The Pursuit of Happiness

Folic fail

2011-11-07T10:15:00.005-06:00

I finished off my fourth bottle of the mmthff-whatever a couple of days ago. Apart from the first week which I chalk up to a placebo effect, I saw no change over the many weeks while I took it. This doesn't mean that it doesn't work for anybody, JL and Melanie have clearly benefited from the stuff. It just happens to be that I don't.

So, what now? A reader asked that question back when I started trying the folic solution and I didn't have an answer. I still don't. Maybe I'll look into JL's meditation. Maybe I'll give walking another try. Or, most likely, I'll just sit here and keep self-medicating with booze. I really wish I could afford a therapist.

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My father in law visited yesterday. He lives 1100 miles away so it's kind of a big deal when he stops in. On the other hand, we see him two or three times a year so it's kind of not a big deal. Anyway, we had lunch at a BBQ place downtown. I live in an old river town on the Mississippi. Downtown is right on the river and is bisected by a railroad. After we were done eating, we sat around and chatted. I quite like this restaurant and even have a bit of a history with it but, yesterday they were blasting the worst of the '70's and '80's so, after a while, I just had to get out of there.

I left and wandered out in the street, aiming to sit on a quiet park bench near the railroad tracks. As if on cue, a train came screaming up on me. I couldn't sit through that so I stood up, as if in some sort of respect. After the engine passed with it's blasting horn, I was confronted with what seemed to be miles and miles of train cars rumbling past with horrible, magnificent noise. I could only stand and watch.

I wondered how hard it would be to time it to dive under the cars, between the wheels, and put my head on the tracks for a quick and, mostly, painless death. I watched a rusty old car come rumbling up to me as it swayed back and forth on it's unstable wheels and secretly hoped that it would tumble over and take me. In short, I had one of the more suicidal moments that I've had for some time. And, I must say, it was a bit refreshing. I actually feel better now for having had it.

Living with depression

2011-10-22T11:35:00.003-06:00

This is something I really haven’t given much thought to. If you were to look back at this blog, which constitutes pretty much all my thinkinhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifg about depression since I started it, you’d probably find that around 75% of it are posts featuring me whining about my self-diagnosed chronic depression, around 20% about one or another alternative cure I’ve considered, 5% about miscellaneous stuff, and the remaining 37% about how bad I am at math. But, actually coping with depression, living day after day with this dark companion, is something that I’ve avoided altogether both in my head and on this blog, at least as an explicit topic of conversation. I’ve been so concerned about how much it sucks and how great it will be when I get over it that I’ve missed the obvious. To quote Jack Nicholson’s line, “What if this is as good as it gets?” What then? How have I coped and survived until now and how will I continue to do so?

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a teenager in Australia. Let’s call him Tom. He is also depressed. It appears to be chronic and he’s getting help. He’s not hiding it and, under the Australian health-care system, he has access to real help. So good so far, right? He emailed me because he felt that I, being someone more than twice his age with roughly the same set of problems, could provide some insight that the best of his counselors haven’t so far. To paraphrase because I didn’t ask permission to quote him, he basically had two questions based on the single premise that, since he seems to be stuck with this depression thing for life: 1) Is it really worth it to go on? 2) If so, then how does he cope with it because all the meds and counseling in the world, though they can help, might never make it really go away.

I didn’t ask his permission because I didn’t know if I would respond at all. I’m still not sure, as I type this sentence, if I can come up with something worth saying. I’ve been pretty flummoxed since I got his email. Given that I’ve never really considered question 2, it gave me a lot to think about. How have I coped? Do I really know or do I plod through the day, fearful of the alternative? I’m still not entirely sure.

Let’s tackle question 1 first. We’re talking about suicide although he never said it. It’s something to talk about. Most professionals and patients seem to treat suicide as the no-no, hush-hush alternative that we must never speak of or even allow ourselves to consider. I don’t really have a problem with it, I really don’t. Who’s to say that a person in a severe depressive episode is in any less pain than something who’s body is failing from a terminal disease. Your conclusion about whether or not someone in the latter situation should be given the ability to kill herself may be different from mine but, in the post-Kevorkian world, I think that we can all agree it’s something that should be considered and discussed. Ah, you say, depressive episodes pass and the person has the chance at life beyond it. True, but a life punctuated by random, unpredictable depressive episodes may be too much for one to deal with. Ultimately, the moral positions on suicide are not unlike abortion – they are too wrapped up in personal ethics, religious beliefs and societal mores for there to be a clear, universal answer. I believe it should be a personal choice. I do not consider someone who commits suicide to be immoral or even wrong. (The exception in my mind is when one commits suicide when he has obligations, financial or otherwise, to his friends or family. It is condemnable to leave behind someone to clean up the mess that he was too cowardly to clean up himself.)

But, none of that really addresses Tom’s question, does it? Is it worth it to go on? Here’s the answer that seems to have evolved in my life. Yes, for the most part, it’s worth it to go on. I have more good days than bad and, most of the time, I’m hopeful about the future. I’m also curious about the future; I really want to know how things will turn out. It seems a little silly to base my mortality on seeing the plot through but it works for me, somehow. I’m also damn scared of killing myself. At my lowest moments, the thing that kept me from doing the deed can only be described as pure cowardice. So, is it worth it to go on? As I said before, so far, for me, it beats the alternative.

