Depression Talk

I must confess: I’ve been ignoring my own advice and been self-medicating with my Mom’s old bottle Endocet for anxiety. I’ve been doing it for about two weeks. Now, I’m on Prozac (an SSRI antidepressant) and really should not be taking any medication ending in -cet. Otherwise, I could wind up looking like Tammy Faye Bakker.

But My Nerves Are Shot

So, why are my nerves more frayed than a tug toy after a session with a pack of Labrador retreivers? I’ve had three clients jerk me about by fooling with my payment. One client has paid and it was all a silly misunderstanding and that’s been resolved. (Thank you, client — you know who you are). But I still have two clients who owe me a combined total of nearly $1000 (US). (And you know who you are.)

One grand may not seem like much to some people, but for me it’s a hell of a lot. Especially since I used to be homeless and I’m not exactly eager to return to that condition.

Dangers of Self Medication

So, why am I confessing all of this? Besides to keep me from impaling my forehead with the computer keyboard? It’s to let any readers out there (both of you) know about the dangers of self-medication. For one thing, my depression has worsened. I don’t want to do anything except curl up with my dog and cry. But I only have one Endocet pill left and I’m saving that for March 31, in case my clients still haven’t paid up.

That, and it gives me a good excuse to stick this YouTube clip up of a somewhat decent rap song called “Self Medication Blues”. It does contain adult themes, so kids, make sure your parents are out of the room:

After a couple of disasterous relationships, a few years ago I took myself out of the dating scene. Since I became celibate I’ve been able to start my own freelance writing business, give to charity and help out my family (instead of the other way around, for a change). I’ve also been able to make great strides in managing my major depression.

Am I Being Punished?

Perhaps it was my Protestant upbringing, perhaps it was watchign too many movies or perhaps it was my depression, but many times I think the reason that my relationships turned out so badly was because I never stayed true to my biggest love.

My biggest love happens to be Peter Gabriel. I fell for him when I was 16 and now I’m — a lot older. However, the big snag in my relationship with Peter is that he’s completely unaware of it. He’s also currently married to a woman younger, more attractive, more intelligent and more fertile than I am, so I don’t think I have much of a shot (not that I ever did. In between wives, he’s dated actresses, models and other singers).

But yet, I’ve still not stayed true to him. In one way, I’ve betrayed my greatest love, so is that why my relationships were always crap, because I was being punished.

This Is, Of Course, Nonsense

Even if I did manage to date Peter, I’d sure as hell screw it up somehow. That’s just the way I am. I like being single — and unchained by a relationship. So, I feel miserable in the spring when the hormones start rushing about my body, but it’ll pass. It always does.

My Mom’s been on this new diet since February first. It’s a program called Food Addict’s Anonymous, a variation of a twelve step program. I’m sure it’s a lovely program that’s helped many people, but if my Mom is on this diet for much longer, I’m going to explode.

Behold the FA-Nazis

The diet isn’t written down. There are no particular menus that I can predict. If you feel like eating, you call an FA-Nazi that tells you that you can’t eat it. And then you go to meetings three or four or five times a week so they can tell you what you can’t eat.

Things the FA-Nazis have told her she is not allowed to eat:

• Cabbage
• More than two pieces of fruit per day
• Sugar
• Nuts
• Wheat or wheat flour
• Rice or rice flour
• Artificial sweeteners or diet sodas
• Chick peas or green peas or just about any other kind of pea
• Spices — other than salt or black pepper
• Cooking more than one food in one pan. This means, if she wants sauteed onions and zuccini, she can’t cook them together and she can’t mix them together on her plate.

How This Depresses Me

Now, granted, I’m not on the diet. But how can I eat normal food in front of my dieting Mom? That would be a form of torture. So, I eat basically nothing when she’s around except yogurt and then, when she goes to meeting or goes to sleep, I stuff my face for hours.

She’s now lost 17 pounds. Meanwhile, I’ve gained 20 pounds. When I said I’d soon explode if Mom doesn’t drop this diet soon, I wasn’t kidding.

I’ve taken LSD once — but not by choice. My boyfriend at the time did the “open your mouth and close your eyes and you will get a big surprize” thing and boy, was it EVER a surprize! So, if you happen to be at a party or your significant other suddenly turns into a skeleton with a smile, don’t panic — it’s just LSD (also known as acid, Bartman, blotter paper, window pane). It will pass.

Nothing Can Hurt You

The first thing you have to realize that with LSD, you will see things. You may hear things, too or even smell things, just like an hallucination. But it’s like television — it seems like it’s right there with you, but it’s not.

