Pre-Trail Anxiety Is Real (And It Doesn't Mean You're Not Ready)

This post was originally written 76 days before I started my 2018 Appalachian Trail thru-hike. I've updated it with a section at the end about what actually happened — but I kept the original voice intact, because I think the mess and the panic and the uncertainty is exactly what someone who's freaking out right now needs to read.

Did you know it's already December 4th?

February 18 is 76 days away. Less than 11 weeks.

I'm freaking out, y'all. I won't lie to you. We all know I have anxiety and love to plan and know exactly what's going to happen — which is pretty much a very naive dream in my current situation.

Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to leave for the trail. No, I am not having second thoughts. But I'm nervous, and that's completely natural. If I wasn't nervous you might want to get concerned.

Here's a snapshot of what my brain looks like with 11 weeks to go.

The Pack Situation

I got fitted for a pack at REI by a very capable guide. Of the packs I tried on, with the little working knowledge I had at the time, I felt that my choice was a good one. It was a great price, it seemed to fit. It felt big, but I thought: well, I've never thru-hiked before, and I'll want 60+ liters. Besides, I'm not that short.

I've learned a lot since then. About myself, my preferences, and about packs.

In the store, the straps seemed easy to adjust and understand. After starting a job at EMS, learning more about packs, fitting other people for packs, and playing around with a lot of different options, I realized the straps on this pack really annoy me. It's a small detail — but I don't want to spend six months with a pack I don't like, or worse, have to replace it on trail where I can't return it.

Then this happened: I loaded it up with 20 pounds of weights and tried it on the stair climber at my gym. It felt okay at first, but every time I turned or tilted my head, the top of the pack hit the back of my head. Not the brain of the pack — the top of the back panel. Stiff and structured. I tried adjusting the shoulder harness placement, did squats, tried different positions. (Yes, other people at the gym definitely thought I was losing it.) The problem didn't go away.

Here's what I figured out: I had packed everything I need — with room for food and water — without even using the bottom sleeping bag compartment. That's 15 liters I wasn't touching. Which means I was using 55–60 liters of a 70-liter pack that already felt too big. So I'm returning it and looking at other options this weekend.

The lesson I'd pass on: get fitted in a store, but also load your pack up at home and actually move in it before the return window closes. The stair climber test is real.

The Sleeping Bag Situation

When I first looked at sleeping bags I genuinely thought mummy bags were my only real option. I was wrong.

I'm returning my Marmot mummy bag. I love the weight, the treated down, the temperature rating, the materials. The problem is that after sleeping in it for about 14 nights total, I had a realization: I never made it more than 10 minutes with the bag fully zipped. I toss and turn. I'm a side sleeper. I need to stick a foot or leg out. The mummy bag just isn't how I sleep.

After some research, I've decided to try an ultralight quilt — specifically the Revelation Quilt by Enlightened Equipment. It's only $30 more than the Marmot bag I'm returning, and for a good night's sleep on a six-month hike I'm willing to spend a little more. The quilt is about the same weight as the mummy bag, but I think it'll fit my actual sleeping style significantly better.

If you're in the same boat: don't buy your sleep system without sleeping in it a few nights first. Gear store sleeping bags are staged for display, not for how you actually sleep. Find out if you're a foot-out person before you commit to a mummy.

The Small Things (That Are Actually Big Things)

I still need a Sawyer filter. Rain pants or skirt or umbrella — haven't decided which. A bandanna for a pee rag (vital, don't skip this). Gaiters. Liner socks. The right underwear.

Small things. But also: critical things. The kind of things that seem negligible until you're 200 miles in and you haven't slept in three nights because you made the wrong call on one of them.

The gear list never feels done at this stage. That's normal. Make a list, work through it methodically, and try not to spiral every time you remember something you haven't bought yet.

The Medication Situation

This is the part of pre-trail prep that nobody really talks about honestly, so I'm going to.

I recently went back to see my psychiatrist because the Cymbalta was not working for me. My doctor and I figured out something interesting: this is the first time in my life that my life has been like this.