Okay, then, on to Tom’s second question. How to cope with it? This is the bit that really stymied me. I really don’t know how I’ve coped. As I turned this question and the answers I could think of over in my head I began to realize that I was writing a commencement address – seek your happiness, be true to yourself, love your family, blah, blah, blah. Like I said, Tom’s a teenager and he’s set to graduate soon enough. I’ll leave the platitudes for the C-list actor who happened to graduate from Tom’s high-school and gives that speech the year he graduates.

So, I tried harder to come up with real answers. The thing about depression is that it is our problem. It is fairly well defined and we kind of have a list of things it does to us. However, everyone has problems, right? I heard of a study a few years ago that says that babies and toddlers feel the same level of anxiety over their little dramas as we adults do. It seems silly to consider that a missing toy leads to the same amount of stress as trying to figure out how to pay the utilities on a limited budget but, apparently, it does. My point is that I think humans tend to look for and focus on points of tension in our lives. We depressives are lucky in a twisted way in that we know the source of our tension and we sort of know what to expect from it. Other people with a different set of less definable problems are trying to deal with them as best as they can. I’m not sure if I’m making my point very clearly here or if I even really had one to begin with. Let’s move on.

As I’ve stumbled through life, I seem to have settled to two key points that guide me.

The first is to know your depression. This means that it’s important to learn when depression is making you feel a certain way or real life circumstances are. Rage, anxiety and sadness are all occasional symptoms of depression. They are also symptoms of the human experience. Whenever you feel extreme emotions, take a beat and try to identify if it’s a result of real life or some meaningless, internal storm. I’ve lost friends and alienated family members over not being able to tell the difference. Innocent comments can be misinterpreted when observed through a depressive filter and turned into insults.

My second best bit of advice is never blame your depression. I’m talking about both externally and internally. Externally is easy. Just don’t do it. Never use your depression as an excuse for your actions. If you are an ass to your best friend because you misinterpreted an innocent comment while you were having a particularly low day, don’t say you did it because you are a depressive. Your depression might have influenced you but final decision to lash out was yours. Apologize, hope he accepts it and move on. This isn’t to say that you never talk about your depression – your friends might be a great source of support for you - just don’t rely on it as an excuse for your bad actions.

More importantly, never tell yourself that you acted a certain way or made a bad decision because of your depression. Once again, depression might have influenced you but, ultimately, you are responsible for what you do. Blaming depression becomes a crutch, relieving you of all responsibility and that can become a vicious cycle: I’m even more depressed now because my life sucks because I made bad decisions because I was depressed at the time so now my decisions are going to be even worse and my life will suck all the more. Depression may be a part of who you are until the day you die but never let it define who you are.

I tried to avoid platitudes but that last sentence came dangerously close, didn’t it.

So, Tom, there’s my answer. I’m sorry it took so long but you really threw me on that one. You gave me a lot to think about and I hope I gave you a little insight, too. Best of luck, brother!

This blog post contains a sponsored link.

Fabulous Folic Acid? - A folic acid update from another perspective.

2011-10-15T14:45:00.008-06:00

This is a guest post from my buddy JL. She discovered folic acid around the same time that I did and has had much better success with it. So, to avoid yet another gloomy "things still suck" post from me - which is the case - I asked her to tell us about her experiences with it. And, when you're done reading this, go subscribe to her blog, From Manic to Mindful.
-Ray

In my 32 years, I can say with full confidence that depression has dominated over ¾ of my life: I was an incredibly angry and sad little girl (oh, how the therapists love to hear that!) , who grew to become an overly eager-to-please, must-be-perfect-at-all-times teenager, who finally came down hard at age eighteen, only to be kept afloat on a cocktail of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medicine until about eight weeks ago, when I stumbled onto the blog I’m writing for now. Through this blog I found another blog, (Methodical Musings of an Unbalanced Woman) and I discovered Folic Acid- specifically, 5-MTHF.

I’ve spent a lot of time on anti-depressants. To name a few: Lexapro, Cymbalta, Zoloft (thank you very much for landing me in the hospital), Paxil…and those are just the ones I remember. I spent my longest time on Lexapro, and I was pregnant with all three of my children while taking it (after my doctor’s decided that the “benefits” outweighed the “harm”. So far so good with my little ones, but I guess time will tell). Here’s the funny thing about anti-depressants: I was never really not depressed while taking them. I was cushioned and functioning better, for sure, but I still always fought that depression. So when I had the epiphany, if you will, that the anti-depressants were not really doing much for me and acting as a placeholder solution, at best, coupled with increasing difficulties with health insurance to even GET said anti-depressants, I needed to finally go on that search to nip my depression in the bud, or at least keep it in check, on my own.

I knew that an answer must be out there.

When I stumbled on the information about 5-MTHF, all I had to read was “there are studies that show that a large amount of the population cannot properly break down and absorb Folic Acid, and those who are unable to do so are prone to depression, anxiety, and anger (among other diseases and issues),” and I was sold. I emailed said bloggers about it and asked them for more information. As a girl who loved her illicit drugs while in high school and college, not to mention her booze, (NOT ENDORSING that behavior, just being honest with you…) I had zero problem with taking a vitamin supplement I ordered over the internet.

