Antidepressant round-up

[DanaC]

With respect Shawnee: that is your experience of clinical depression. Not everybody's experience of clinical depression is the same. Not everybody with depression would be suicidal without meds.

Different people experience different kinds of depression and they are debilitated in different ways and to different extents. What you look at from a distance and see as 'blues' might be depression. What looks like depression from a distance, might be the blues.

Someone who has never experienced depression telling someone with clinical depression to pull themselves up by their bootstraps is annoying yes. It's not at all helpful, and shows an ignorance on their part as to what depression is. But it's not helpful either to mark out some competetive sliding scale that ranks 'proper' depressives as people who are completely incapacitated by depression if untreated, and anything else as a not really depression.

How do you know whether that person is truly depressed or just has the blues? You only get a fraction of what other people experience, and what you get is skewed by their own understanding of themselves, and their own ability to express.

[Shawnee123]

OK, I get that. But I can only draw from my experience. And there are those who like to dabble in illness, who want something wrong with them, who want to say "Yabbut, look what I did...what YOU could not." That is what I'm addressing, and it's hardly an arguable point. The munchhausens always want to find something wrong, must have diagnosis...otherwise it just makes so little sense.

I think I'm superior because my depression is more than just the blues? Yeah, no. I really wouldn't choose this for my own worst enemy. I'd give anything to kick it, to not be 'me' but I can't.

I'd like to not be thoroughly hurt, once again, that my expressed opinion has met with, once again, the whole "you are out of order and misguided" thing. But that is also just a part of "me" I'd rather not live with, that over-sensitivity, but have to.

Right now I'm going to choose to try to get some work done, one foot in front of the other, keep the job, make everyone happy...everybody smile now. Here we go.

Please to forgive if my talk of depression in a depression thread was not correct.

[DanaC]

Consider that maybe I read your post as a dig at me, since I felt able to bring myself back from the brink.

Apols :P

[Shawnee123]

No no no, not at all at you.

In general, mostly, but there was a tone that offended me, but it wasn't you.

My apologies as well. I'm feeling a bit down. <-----winky smilie seems out of place, but I wanted to convey some sort of irony.

[DanaC]

Good good, glad we got that cleared up aheh. yeah. I'm a little tetchy at the moment. Or rather, slightly more easily riled than usual.


On a slight aside: I don't actually think of myself as a depressive now. It's something that swooshes into my life every so often, regardless seemingly of general happiness or circumstance, and then swooshes out again. There's always a kind of low lying darkness in there somewhere more generally. But I doubt that's different to most people. I get sad, too, obviously. But not to any greater extent than anybody else. Mostly I'm happy, as in I am reasonably satisfied with who I am, relatively forgiving of who I've been and pretty much comfortable with where I am heading.

One of the most powerful realisations I had about depression (as I experience it), was that it didn't in any way seem to correspond with periods of more general unhappiness. That is to say: I had a long period of being generally unhappy, and during that time I also experienced depression. I always kind of assumed the two went together, until i discovered some happiness and peace of mind and still had those same bouts of depression. Same with the sudden feelings of something almost euphoric. I'd categorised that as sheer relief that the whole thing (whatever thing it was at each time) was over. But I still get it from time to time. Like I've dropped speed or something, for hours, or days at a time. Sometimes for a very short spell, followed by a bit of a crash.

It's the bizarrest thing, to feel happiness at one level and depression at another, with both kind of coexisting for a while, at the start and end of a spell.

[Undertoad]

I remember the moment I realized I had clinical depression. I was driving down the street and I felt this heavy weight on my body. I didn't feel sad so much as I felt that nothing mattered. I could drive down the road or I could drive off the embankment and it didn't matter which choice I made.

I remember the moment I realized the drug was bringing me out of it. I was looking up at the sky and admiring the awesome gradient of blue it created. Every day a gradient with billions of colors no Photoshop will ever be able to reproduce. And I realized: I'm seeing colors again. I'm hearing birds again. I wasn't hearing them before.

[Shawnee123]

Wow, yeah UT, I know what you mean. I remember thinking "one sharp pull to the steering wheel, just one..."

Also, I really get ya, Dana. Sometimes I swear I think I am all that, on top of the world, kiss my sweet bippy if you don't like me...but it doesn't last. Then again, neither does the depression. I HAVE learned, as you pointed to, to recognize that it WON'T last, and that does help me get through it.