Previously, my life looked like: working 20–40 hours a week, full-time school, a 16-hour internship, two seasons of team sports, band, jazz band, orchestra, high expectations, high stress, a packed schedule. Or a political campaign at 70 hours a week.

Now it looks like: two jobs, mild to moderate physical activity, financial and housing support from my parents, low stress, low pressure. And a bit of identity confusion.

I was so distracted during most of my life that I didn't pay attention to my mental health problems until they caused other health problems — fainting, starvation, malnutrition, sodium deficiency, migraines, gastrointestinal problems, exhaustion. I didn't even think I had anxiety until I was in a psychiatric ward.

This time on Cymbalta was complete torture. My mood and motivation improved somewhat, but the side effects were unbearable: appetite loss, nausea, vomiting, insomnia, shaking and tremors, hot flashes, relentless dry mouth, and worst of all — it amplified my anxiety. There were very few times I have felt more anxious than this past month. It felt like electricity buzzing through me, but instead of energy it just made me exhausted and scared.

My psychiatrist and I made the decision to switch to Prozac. Prozac metabolizes differently than Cymbalta — it takes longer to clear the system, which means fewer withdrawal symptoms between doses. It targets anxiety more directly than depression, which is the bigger issue for me right now. And at higher doses it can be taken just once or twice a week, which could be genuinely helpful on the trail.

I want to be honest about why this matters in the context of a thru-hike: I think I could make it through the trail without psychiatric medication. But I don't want to try if I don't have to. Right now I feel unstable, nervous, anxious, and socially awkward. My mood cycles by the hour. My anxiety is bordering on paranoia in certain situations — nighttime, large stores, nightmares, social settings. I don't want to have to leave the trail because of my mental health. I'm hoping the Prozac works.

If you're managing mental health medication and planning a thru-hike: this is a real logistical and emotional puzzle, and you're not alone in trying to figure it out. Talk to your psychiatrist specifically about the demands of a long trail — the physical exertion, the irregular resupply schedule, the limited access to refills, the way your baseline stress and sleep will shift dramatically. These are things worth working through before you start.

What Pre-Trail Anxiety Actually Looks Like

Here's what I've noticed about the pre-trail freakout, having lived through it:

It doesn't come from one big thing. It comes from the accumulation. The pack that doesn't fit right. The sleep system you're second-guessing. The medication that's making you feel worse before it makes you feel better. The calendar that keeps moving faster than your to-do list.

None of these things individually is a crisis. Together, at 10 weeks out, they feel like a lot.

Some things that have helped:

Write it down. Not a gear list — a worry list. Get everything that's spinning in your head onto paper, then separate it into "things I can control" and "things I can't." Make a plan for the first category and let go of the second.

Break it into weeks. Ten weeks sounds like nothing. But that's ten distinct windows to work through your list. Assign things to weeks rather than looking at the whole stack at once.

Talk to people who've done it. Not to get reassurance that it'll be fine — to hear that they were also freaking out at this stage and started anyway.

Accept that the list never feels done. It won't. You'll still be wondering if you made the right call on your sock liners when you're at the trailhead. That's just how this works.

What Actually Happened (2026 Update)

I started on February 18th, 2018. I finished on September 28, 2018.

The Prozac worked. Not immediately, not perfectly, but well enough. It took a few weeks to stabilize, and there were still hard days — there are always hard days on a thru-hike, for everyone, medicated or not. But the decision to sort out my medication before I left was the right one, and I'm glad I didn't try to white-knuckle it.

I ended up replacing my pack with an Osprey Eja 58. The Enlightened Equipment Revelation Quilt — well, I kept it from Georgia to Maine, but not because it was perfect. The filling wouldn't stay in the baffles and it ran too light for me, so I was cold more nights than I should have been. I layered it with a cheap summer quilt from Amazon. I kept using it because I couldn't afford to replace it mid-trail. The lesson there: test your sleep system in actual cold before you commit, not just in your living room.

The small things got sorted. I didn't forget anything critical. I didn't feel ready on my first day. I went anyway.

The medication piece is more complicated than I expected, and I want to be honest about it because I think it's more useful than a tidy resolution.