Methylated Folic Acid, in it’s L-methylfolate form, is already broken down so that, basically, the work has already been done for those people who are not able to do so because of their genetic deficiency. I can’t say whether I have said genetic defect or not, since I have not been tested, but I do know that depression runs very heavily in my family, and not only has it been obvious that my maternal grandmother was/is severely depressed, so is my mother, me (obviously,) and I see it in my seven year old son ( a little more about that in a bit). I readily ordered my methyl-folate and anxiously awaited its arrival.

In its early days, (and still, today, because I guess we can still say it’s still early since almost none of the physicians that I’ve discussed this with have any clue about it…though evidently research about this began FORTY YEARS AGO…) methylated folic acid was (and still is) prescribed to go WITH anti-depressants, to make them more effective. I can confirm that this was the case for me, right away. Happy, Joy, Grateful-wow. A whole new world opened up for me immediately. I attributed this to the folic acid and (combined with the fact that I was so desperate to be off of my meds) quickly made an appointment with my doctor to discuss coming off of my antidepressants (Cymbalta. 20 mg twice a day)-I am not one to wait around for things to happen. We agreed on a plan (well, she told me a plan and basically forced me to agree, though in my many years with anti-depressants I knew that “her” way to come off of the pills was too fast…) and I began decreasing my dosage of anti-depressants, and kept with the 5-MTHF (which she knew nothing about, but because she had heard of folic acid, said was “fine”.)

Coming off of those first 20 mgs a day was unusually easy. MUCH, much different than coming off of anti-depressants had ever been before: I was still very much content and yes, even happy. This was a very new experience for me. But I guess I should also stick in a disclaimer: along with the 5-MTHF, I began practicing mindful meditation and using the Silva Method of Meditation, which I have committed myself to doing once a day. I also stopped drinking alcohol as much as I did before- only about a glass a day. This wasn’t so hard, though, because something interesting happened: I didn’t WANT to drink. I don’t know if it’s the folic acid or the meditation or what, but I can’t write a truthful post without putting those other parts in as well.

I have to say that the final 3 (that’s right. A mere THREE mgs) of the Cymbalta were the worst. I felt like a crack whore coming off of the hooch (I have a really good imagination). It was awful and I began to wonder if the folic acid really helped at all. But I had to remind myself that I have been on anti-depressants for MORE THAN A DECADE, and that my adult self has never existed without them, so of course it would be incredibly difficult and that I really needed to cut myself some slack.

Here’s what kept me going during that (not so long ago) time:

My son, who I mentioned before, is seven and has displayed anger and anxiety ever since he was three. Part of me always chalked it up to my divorce from his father when he was one, and his anger about my re-marriage and the two baby sisters he got as a result of the remarriage. But after four years, I finally confronted my excuses for his behavior and accepted the realization that he is probably a “depressive,” just as I am. I do not want this kid on prescription, synthetic, medication, especially at such a young age, and yes, he has been to therapy. Still willing to give 5-MTHF a fighting chance, I decided to see how he would do on it.

In my research and discussions with other people who take the 5-MTHF, I learned that this is one of those supplements that have almost no side-effects, and that it benefits basic human functions on so many ways that it is just fine for almost anyone to take, even children (but I would definitely research that more before you give our two year old methyl-folate.- or anyone for that matter ) My son is a big 7- at 85 lbs I felt okay with giving him 2 mgs of the 5-MTHF a day. Not right away, but after a few weeks my son slowly evolved into being a happy kid. Finally!!! As a parent, this is the one thing you want for your child. Seeing my guy like this is such an incredible relief for me. He still gets angry at times and is as difficult as any other 7 year old boy I hear about, but for the most part our home is so much better. He even told me himself that he “feels so much nicer when he takes his medicine.” (Of course, we have many discussions about how it isn’t really a “medication” but a food supplement…) Just knowing, and seeing what the folic acid has done for him really got me through those incredibly tough days I spent ridding myself of Cymbalta.

Now, I come from a family of researchers- my father has his PhD in Chemical Engineering, as does my brother. Most of my parent’s friends are either chemists or physicians of some sort. I am merely a graphic designer, who has a passion for all things psychological (does it matter that my minor in college was in psychology???) but I do love to do my own research-and empower myself by doing so. I strongly encourage others who are considering anything like this to do their own research as well. My father has been so impressed with what he has seen from both myself and my son (we are all very close) that I have had the fortunate experience of being surrounded by my own personal research team. Therefore, based on my own experience, I feel really confident with my personal dosages, method of coming off of anti-depressants, and giving the supplement to my son. I am not telling anyone to do the same without doing their own research, attempting to discuss this with THEIR doctors, etc. etc. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that depression is an extremely serious disease, so please view this blog post as food for thought but not the official go-to place for information. Be your own responsibility and look into it yourself.

That said,

A couple of key points I would like to mention:

1. Research shows that pretty much everyone can benefit in some way from taking Folic Acid. However, those who are not able to absorb the folate (genetically) vs. those who are will react differently and have very different experiences. For those who CAN’T absorb it, and who take the 5-MTHF, it will work drastically better than those who CAN absorb it naturally and whose depression is not biologically based but perhaps more psychologically or experience based instead.

2. As with any supplement or drug, amounts are key. One person (and these are “random” amounts I’m naming) might “need” 15 mg a day, another 7, and yet another, 5. I have been playing around with quantities (DANGER! YES! I’M NOT A DOCTOR!) and it seems that I do best when I take twice as much as I initially thought (based on my research) I would need.