So, get to a safe place, sit back and enjoy the show. Depending on the quality of the LSD and your general health, effects can last a few hours or a couple of days. There will be plenty of time later to inflict revenge on the person who spiked you.

What You See

Everyone’s LSD trips are different, so I’ll describe some of the things I saw. Everyone’s faces had lots of colorful squiggles on them and various flaces flashed over the face. The one that kept popping up on my boyfreind’s face was a vampire.

The great thing was the flashes. I could write in the air as if my finger was a pen. That was highly amusing.

I also saw a small grey, black and white wolf sitting in the corner of the room. However, he just sat there and watched and soon he was no big deal.

I also felt that my body had extended far beyond the borders of my skin. I could reach my hand out perhaps six inches from the wall — and feel the wall. Again, that was highly amusing, but it made going to the toilet a challenge worthy of climbing Mt. Everest.

The Come Down

Most of the visual hallucinations went away in about twelve hours and the feeling of beeing “trippy” (goofy yet calm) lasted for three days. And when I came back down to earth, I discovered my boyfriend had robbed me of nearly $1000.

So, I don’t recommend taking LSD, but you do get to see some pretty lights.

America has a fatal fascination with trainwrecks, which may explain why the Republican party was in power for so long. The latest trainwreck is Nadya Suleman, a mentally ill woman in California who recently gave birth to octopulets — and yet already has six children. Not only that, Nadya lives with her parents (although they have threatened to kick her out), is unemployed and does not have a partner to help her raise this vast herd of rugrats.

She didn’t even get pregnant the old fashioned way. She went to an as yet anonymous California fertility clinic, which must have cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, which the American public will have to pay for because it’s inevitable that all of the children will be taken away from this Angelina Joile-wannabe.

And the odds are that all of the kids have inhereted their mother’s mental illness. Which means they will most likely grow up to commit suicide or at least be freaking miserable.

“I Can Be There For My Kids”

Suleman’s argument for having 14 kids while unemployed and living with her parents is that she can “be there for her kids”. Can someone throw this woman in a hospital and at least sterilize her, let alone get her some good mood stabilizers so she can see that she is completley insane?

Anyone remember their own childhood? The greatest thing was when the parents left you alone. You could run wild. It was what most kids pray for. “Please, God, let my parents get stuck in an elevator shaft for the weekend. I want to party.”

Not Usual Of Mental Illness

Most people with a mental illness like depression are not so whacknoodle. They can actually hold down a job, take care of many commitments and do not have 14 kids on purpose. Nadya Suleman is NOT a poster child of mental illness. She’s a poster child for abortion.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and announce that I hate panic attacks. I hate them so much I’d sue them if I could. I’ve just gotten over my last panic attack a couple of hours ago with some TLC from my Mom and a gift of a Tramadol.

Really Big Warning

Do not do what I did and pop a pill that was not prescribed for me. I was desperate and I was willing to risk death in order to stop the panic attack and my migraine, which had been going on for about fifteen hours. Tramadol is a whopping massive painkiller, usually given to people with chronic arthritis, chronic back problems or people recovering from surgery. It’s an opiod painkiller and also can sedate you silly.

About My Panic Attacks

I get panic attacks when I am in physcial pain. Getting beat up triggers them; having stomach flu triggers them or having a migraine for more than twelve hours. This is not to be confused with people diagnosed with panic attack disorder (PAD) or even general anxiety disorder (GAD). That’s basically when you have panic attacks even though you are not in pain or facing imminent threat of being in pain. And please don’t quote me on that, because I’m on tramadol. Right now, I’m transfixed with the symmetrical differences between a semi-colon and an apostrophe.

This Ain’t Good

Although I’m very glad that the panic attack and the migraine have finally come to an end and I have able to actually get some work done today, I am a bit sorry I had to resort to begging for drugs from my Mom. Must go back to reading the Dalai Lama.

(THUD)

According to the National Insititute of Menatal Health, one in four adult Americans has a mental illness (including all of the types of depression). This comes to about 57.7 million people. That’s a big market. It’s a wonder that Hallmark and other 1999 greeting card companies haven’t got in on this action.

The US Government won’t bail out the health care industry, so maybe they can at least send all of us who are mentally ill a greeting card whenever we try to kill ourselves.

Suicide Ettiquette

Two weeks ago, my Mom’s friend tried to commit sucide by taking a lot of pills and then wanted to jump off a roof. She’s doing much better now. But Mom got these strange phone calls from her other friends asking if they should send get-well cards to the friend who tried to commit suicide.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mom told them. “Perhaps you should call her instead.”