I went off Prozac about a month into the trail. Coming off it was rough — I didn't sleep well and it was genuinely hard for a stretch. But once it cleared my system, I felt better. Not worse.

The trail turned out to be the thing that actually worked for me, and by the end I had stopped all antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication entirely. I learned later that I have ADHD and CPTSD, which explains a lot — including why the medication approaches I'd tried never quite fit. The anxiety and instability I was experiencing wasn't just depression. It was a different thing entirely.

What actually helped, over the course of the trail and after: keeping going even when it was hard, finding people who kept me motivated and feeling safe, CBT, podcasts and books, therapy, the walking itself, and processing — just having the space and the time to actually work through things. And honestly? Microdosing mushrooms helped enormously too. I know that's not what you'll find in a pre-trail prep guide, but I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

I spiraled. I pushed through. The trail didn't fix my mental health — but it gave me the conditions to start doing that work myself.

If you're 10 weeks out and freaking out: that's correct. You're paying attention. Keep going. And be open to the possibility that what you think you need right now might not be what actually helps — you'll figure that out as you go.

Where to Find Your People

When I was prepping for my 2018 hike, the online AT community was a handful of blogs, a few forums, and maybe three or four people on YouTube. It was enough — but it was sparse. If you were anxious and looking for someone who was going through exactly what you were going through in real time, you had to look hard.

That has completely changed. The community is enormous now, and it's on every platform.

Read first:

Appalachian Trials by Zach Davis is the book I read before I left and the one I'd still recommend first to anyone doing mental prep for a thru-hike. Its central argument — that most hikers fail not because of their gear or their fitness but because of their mental preparation — is still the most useful framing I've encountered. It's short, honest, and practical. Read it before you go.

The Trek is the best ongoing written resource for AT-specific mental health content. They have a real thread of honest hiker writing on anxiety, depression, pre-trail nerves, and post-trail blues — not the sanitized highlight reel version. Worth browsing their mental health and personal essay sections specifically, not just the gear posts.

WhiteBlaze is the forum where thru-hikers actually talk to each other, including about the hard stuff. If you want to read honest conversations from people who were scared and went anyway, this is where they happen.

Connect with people:

Before I left, I met quite a few people through Facebook groups for that year's AT class — people planning to start around the same time I was. I'm not sure how active those groups are now compared to 2018, but searching for your start year's thru-hiker group is worth checking. Even if Facebook isn't your platform, the same dynamic exists in Reddit communities like r/AppalachianTrail.

What worked even better for me personally: DMing people on Instagram who were documenting their hikes. If someone was a few months ahead of me on trail and posting about it, I'd just reach out. Most people were generous and responsive. It was a genuinely good source of comfort and real information before I left — not just the polished version of trail life but the actual day-to-day of it. Don't be shy about doing this. Most thru-hikers love talking about their hike.

Watch and follow:

YouTube now has hundreds of AT thru-hike vlogs — people documenting the whole thing from Georgia to Maine, including the bad days, the quitting thoughts, the ugly cries in shelters. Search "AT thru-hike 2024" or "AT thru-hike 2025" and you'll find recent hikes that show you what the trail actually looks like right now, not just the cinematic highlight version.

TikTok's #thruhike and #thruhiking tags have millions of posts. The format is good for the real, unglamorous stuff — 60 seconds of someone having a terrible day at mile 200 can do more for your pre-trail anxiety than any listicle. Instagram Reels from current-year hikers give you real-time dispatches from people who are literally on trail during your planning phase, which is genuinely useful for calibrating expectations.

The point isn't to consume all of it. It's that whatever specific fear you're sitting with right now — the medication question, the pack question, the "what if I can't do this" question — someone has talked about it honestly and publicly, and finding that person helps.

If you're struggling with your mental health while preparing for a thru-hike — or at any point — you can always reach me through my contact page. If you need immediate support, please reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, or text HOME to 741741 for the Crisis Text Line.

Pre-Trail Anxiety Is Normal: What 10 Weeks Out Actually Looks Like (AT Thru-Hike)