3. Many physicians have no damn clue about this. And it’s really frustrating but hopefully through blogs and other word of mouth, more doctors will become interested and look into it. But I have to admit I get really annoyed at people who say “okay, I’ll discuss it with my doctor” and then the doctor has never heard of it and the idea is dismissed. I am not “pushing” the 5-MTHF here so much as I am encouraging people to be their own health advocates. After I looked into and actually READ the 42 pages of disclaimers of Cymbalta, I was shocked that the stuff is on the market. And yet, doctors wanted to keep me on it.

4. Traditional blood tests might not show that you do not absorb the folic acid. It might show up, yes, because it’s in your system, but the indicators will not be there whether it is actually being fully absorbed and processed correctly or not. So you can’t really see whether you can or can not genetically absorb the folic acid by saying “oh, I had my blood panel done and my folate levels were fine.” It goes deeper than that, folks. You'll need the actual genetic testing.

5. NOT ALL FOLIC ACIDS ARE THE SAME. Chances are, you will not be able to find the proper L-methylfolate in your local healthfood store. The “L” is the important bit here, which is the folate in it’s “purest” form. Yes, taking folic acid is good. But there is a “good, better, and best” and it turns out, for the “extreme” cases, ie, the people who don’t absorb it, that the “L” is the way to go.

6. There is an entirely different discussion to be had (which I don’t really understand) that has to do with Folic Acid and the B-vitamins. Turns out that it is HIGHLY recommended that you take a B12 with the folic acid (I found a methylated one that both myself, my husband, my mother in law, and my best friend now take because it is AWESOME and the energy you get from it is amazing.) Just thought I’d throw that in there.

7. The drug Deplin is a prescription of methyl-folate and comes in 7.5 mg. and 15 mg pill form. I am mentioning it because it comes up a lot when researching MTHF. I am honestly on the fence about it and can’t entirely trust that it just is what it says it is or whether it has some of the synthetic neuro-transmitters in there that the other antidepressants have, which, of course, is what I’m trying to avoid. There seems to be different information on it all over the place so it’s left me stumped-which means I won’t take it. I’m sure it’s fine and completely legit but I after coming off of the Cymbalta I am so wary of anything prescription anymore.

I know this has gotten pretty long so I need to wrap it up, but I want to everyone to know that right now you’re reading something from someone who has had a pretty rough time. I’ve had the world tell me that there is no reason for my depression, that I have everything to live for, blah blah blah. Yes, this is true, but there is this little thing called CLINICAL DEPRESSION that is very real and still exists no matter how smart you are, or pretty you are, or tall or short or thin…or if you have a loving family or not, a supportive spouse or dog or whatever. It’s like cancer-it can get anyone. To say that I am thrilled to find 5-MTHF is an understatement. Wonderdrug? Probably not. Nothing comes without work: you’ll have to stay on it, to find the dose that works for you, and also be willing to examine your life and make whatever changes that are necessary in order to help yourself. No pill will do that, but it might motivate you to.

I can’t pretend that I know everything about folic acid, and my life isn’t 100 % (or even 90 or 80 percent) rainbows and butterflies since I’ve started taking it, but to me, it is an incredibly huge step and I am so grateful to Ray for this blog, and to Melanie from Methodical Musings of an Unbalanced Woman, for introducing me to this supplement (and also being my depression support group, in a way). My life (and my son’s) has taken its most drastic change to date and it’s really exciting for me. I actually feel like, for the first time ever, that life might be worth living after all. Go figure.

In my own blog, From Manic to Mindful, I write about my experiences with depression, with coming off of antidepressants and how I did it (and my struggles with it), and all of the proactive steps I’m taking to rid myself of depression-without the “aid” of the medical community. Some of it is helpful, I’m sure, but admittedly, some days I just b*tch about how I hate Costco milk containers and how I get so angry at them that I want to throw them across the kitchen. After all, I might take 5-MTHF now and meditate daily, but that doesn’t mean I’m not human.

Again with the folic acid

2011-09-15T09:15:00.004-06:00

It's been about six weeks now. I started on this particular acid trip around the first of August and, aside from that first euphoric week, I haven't been much impressed. The second week was a bitch of a week and gave me plenty of legitimate reasons to be depressed and since then I really haven't gotten back up.

I know that for some it takes up to 90 days and I probably should plod on but, shouldn't I have felt something by now? I'm pretty sure during that first week I was caught up in a placebo affect.

I'll probably order more and ride out the full three months but right now I'm feeling pretty pessimistic.

The Evolutionary Benefits of Depression

2011-09-06T01:22:00.006-06:00

(Guest post by Allison Gamble on behalf of psychologydegree.net

“Pain or suffering of any kind, if long continued, causes depression and lessens the power of action, yet it is well adapted to make a creature guard itself against any great or sudden evil.”
-Charles Darwin

For ages, our ancestors have known of the condition we call depression, though to them it was listed under a variety of other names: sadness and the blues, to name a pair. The question that they never asked, but scientists now seek to answer is: has there ever been any payoff from depression from an evolutionary perspective?