This year I got an additional diagnosis of anxiety attacks, after some pretty hairy moments seemingly related to pms/perimenopause. I think it's more than that, though. I wonder if bipolar isn't a better diagnosis: but I don't experience extreme mania, just some freak out moments.

At any rate, I wish it weren't a part of me, but I guess I wouldn't be me if it weren't? Or something.

[DanaC]

The doesn't matter thing I recognise from a few really bad bouts. But a long time ago. The ones that give me a slight chill to recall.

Y'know somebody in here or the other thread (not scouring to find out :P) said the Cellar was part of their self-therapy. Can't recall if it was a serious or flippant point being made; but I kind of concur to a degree. The last time I really felt I was totally losing control, was somewhere around the time I joined the Cellar. Ether just prior to or just after. I've had maybe two or three slides since then, but I seem to have become aware of them faster, and able to talk myself (and write) out of it quicker. I don't know to what extent that is due to more general lifestyle changes giving me more room to deal with things my own way, and to what extent it was having a place to express where I was at, but the Cellar definately played a part.

If only by providing a visible neon sign to myself that i was reacting to things and people differently.

[skysidhe]

Foot asked what worked or what we did to feel better. Although, I appreciate my approach there are those times when an individual needs medical intervention, as in the case of my sister, who I encouraged to go that route, even though she leans toward the natural approach too. Somethings are just too deep and prolonged to ignore or find relief in natural methods.

My methods would be a good supplement in those serious situations but are in no way, I feel the in all to the cure for serious depression. This is how my son deals with anxiety, but antidepressants don't work out for him. They make him feel suicidal. So this is what works here.

It was in no way, an implied attempt to tell anyone to pull up their boot straps. Least of all foot, who I hope is at the doctor right now getting that RX.

[footfootfoot]

Back from doc with scrip. More later.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

Back from doc with scrip.

Well, don't hide 'em, divide 'em!

[Undertoad]

And if you have diabetes, don't take drugs for it, that's "unnatural". Just live with it!

[footfootfoot]

I really don't think it is possible to explain depression to someone who hasn't personally experienced it. I think a lot of people hear the beginning of the description and say "Oh yeah, I've had that feeling and I find if I just go out for a walk I feel better." or some such equivalent.

I imagine it would rather be like trying to explain to someone the feeling of an orgasm. It's funny to hear someone say they think they've had an orgasm. Sort of like saying, I think I just sneezed.

Sure, there are different types of depression and different degrees of severity and I've seen people who are medicated that probably don't need it, and vice versa.

I think the armchair therapist opinions about treatment, especially coming from the undepressed, are generally not welcomed.

Here might be a tip that you don't really suffer from depression: If you find yourself offering advice to a depressed person about how to "get better" then you probably don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

<--- Not directed at anyone in general.

[Juniper]

But, as Dana pointed out, not everyone who is depressed is also suicidal.

Lots of people just live with it, because the guilt, shame, and sheer paralysis of depression won't let them get help. They feel like they aren't worthy of help. Getting help requires money to be spent that could be spent on other things, even if those other things are just their kid's video games. Getting help requires time that could be spent on other things, even if it's mostly other people's time that matters and not your own.

I've dealt with depression's spectrum all of my life, really, but it wasn't diagnosed till I was about 20 and spent a week in the mental hospital. They said I was depressed, but also gave me another "tag" -- Borderline Personality Disorder, which probably says volumes about me. I always thought BPD was just a clinical, fancy way of saying "Antisocial, Selfish Bitch."

I don't think that's true, though, I don't have BPD. Some of the stuff fits but I'm a nice person most of the time. At least I think so.

My dad was depressed too. He took anxiety meds for a long time. So was my mom, but she was one of those "deal with it" types. I come by it honestly.

But if you do find things that really help you "live with it" and maybe put off going onto the whole med thing for a while, isn't that good? Can't we be happy about that without everyone who is on meds getting offended?

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Juniper

But, as Dana pointed out, not everyone who is depressed is also suicidal.

Lots of people just live with it, because the guilt, shame, and sheer paralysis of depression won't let them get help. They feel like they aren't worthy of help. Getting help requires money to be spent that could be spent on other things, even if those other things are just their kid's video games. Getting help requires time that could be spent on other things, even if it's mostly other people's time that matters and not your own.

I was referring to this BTW. Just so we are clear.

If you are waiting to feel suicidal before getting help ---- well, that's just like waiting to have a heart attack before addressing your cholesterol problem, no?

ALSO - the martyr quotient here is HUGE. Just saying.