as noticing patterns and minute details (and in its unhealthy state, being paralyzed by perceived differences in these details). The “training” OCD has given me and the ability to click into this mental state has been invaluable in thinking through the complex and layered problems of building and commercializing a dog longevity drug.
For me, SSRIs reinforced these lessons
The lessons my unusual brain taught me have not been dulled by taking medicine. SSRIs gave me energy by removing the energy spent on fear. Perhaps most importantly, SSRIs have given me the strength to push my boundaries even further, uncovering new lessons and learnings that directly help me become a better operator.
SSRIs give these lessons with increased efficiency - it’s a more effective combustion, allowing me to move forward faster without wasting energy on fear and discomfort.
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This is one person’s experience with SSRIs - I hope it is helpful in getting the courage to have that first conversation with your doctor and family.