Depression is not a rare disorder by any means, and it is suggested that as many as 50 percent of Americans will experience the criteria for diagnosis with major depressive disorder at one point in life or another. It doesn't take a psychology degree to know that's a high percentage of people affected, particularly for a mental disorder. The majority of mental diseases are actually quite rare – how is it that depression slipped through the cracks?

For one, depression may actually have played a role in the process of natural selection regarding infants and young children, in the form of postpartum depression. It has been shown that parents will not invest sufficient care in every one of their offspring if the apparent costs outweigh the benefits of caring for certain offspring. Postpartum depression may be an evolutionary signal to a parent that risks involved in continued care of the unfit offspring outweigh the benefits, thus exacting a decidedly detrimental toll on the caregiver's health and resources. It may also be an evolutionary signal for assistance from others for help caring for the child.

Socially, it may also have helped contain sexually transmitted diseases, as depression frequently causes disinterest in social interaction and sex. In addition, exposure to other diseases would have been lessened by a reduced exposure to events and elements outside the confines of the afflicted's own home.

Plus, with a lack of energy and desire in even the most mundane things in life, our ancestors would have likely spent more time sleeping, which would have replenished the body in a time when stressful and excessive work conditions contributed to skyrocketing illness and mortality rates.

People with depression can focus on one issue and attack that issue as a whole, rather than breaking in down into bite-sized components, which is more taxing on the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC). Focusing on a number of problems requires a constant supply of neurons to keep up with the more numerous amount of tasks than can be accomplished by those who can digest the problem as a whole and concentrate solely upon finding an answer to that problem.

This is due to the presence of a receptor in the brain known as 5HT1A, which constantly fires new neurons for the VLPFC. Consequently, the subject can perform better in the functions regulated by the VLPFC, like focus and sustained concentration. Depression activates the VLPFC, while the 5HT1A sustains it vigorously to achieve its intended functions for longer periods of time.

This would have been a very valuable asset to our primal ancestors. Unlike us, they had fewer distractions to occupy their attention, though because of the volatility of their environment, every problem was potentially life-threatening. A chain of priority was absolutely necessary. A depressive mindset would allow our ancestors to take on the most pressing problem first, then adapt to the other problems facing them as necessary.

Another possible benefit is that by concentrating solely on the problem causing one's depression, one has a greater chance for true introspection and self-enlightenment. Many of the greatest sages in the history of mankind probably suffered from one form of depression or another, yet by channeling their focus inwards, they found a deeper enlightenment and the ability to better interact with their environment and problems in a more meaningful and positive fashion.

Perhaps the greatest asset of depression is the most evolutionarily necessary: depression forces the hand of the species to reach out and try to eliminate the suffering of the one for the good of the race. And maybe, just maybe, this response is what separates us from the rest of the animals.

Allison Gamble has been a curious student of psychology since high school. She brings her understanding of the mind to work in the weird world of internet marketing with psychologydegree.net.

Sweet, sweet suicide.

2011-09-01T11:06:00.009-06:00

Have you seen Mad Men? This is one of those television series that critics and rabid fans tell you that a) you aren't watching and b) you really suck because you aren't watching it because it is so stinkin' good.

I don't know about all that. I like good movies and I like good TV. A while back I decided to check out Mad Men and, I must say, it really is pretty good. It took until season two for it to really amaze me; overall I'd say it's an interesting and compelling show, especially if you're a US citizen.

But, my views on popular entertainment are not why we're here, are they? The reason I bring the show up is that every time I watch the opening sequence the phrase "sweet, sweet suicide" comes to mind. I'll post it below so you can see what I'm talking about.

The trancy music, the faceless cartoonism, the generic businessmen floating down... It all seems like a beautiful, drifting, perfect suicide. I doubt that's what the creators meant but, being a guy who's spent most of his life thinking about suicide, that's what I see.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not on the edge. I'm okay for now. However, I can't watch this and not think how relaxed and lovely this guy looks as his floats to his death.

I've often wished I could...

A few minutes later: I'm having some trouble with this video. If you can't play it above, click here.

Depression and Atheism

2011-08-24T09:46:00.002-06:00

I promised this topic a while back. Sorry it's taken me a while. Actually, I don't know if I should apologize at all. It seems kind of silly of me to think that any of you wake up day after day thinking, 'is this that day that Ray will finally tell us about his atheism?' then being disappointed when I don't. Beyond silly, it's arrogant.

Nevertheless, I've been promising and not delivering for so long because this is something that never even occurred to me and I never really think about. I'm not really sure how to go about addressing the two topics as they relate to each other because, in my mind, they don't. Both things are deeply personal to me and have grown roots that are so old and deep that removing either depression or atheism from the earth of me would be, to say the least, disturbing. I'm willing to do so with depression; I'm not with atheism.

Let me start by saying that I believe I understand theists, specifically their perspective of atheists. I spent most of the first two decades of life as one. It seems hopeless to live without the belief in god. If no one created us, if there is no externally designed plan for my life, and, most importantly, if nothing happens when I die, if there's no reward for the good and no punishment for the bad, then what's point of it all? How can one live in a universe so empty of meaning, purpose and hope?

It's easy to understand why theists can believe that atheism and depression go neatly hand in hand.