After Mom told me about this conversation, it’s been going over and over in my head. Would “glad you messed up your suicide” cards be that bad of an idea? Please bear in mind that practically everyone in my family has tried to kill themselves at one point or another and I’ve tried to kill myself so many times, I’ve lost count. Would I have really minded getting a get well card after yet another suicide attempt?

Yeah, I probably would … at first. Then, knowing me, I’d get a really good laugh out of it.

Do They Exist?

If you enter any random words in Google or Yahoo!, you can usually find several thousand links on it. And through the magic of the Internet, there are greeting cards for the depressed, as long as you keep your tongue firmly in your cheek. Here are some links I’ve discovered. Enjoy.

• Cafe Press: Maniacally Depressed Greeting Card Share the love.
• DGreetings.com Has several designs to choose from.
• Zazzle in the UK Has T-shirts and coffe mugs, too. Why should American depressives have all of the fun?
• Depression Card Does what it says on the tin.
• Just be sure you use your cards for the depressed in order to cheer someone up, not as templates for suicide notes, as happened to Moshe Pergament. That wouldn’t be too polite.

One reason why people with depression do not seek treatment is because they don’t want to be branded as “insane”. Being diagnosed with depression does not automatically mean that you are insane. Although all types of depression are considered mental illnesses, being mentally ill does not mean that you are insane. You’re just mentally ill, which means you are just ill.

I Must Be Crazy

There is a certain underlying fear in many with depression that they are loosing their grip on reality and will eventually loose all control of their personalities, words, thoughts, actions, friends, family and posessions. “If they just knew the REAL me,” the thought is, “then they’d lock me away.”

This certainty that you might be crazy is exactly why you are not crazy. Often with depression, you are miserable for no reason at all. Nothing can cheer you up. You may not be able to taste food or get any pleasure from even sleep. Now, if you’ve lost everything in a tornado and feel depressed, you never doubt that you are sane. You just lost everything in a tornado. Anyone would be depressed after gong through that. If you were happy as a lark, then you’d be locked away.

Why? Because being increedibly happy after a disaster is not normal and not healthy.

Yet, neither is feeling miserable when nothing bad seems to have happened. And yet, you feel miserable and out of control anyway. This feeling as if you are going crazy is your body’s way of saying, “Go to the doctor, already!”

The Regular Irregular

People with depression, even bipolar disorder, can often hold down jobs, pay bills and appear to live normal lives. They can do this for years until there is an inevitable breakdown. But even after a breakdown, they can very often go back to appearing to live a normal life.

But are depressives abnormal? Not really. Of course, I can’t peek into the thoughts of every single person on the planet, but many people (no matter what their mental health) will often feel bad in some way. They will often feel as if people knew who they really are, then no one would like them. The only difference in depressives is that this thought can become so obsessive, it takes away all of the joys of life.

This blog might be a little somber lately since I haven’t been well and my Mom was hospitalized this week. Then again, the whole world is probably a bit somber lately. So, I looked for a snarky but kind of funny video which somehow has to do due with mental illness. And this was the best I could find. (Hey — it’s been a hard week).

This is one of those traditional YouTube video clips where someone is talking to the camera for ten minutes. The fellow in question is Dr. Breeding. I’m not sure what he has a doctorate in or even if Dr. Breeding is his real name, but he does that touch of maladjusted charism that makes for interesting YouTube viewing. He mentions a website called Mindfreedom.org several times, but I don’t know his association with that website. I’ve never heard of the website before today, so I don’t have an opinion about it yet.

Come to think of it, there’s a lot I don’t know…

WARNING: This video is NOT to be used in the place of your therapist’s or doctor’s diagnosis. Although I do agre that there are a lot of therapists and doctors who don’t know what they’re doing and look for pills as a quick fix, there are also a lot of doctors who DO know what they’re doing and can really help someone with major depression, bipolar disorder, post-partum depression or extreme grief.

If you work in the mental health field, then perhaps you might want to skip this video and go have a cookie, instead.

Granted, this YouTube clip is an advertisement for a book by Tina Zahn, but you don’t need to read the book in order to get the jist of the clip. In case you’re wondering what Tina was jumping from that July day in 2004 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, it was a big-ass bridge. Could she have survied the 200 foot fall into the river? Possibly, but since she wanted to die, her motivation for not drowing was pretty slim.

And why was Tina jumping? She had just been laid off right after giving birth and had inexplicable chronic pain. But most of all she had postpartum depression. I suppose the cure for postpartum depression would be never having a kid, but I guess that advice comes about nine months too late for most women.

