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My second psychiatrist told me last October that if I reduced my antidepressant dose without supervision she would need to document it in my file as non-compliance. I had been on psychiatric medication for twenty-three months. For a stomach problem. I need to go back to the beginning so this makes sense. Dr. Reyes had been my primary care physician for eleven years. She knew my history. She knew that my anxiety had always been situational, that it came and went with life circumstances, that I had never needed medication for it, that the version of me she had been treating for a decade was a person who managed her health carefully and came to appointments with questions written down. When the gut symptoms started in the spring of 2022, she ran the standard panel. Nothing showed up. She referred me to a gastroenterologist. He ran more tests. Nothing showed up. He said it was probably IBS and suggested a low FODMAP diet and a probiotic and a follow-up in three months. I did the low FODMAP diet for four months and tracked every meal in an app. The bloating that made me look six months pregnant by 7pm did not change. The stomach that felt heavy and full no matter what I ate did not change. The 3am wake-ups with my heart pounding did not change. The sugar cravings that hit every single night like something inside me was demanding to be fed did not change. The exhaustion that never lifted no matter how much I slept did not change. I went back to Dr. Reyes. She ran more blood work. Normal. She suggested I see a therapist because stress was known to manifest in gut symptoms. I saw a therapist for four months. The symptoms did not change. Dr. Reyes retired in March of the following year. I got the letter on a Tuesday. Standard form letter. After thirty-one years of practice she was stepping back, my care would transfer to a new physician, she wished me well. I had been seeing her for eleven years. She knew me. My first appointment with Dr. Peterson was a transfer of records. She reviewed my file and referred me to a psychiatrist before she had asked me a single question about how I was feeling. "Your symptom history is consistent with anxiety disorder with somatic features," she said. "The gut symptoms, the sleep disruption, the fatigue, these are very commonly anxiety presentations." "I have had anxiety my whole life," I said. "It has never felt like this. This feels physical." "Anxiety can change presentation over time," she said. "A psychiatric evaluation would be helpful." I sat in the car afterward for a long time. Dr. Reyes would not have done that. Dr. Reyes knew the difference between my anxiety and something else. The psychiatrist was a pleasant man who spent 45 minutes asking me about my childhood and my relationship with my parents and prescribed 10mg of Lexapro with a follow-up in six weeks. The bloating did not improve. The 3am wake-ups did not stop. The sugar cravings did not change. I went back in six weeks. He increased the dose. "Sometimes it takes time to find the right level," he said. He moved his practice eighteen months later. My second psychiatrist was a woman who called the dose increase overdue and said that if I reduced it without supervision she would document it as non-compliance. I had been on antidepressants for twenty-three months. The symptoms had not changed. They had become background noise I had learned to navigate around. The bloating was still there. The 3am wake-ups were still there. The sugar cravings were still there. The exhaustion was still there. The night she told me about the non-compliance documentation I could not sleep. I lay next to my husband in the dark at 3am the way I had been lying awake at 3am for two years and stared at the ceiling. I got up and went downstairs. I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop. I typed: gut symptoms misdiagnosed as anxiety I typed: bloating 3am waking sugar cravings same cause I typed: parasite symptoms anxiety depression misdiagnosis I sat reading for two hours. The results did not look like fringe wellness content. They looked like case studies from gastroenterology journals. Blastocystis hominis, a protozoan parasite present in an estimated 1 in 4 Americans, is frequently misdiagnosed as IBS or anxiety because it disrupts serotonin production in the gut, and the gut produces 95% of the body's serotonin. A parasite disrupting gut serotonin produces anxiety, depression, bloating, fatigue, and sleep disruption that looks on paper identical to a primary psychiatric disorder. I found a gastroenterologist on my own, not through a referral, not through Dr. Peterson, by searching specifically for someone in my city who tested for parasites. She saw me that week. She was the first doctor in two years who asked me directly what my stool looked like. She ran a comprehensive stool test the same day. The results showed Blastocystis hominis. Never once tested for in two years of medical care that had instead put me on psychiatric medication. I called my second psychiatrist that evening. "That does not necessarily explain the anxiety," she said. I stopped Lexapro gradually under medical supervision and started a parasite cleanse. ParaGuard was the first one I found, a highly reviewed combination of wormwood, black walnut, and clove. By day five I was seeing things in the toilet I could not fully process. By day ten my bloating had dropped significantly and the 3am wake-ups had spaced out. I felt completely normal by day fourteen. The bloating was gone. The sugar cravings were gone. I told my husband I thought I had fixed it. Day twenty-three everything was back. Bloating. 3am wake-ups. Sugar cravings. Exhaustion. All of it. I sat in the kitchen that night feeling a specific kind of despair that I do not know how to fully describe. I ordered a second cleanse, a different brand with added oregano oil at a higher dose. Same pattern. Better for two and a half weeks. Then back. I went to the forums at 2am on day twenty-two of the second cleanse and found a post I have saved to this day. A woman who had been through the same cycle seven times over three years explained exactly what was happening. Wormwood, black walnut, and clove kill adult parasites. They do not kill eggs. The parasite life cycle is three weeks. The eggs hatch on schedule three weeks after the cleanse ends, the new generation reaches maturity, the symptoms return, and you conclude the cleanse failed. You are not resistant. The cleanse killed the wrong targets. She said the only formula she had found that cut off the energy supply to parasite cells at every stage of life, including eggs and larvae, so nothing could survive to restart the cycle, was DrPura Soursop Drops. I ordered it that night. By day ten my bloating was gone for the first time in two years. By day seventeen the 3am wake-ups stopped completely. By day twenty-four the sugar cravings that had owned my evenings for two years disappeared. Day twenty-two passed. Day twenty-three passed. Nothing came back. By day thirty my husband held my face in his hands and said, "You seem like yourself again. I didn't realise how long it had been." I went back to the gastroenterologist at day forty-five. Clear. I told my second psychiatrist I was stopping our sessions. She asked why. "Because you were treating the symptoms of something that needed to be removed," I said. "The anxiety was never mine." If you have been handed an anxiety or depression diagnosis that started with your gut, ask to be tested for parasites. Not for hormones. Not for stress. For parasites. The link is below.