I was depressed well before I became an atheist. The first time I seriously considered suicide was when I was around twelve. I had no reason to feel bad but I did. I felt so bad about myself, so unloved, so worthless, so invisible, that I went down into the basement where my dad kept his guns. I spent a long time sitting with a loaded rifle in my lap, bawling and blowing snot bubbles. I never could work up the nerve and when I heard the garage door opening - I had been home alone - I quickly unloaded the gun, put it back on the rack and went to hide in my room until I could calm down.

So, now, I've told that story. Didn't plan to but there it is. My point is that my atheism didn't lead to my depression. Clearly, I've struggled with some pretty classic symptoms of depression for most of my life and well before my, um, conversion.

Even though that's the right word I hate to use it. For me, at least, conversion carries a lot of baggage. When I think of conversion, I think of the scene in the New Testament when Saul is strolling to Damascus and has a massive, singular revelation that causes him to completely change the course of his life and, for some reason, his name.

My crossover from theism to atheism took longer than an afternoon walk. It was probably a very long time coming but, as a process of which I was aware, lasted about 6 months. I won't go into the gory details. I'd reached that time in life when one starts to consider his place in the world and I'd been exposed to enough of the church to understand that it was a very human creation instead of the holy, unquestionable institution that I'd been raised to believe in. These two things gave me the courage to actually consider the possibility that the faith I'd been raised in wasn't necessarily the truth.

I spent a very weird summer living in a crap apartment downtown, working the night-shift at a local factory and reading. I read everything I could about faith, theism and religion. By the end of that summer, I was settling a little uncomfortably into atheism. I still had those questions I mentioned above except without the hopelessness. In fact, as I look back now, I count this time as easily within the top five happiest points of my life.

In time, I've answered those questions for myself. Theistically speaking, I am incredibly comfortable in my skin. In fact, as I struggle with my expanding and contracting emotions, my professional life, and all the relationships in my life that I seem to subconsciously destroy one by one, my atheism is one of the most solid things about me.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an evangelical atheist. I'm not crazy about my tax dollars going to blatant theism but I'm never participated in a lawsuit about it. If the mayor of my town wants to put one of those cheesy lighted nativity scenes in front of City Hall in December, go right ahead. I'm just saying that, of all those things that all of us struggle with internally, the theology thing is settled for me.

I don't know if I've covered this at all. As usual, I just cracked my head open a little and tried to give you a look. So, lurking and not so lurking theists, if you have any questions or comments, have at it.

Folic acid update and some thoughts about obligation

2011-08-21T05:24:00.000-06:00

So, it's been roughly three weeks, I think. I ran out of pills yesterday so right now I'm at about 18 hours since I took the last one. More are coming but I didn't plan well.

Again, I don't have much to report. I suppose I do feel a little more up these days. I'm feeling generally optimistic about the future. I don't know. Trying to get a bead on how I'm feeling, or more precisely, if I'm really feeling better than I did is like trying to trying to see a distant star in the night sky. When you look directly at the fainter stars they disappear and when you look just to the side of them they reappear. How can I describe something that disappears when I try to focus on it? This is going to take time.

In a previous post, I said something along the lines of owing you guys an update. In a few of the comments and emails that you sent me, you guys made it clear that I don't owe you anything. Strictly speaking, you're right. I am the king of this little blog and I can do whatever the hell I want.

When I started this blog, I just wanted a quiet little corner of the interwebs where I could go and whine about my problems. I didn't really much plan for readers. Publishing it publicly was part of the reason that it was therapeutic for me. I was shouting into the universe and not exactly expecting it to answer.

Then it did. A readership, a very vocal one, started paying attention to me. I blog on a number of websites, a couple that are much bigger than this one. One of my sites gets thousands of visitors a day but this blog with 60-90 hits a day produces almost as much reader feedback. My reward for cutting myself open and bleeding a little on the web has been an unexpected support network in you. Faceless and often nameless but support none the less.

It's very gratifying to get notes of sympathy and support when I'm have a tough time. Knowing that I've touched you or even helped a little, as some of you have told me that I did, helps me immeasurably. I'm getting way more out of this than you are.

So, yes, I do owe you.

Listen to this

2011-08-21T05:20:00.001-06:00

For the first time since I started this blog, I have a whole stack of things that I want to say. In the past, my intent when I came here has been very singular and it was usually just to scream into the darkness. But, lately for some reason I've felt a new level of engagement with the blog and you guys.

Right now, though, I'm going to talk about podcasts. (Bare with me, this really is going somewhere.) When I first learned what podcasts were a few years ago, I didn't think that they were for me. That's really kinda silly because I've always enjoyed spoken word entertainment from listening to my Dad's Bill Cosby records when I was a kid to political talk radio to a whole host of NPR shows. It took me a while to warm up to podcasts but once I did I found a handful that, now, I listen to regularly: WTF with Marc Maron, Savage Love with Dan Savage, The Moth, The Smartest Man in the World with Greg Proops, and Judge John Hodgman.

Of those, the two that I never miss are WTF and Savage Love. All of them are entertaining and most make me laugh but I get something more out of WTF and Savage. Both men are intelligent, articulate, funny and bring a view of the world that's outside of the normal for me.

