I have a cat.

That’s my go-to answer when people ask me if I have children. It’s just easier than saying my refusal to take FDA-approved medications for severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) stole a decade of what could have been normal life from me.

Studies show it takes an average of 17 years for patients with OCD to receive adequate therapy. Thankfully, in the past ten years, this duration is starting to improve. My OCD began at 28, and it caused me to stop eating food for fear of food poisoning. When Ebola entered the U.S., I became homebound, and dating became impossible because I refused to see my boyfriend for months on end. This struggle unfolded for me over the next ten years, a crucial period for a single woman considering marriage and children. By the time I recovered, having children was no longer a realistic option for me.

I’m not complaining. I eventually got better. But I do regret spending so much time trying to manage my OCD without medication that I lost valuable years. My “decade of downhill” didn’t need to happen, so I’m making it my mission to prevent others from making the same mistakes I did.

I started experiencing depression when I was 15 years old; anxiety is something I don’t remember ever living without. Although in high school, I was the senior class president and voted “most outstanding student” by my peers, I was suffering. At age 21, a dramatic breakup landed me in a therapist’s office, where a doctor suggested I try an antidepressant.

No. I couldn’t deal with the stigma of taking an antidepressant, and I was afraid of the side effects. If exercise and yoga worked for others in managing their depression and anxiety, they should work for me. But they didn’t.

I worked with clinicians on cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy among others. These all helped, but not enough.

As years passed, my OCD got so bad that I developed avoidant restrictive food intake disorder and couldn’t eat or drink anything without the fear of dying a long and drawn-out, torturous death from the possibility of the food being bad, tainted, or ill-prepared. I couldn’t touch a doorknob without wondering if someone with Ebola had recently bled on it, and I maybe touched it with a microscopic cut on my hand. Toward the end of this madness, I weighed a mere 90 pounds, had an overly rapid heart rate, and was told by my therapist I’d soon be homeless because I could no longer manage to go to work for fear of contracting Ebola.

My primary care doctor finally gave me an ultimatum: Take an antidepressant or be hospitalized.

With little left to lose, I tried several different medications: some helped my depression but not my anxiety; some made me feel like a zombie. The last option I had was the one that ended up working: Prozac. I have no idea what would have happened if Prozac, too, failed me.

Although it took some getting used to, Prozac helped quiet my intrusive and racing thoughts. I was able to say words I had earlier refused to say for fear that saying them would harm me or my family in some way. I continued my cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy, as I understood medication alone wouldn’t make me better. I had a peer support specialist, a psychiatrist, and a social worker, all aiding me in my recovery from OCD. But I needed the chemistry, as many people do. Studies show a combination of medication and psychotherapy to be the most effective way to manage mental illness, and that was certainly true for me.

I didn’t mind the psychotherapy, but I wished there was an alternative to the meds. Stigmas were slowly starting to change in Massachusetts, where I live; more people were talking openly about mental health, and at the time, cannabis was on the ballot for recreational legalization. Many of my friends were using it to reduce social anxiety and suggested I try it because it would also increase the appetite I naturally lost from my eating disorder. I brought it up to my doctor, but he immediately nixed the idea citing a lack of evidence and research as his reasons. He also noted that cannabis could cause psychosis and paranoia and might be counteractive for some mental health patients. I wished my doctor knew more about the research and the evidence. I wished there was a plant medicine that could do what Prozac could. I could have easily pursued a medical cannabis card for my symptoms, but I chose to heed my doctor’s advice. I was between a rock and a hard place. And all that did was make me lose my precious 30s.

If I could change one thing about my mental health journey, I would have tried medication a lot sooner. I imagine if I had a doctor familiar with cannabinoids and who was able to monitor me closely while I tried cannabis, maybe it could have been the gateway drug I needed, not a gateway to using illegal substances, but rather a gateway to trying new things like an SSRI. This experience not only profoundly impacted my health but also inspired my decision to specialize in cannabis regulatory affairs in Massachusetts. As cannabis became recreationally legal in the state, I was able to use my marketing skills to help build the state’s industry through story-telling, education campaigns, and advocacy for several dispensaries and cannabis brands. This was my first foray into health care, and I was never happier. The opportunity to use my skills to advance such an incredibly profound mission was a dream come true.

I will never know if cannabis could have alleviated my anxiety and depression or gotten me to try an antidepressant sooner and help prevent the loss of a decade. But I do know I will never stop advocating for the destigmatization, legalization, and integration of cannabis and plant medicine into mainstream medicine for these reasons.

Jennifer Roy currently serves as a marketing director for one of the country’s oldest law firms. In 2019, Jennifer earned her certificate in cannabis regulatory affairs at Clark University—the first program of its kind in the nation—and helped build the Massachusetts cannabis industry by creating public education events and campaigns for cannabis testing labs, dispensaries, and cultivation sites. Her interest in plant medicines sprung from her experience navigating the mental health care system when she was diagnosed with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Jennifer has since become a mental health advocate and enrolled in the media and medicine certificate program at Harvard Medical School to expand her skills in using media to advance medicine.