I haven’t read the book but the clip is hypnotic. I’m going to assume the book is going to be a bit gung-ho Christian, since the publisher is Revell, which specialises in Christian-themed books.

When you live with depression, you can be tootling along for months and then all of a sudden you feel miserable, cranky and often suicidal. This can happen even when you are regularly taking your medication, eating a balanced diet and exercising regularly. A lot of people call these “setbacks”. I call them “inevitable.”

No One Time Cure

If you have depression and suddenly, for no reason, you’re just as depressed as you were before you went to get help, this does not mean that you have done anything wrong. The nature of depression is that some days it’s worse than others, despite all that you do. The good news is that these setbacks often go away after days or weeks, often as suddenly and as mysteriously as they came.

Despite what some drug manufactureres might have you believe, there is no once and for all cure for depression. Personally, I don’t even think death cures it because you wind up becoming just as miserable as a ghost or in the next life.

Anyway

Setbacks are annoying, but they don’t mean that you are doomed. They’re kind of like migraines. Eventually, they go away (if only for a few hours). Okay, perhaps that was a bad similie. Let’s try arthritis pains. Setbacks are like arthrits pains. They make you want to stay still. But one of the best ways to ease arthritis pain is to warm up the area and get moving.

Alright, perhaps there really isn’t anything comparable to depression setbacks. But they do go away. You have to keep dragging yourself through the day, but eventually you do feel better. Even being able to get out of bed and feed yourself is a great accomplishment when you’re going through one of these setbacks. And if you manage to go to work or school during a setback, that’s incredible. But it can be done. Pat yourself on the back for being able to fulfill your obligations even when you feel like poo.

If you feel like you can’t take it anymore, please talk to someone. Even talking to a stranger or a pet can help shake you from your misery enough to catch your breath and see that you can survive this and that things will inevitably get better.

Remember when Radiohead had hair and made CDs as opposed to downloads? Perhaps I’m showing my age. However, their breakthrough song “Creep” sounds just as brilliant today as when it first aired in the early 1990’s. It’s especially poignant for anyone with clinical depression, in my humble opinion, whether you are a man, woman or hermaphrodite.

When you have clinical depression, you don’t feel as if you fit in anywhere. You feel like an alien dropped you off on the planet somehow. You also have a very well developed sense of self-hatred, which is also apparent in the lyrics of this song. You can also dwell on comparing yourself to others, making yourself even more miserable by magnifying your shortcomings. You also mistakenly believe that you are the only person in the world who has these feelings and fears.

I’ve always wondered what the love object thought of this song. Perhaps they sing the same thing to the person they idolize.

Enjoy.

Clinical depression is not a modern ailment. Maknind has almost certainly had it since we crawled out of the ocean and suddenly realized there was no going back. In case you wonder who the most famous clinically depressed person is, it’s a fictional character, Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, made infamous by William Shakespeare’s play, first performed around 1600.

On the one hand, it’s sad that so many people suffered from depression back then. On the other hand, if Prozac had been around in Shakespeare’s day, we would never had had Hamlet.

Evidence of Depression

There are many things Hamlet does in the course of the play that is typical of someone suffering from the symptoms of clinical depression. These include:

• Not being able to make a decision about if and when to kill his uncle
• Can’t let go of the past
• Everyone who knoew him kept wondering if he were crazy or not
• Recites really, really long poetry
• Wonders if he should kill himself (and eventually does, in a roundabout way)
• Drives his girlfriend insane

But He’s Fictional

True, Prince Hamlet is a fictional character. Modern actors who have played Hamlet tend to purposefully overdo the misery bit. But Shakespeare had a habit of giving his characters very recognizeable emotions and problems. This is one of the reasons his plays still make money after four hundred years. If a depressed Hamlet was an anomaly or did not act like yourself or someone you know, then I don’t think the play would ever have become such a big deal. It would have been shoved into obscurity along with Titus Adronicus, instead.

The story of Hamlet is suppossedly based on the Scandinavian legend of Amleth, also a Price of Denmark, who lived in the 1200’s. Since England had been sacked by the Vikings so many times, it still had a strong Norse flavor in the 1600’s. It is possible that Scandinavian legends and would have been common knowledge. Prince Amleth also apparently knew his uncle killed his father and acted like a lunatic in order to keep his uncle from killing him. Whether Amleth actually lived, who knows.

Fictional characters become real people when they make an incredibly strong impression on our minds. In a way, you become as intimate with them as you would with a friend. It is only with people we can identify with can a fictional character like Hamlet become alive.