Now, here's why I'm telling you about this. In an episode of WTF from early June, Maron interviewed a man named Todd Hanson. Most of you probably don't know who Hanson is; I didn't. He's a veteran writer as The Onion. That alone makes him incredibly interesting to listen to. He's also suffered from long bouts of major depression most of his life. In his conversation with Maron he breaks himself open and gives us all a good look at what he's gone through. I won't say it's fun to listen to but it's certainly cathartic. If you get anything out of my little blog here, you definitely should listen to this episode. Go here to listen.

A few notes: First, I suddenly find that I have a christian readership. I'm sure that there have been a few of you lurking out there all along but lately, well, you know who you are and you know what's been going on. I bring this up because if you have delicate ears when it comes to language and adult topics, you might not want to put this show in them. For the same reason, this probably isn't something you want to listen to on speakers at work. Second, Maron's shows' free availability expires so if you think you might want to listen this sometime but not just now, you should go ahead and download it. It might not be available when to you come back to it later. Third, if you're a weepy kind of person, don't listen to this in a place where you shouldn't produce a tear or two because you probably will.

That's it for now. Go, listen, you'll definitely get something out of it.

A quick question

2011-08-19T12:01:00.003-06:00

I'm worn out. It's been a long week and I've made some progress on that professional problem I alluded to in my last post. I plan to spend this Friday afternoon playing WoW.

So, the question: Is it wrong that I washed down my lunchtime dose of folic acid with a couple of ounces of whiskey? It didn't feel wrong.

Now, I'm off to kill some evil orcs and dragons!

Two and a half weeks update

2011-08-17T15:28:00.002-06:00

Yes, Anonymous, I suppose I owe you an update.

I'm writing this later in the afternoon when I tend to be at my grumpiest so do take that into account.

I don't have much to report. Since we last spoke, I've had one pretty big life change - one that's greatly affecting my sleep schedule - and one professional slap. I don't really feel like getting too much into either of these except to say that both are leaving me feeling rather down on myself and in general.

Vague enough?

Anyway, I only say that as something of a way of giving folic acid the benefit of a doubt. I haven't noticed any improvement beyond what I described earlier and I find that I'm sleeping in again. However, I have real life reasons to be a bit depressed, not just the usual unbalance. Perhaps I'd be feeling worse than I do if it weren't for the supplement. It's impossible to say.

So, I'm down but only a little and certainly not out. And, most importantly I suppose, I still have hope.

There's your update. We'll see what time brings.

And, if you're on the edge of you seat about the atheism thing, sorry I haven't done that yet. As you can see, life has me a little distracted just now and since this is a largely non-paying gig, I have to prioritize my keyboard time. I'll get to it.

Just because it makes me feel good...

2011-08-10T15:09:00.000-06:00

First week on folic acid

2011-08-05T09:07:00.005-06:00

Although it is supposed to take anywhere from a few weeks to four months, I thought I'd weigh in weekly so here's the first installment.

I don't discuss my depression much with my wife because it worries her quite a lot. When she was in her early twenties a boyfriend killed himself and blamed her in his note. She doesn't talk about it much but I'm sure it comes to mind when I bring up my depression. I hate reminding her of such a terrible time. But, I felt I needed to warn her that I was trying a new supplement. Other things that I've tried, most specifically St. John's Wort, initially make all my emotions rawer. It takes a week or two for me to stabilize. I suppose this is because they address the mood directly. Whatever the reason, it's not fun for me and even less fun, I'm sure, to be around me.

"I'm not going to come home one day and find you hanging from the rafters, am I?" she asked.

I told her that's what I'm trying to prevent.

Anyway, the mood shock never came. The up and down swings I was expecting never happened. In fact, I really felt nothing.

Then I noticed two things. First, I'm waking up earlier. Being unable to get out of bed is one of the markers of depression and I've become the king of staying in bed. Some days I don't get out of bed until 9a, one of the dangerous side effects of working at home! But, starting a couple of days after I started FA I've been getting up between 6 and 7, even when I don't get that good of a night's sleep.

Another completely unexpected development has been an increased sex drive. I've never had a problem in this area but for the past week or so I've really not had a problem with it. Odd.

So, that's my folic acid update for week one.

A couple of other things have been going on. Melanie, the blogger who suggest FA to me, and I have been corresponding. She's an interesting person although I think if I knew her in person her enthusiasm would overwhelm me. She blogged about me, focusing on my atheism as much as my depression or this blog. Her emails have come pretty close to witnessing which doesn't really bother me, I just find it a little curious.

I'd never really thought about it but I suppose that there might be a few people out there who would be similarly interested in my atheism and how it does or does not affect my depression. I've been turning a potential blog entry about that over in my head for a few days so look for that.

A couple of other people have also emailed. One is a kid with depression who's headed for college this fall. He wants help and is willing to seek out a pro. But, he's reluctant to tell his mom, which kinda breaks my heart for both him and her. This creates a big obstacle for him since he's on her insurance. I suggested that he look see if there's a Community Counseling Center nearby that might be willing to work with him on payments or he can check with the school nurse when he gets to college.

What a burden to take with you to college, that time when the world is supposed to be bright, shiny and full of possibilities. I really hope he finds a way through. If you want to check out his blog it's here.

Finally, another reader emailed. She is working through depression like the rest of us with the added bonus of a dear friend who actually loved life recently having died. He was healthy, in his early thirties and had a fantastic outlook on life. I didn't know what to offer her except commiseration.

We're a raggedy lot, aren't we?

Folic acid? Really?