Although Hamlet met a sticky end, you don’t have to. Unlike in Hamlet’s day, there are now medications and therapy for you to deal with your crazy relatives.

Spike Milligan was arguably the largest influence on comedy in Western civilization. The main writer of the wildly popular BBC radio show The Goon Show, his brand of surreal humor would go on to teach a whole generation how to be funny in the midst of calamity through his bastard step-children, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The actual epitaph on his gravestone reads, “I told you I was ill.” He was considered a genius as well as being extrememly funny.

And he was also bipolar.

If anyone would know how to survive through depression — including manic depression, which is just about the worst type of depression to mankind — it would be Spike Milligan. Depression and How to Survive It (1994) is mostly written by his doctor, Anthony W. Clare, but also contains large patches authored by Milligan or transcribed from interview tapes.

Not Funny

Even though Milligan was the comdeic genius of the millenium, don’t expect any laughs with this book. It is a grim but very through account of what it’s like to suffer from manic depression. Even if you don’t have manic depression and “merely” have clincial depression, you can still learn a lot, including tidbids about Milligan’s dealings with the late great Peter Sellers.

This is a serious look at depression as it was in 1994 — which isn’t all that much different than how it is today. Particularly enlightening is how depression is described by peple who live in Asian cultures, who refer to it in terms of physical and mot emotional symtpoms. There is a lot of small print, endnotes and references, but you don’t have to read every dingle itty-bitty word inorder to get the gist.

Overall

I read this book when I lived in England — and Spike Milligan was still alive and giving out pithy quotes. I could only borrow it a week — and that wasn’t long enough to get through it throughly. Parts of the book are so grim that you might feel even more depressed than before you read them.

You don’t need to read the book in order. You can skip around and read bits of it here and there and still not loose the plot.

What struck me the most was that this genius, honored in his lifetime, thought of himself as a total failure. I think a lot of people can relate to that.

Some days I wonder if I believe in destiny, because I so often use the word in everyday life. I’m destined to be this, I’m destined to be that. Most often I use the word destiny to describe my status as single.

I often think that if I’m alone for the rest of my life, I’ll be fine, and other times I think… I can’t do it. Most often it is not on my mind, but every now and then I can feel my singleness weighing on me, and I wonder if something must be hideously wrong.

I waffle in my desire to be single or not single. Sometimes I think that because I’m such a Crazy Person, I should just be alone so that no one else ever has to deal with my issues. (Except my mother.) (And my cat.)

I can’t decide right now why I’m single, and I don’t think that I could ever meet and date someone until I’m sure as to why my romantic life has been in the state it has for so long. Am I single because I actually don’t want anyone in my life? Or am I single because I’m such a liberated, free spirited woman that no one dares to try and put an end to my free-living ways?

Or am I just so damn beat up from all the crappy-assed experiences I’ve had that I can’t bear to face it all again?

I like to tell myself that I am a content, whole, and happy person. I even mostly believe that I am. But every now and then, I think about relationships and I shudder. I’m revolted by the thought of getting to know someone, of the risk of finding myself once more in a broken-hearted, drunken stupor on my mother’s living room floor. It has happened far, far too many times to count at this point, and I’m not sure I or the people around me could really handle it one more time.

At the same time, I would just be so desperately thrilled if the phone would ring, if it were someone who was genuinely interested in how my day went, someone who cared to hear me prattle on about my horse. It would be grand to cuddle up on the couch with bad horror movies and popcorn and have someone just enjoy the smell of my hair. I take great care in selecting hair-care products, and I know for a fact that MY HAIR SMELLS GREAT, DAMMIT.

But then why is it that every time I meet a person, I’m loud and obnoxious about my desire to not be in a relationship, about my hatred for dating and all things commitment-related, and my love for single life that does not include ringing telephones? Is is just a stupid act I put on to prove to myself that I’m happy alone?

Or is there actually something wrong with me?

Regardless, every time I meet someone, even someone wonderful and grand and everything I want that someone to be — driven, focused, goal oriented, hard working, with something to show for what he has worked for — I boot it out of there like he’s got some kind of plague. I make up some dumb reason, like “Well, I’d like to be friends”, which is such a load of bull I can’t even believe I’m writing about it on the Internet. Or I say that I can’t date, or that I don’t date, or that I’m so busy in my life that it would be a physical impossibility….

But when I’m saying those lame, pathetic things?

I just feels like they are so damn true.

And once those things are said?

All I want to do is run out and take them right back and jump right into all that relationship-py type stuff.

But then the thought alone makes me want to shudder and hide under the blankets until Mr. WhatsHisFace gives up and wanders away.

And then I just start being confused all over again.