2011-07-27T10:25:00.007-06:00

Folic acid is one of those things about which I know nothing. I've often seen bottles of it on the dietary supplement shelves in drug stores and grocery stores but I never really bothered to try to figure out its use.

Turns out it might be the solution that some of us depressives are looking for. This doesn't seem to be a widely broadcast aspect of the supplement. I just did a Google news search for folic acid and found articles about it being linked with improved grades among Swedish school children, its importance to pregnant women and its potential for preventing colorectal cancer. No headlines about folic acid and depression.

I wouldn't know about it but for a reader and fellow blogger, Melanie. She sent me an email explaining how she discovered folic acid and that it has done great things for her. She encouraged me to check out her blog and consider trying folic acid. So, I did and, as an atheist I gotta say, there's a whole lot Jesus over there! Melanie an enthusiastic blogger, energetic, engaging and eager to share. If you get something out of my blog then I'd say her Methodical Musings of an Unbalanced Woman is definitely worth checking out.

That aside, she has some very interesting information about folic acid and MTHFR. MTHFR is the problem that folic acid corrects. (By the way, my juvenile mind can't let me look at that acronym without filling in letters to make it a rude, two word phrase.) I'll let you check out the link for a fuller description of the disorder but, basically it's a fairly common genetic variation that blocks the body's ability to extract a particular enzyme from the foods we eat. This shortage has quite a lot of nasty side-effects, depression being one of them. Folic acid corrects the problem.

Melanie had her blood tested and discovered she had this shortage before starting the supplement. But, based on what I've been able to find, taking folic acid is quite safe so I'm skipping the blood test and going straight to the pill. I ordered a bottle yesterday. I'll keep you updated.

I was about to publish this post but, I wanted to add, this is the most optimistic I've been about my depression for quite a while. The anticipation of shedding the dank skin of continual depression has me actually excited about my future and its been very, very long since I've been there.

Tension Tamer from Celestial Seasonings

2011-07-22T11:21:00.001-06:00

A few years ago I whipped up a tea from all the herbs in my garden that, according to Rodales herb book, were supposed to relax a person or otherwise produce a feeling of well being. I can't remember everything that was in it. I think there was some lavender and rosemary and maybe some lemon balm and other stuff. It tasted terrible, something like dirty feet but damn it was effective. I wish I'd written the recipe down because that tea was the best stuff I've ever taken for my depression.

Anyway, I thought I'd see if there was a commercial version out there and Tension Tamer is my first one to try. It's not bad. It tastes kind of weedy and lemony, not the best tasting tea in my cabinet but tolerable. The effect, however, is disappointing. It might bring a small hint of relaxation but nothing like the punch to my mood that my homemade tea gave me. Listening to a George Winston album is better for me than this tea.

I'm still going to drink my way through the box in the hope that there is a cumulative effect.

The inertia of depression

2011-07-20T10:56:00.005-06:00

I once asked if I was lazy or depressed. I still can't answer that question completely but I think I have a better understanding of why it's so tough to answer.

A great deal of my depression manifests in self-doubt and often strong self-hate. Any activity I engage in - this blog, a good paying gig with a popular magazine, dinner with a friend, a big party - I approach with fear and self-doubt. My depression tells me that there's no way I've got the stuff to pull of this activity without making a fool of myself.

I call it inertia because it builds on itself. Let's talk about a party. It starts with in invitation to, let's say, an event built around my industry with important people attending. At first I'm pleased to have been invited and excited about making new connections, seeing old friends and generally having a good time.

Then some tiny little kernel of doubt creeps into my mind. Either it's about my ever expanding waistline and how people I haven't seen in a long time will surely notice or it's about an article I recently wrote which I sure somebody there will have read and found completely idiotic and can't wait to tell me why. Or any other of a thousand little quibbling bits of self-doubt. The kernel grows and grows in my mind until it's all I can think about.

This is how I regularly cancel lunches, find excuses not to write articles even though I might need to the money, and generally prove myself completely unreliable. And, in doing so, I create one more very real way to doubt myself. Now, when the next thing comes up, I've got one more piece of evidence to show myself how I'll fail at that, too. It's an inertial cycle of failure.

So, the easiest thing to do - no, the only thing to do that won't further prove to me what I failure I am - is nothing. Outwardly, I appear lazy but inwardly I'm very actively doing nothing. Right now I can point to three things that I'm very specifically not doing.

Somehow, I thought that this argument would be clearer and more convincing. Having written it out, though, it still just seems like a very elaborate excuse for being lazy.

Maybe I should take a nap.

Given up

2011-05-26T15:29:00.003-06:00

So, it's been a few months.

I really haven't known what to do with this blog. It didn't serve it's purpose for me; I don't feel any better for maintaining it aside from the occasional email I get from a reader who finds something worthwhile in it.

I'm still heading down. I don't know how to stop it. But, someone might get something out of that so I'm going to try again to keep up with it.

Just saying that I'm back; I've succumbed to what seems to be a lifetime of miserable self-doubt and hate. But, I'll be telling you all about it.

That should be fun, right?

I'm okay

2010-09-04T11:51:00.004-06:00

Hello everyone. It's Saturday and I decided to give myself the day off. I thought I'd check in on this blog and the associated email account. I was surprised and touched by all of your comments and emails. I know I've said that before and it might seem trite but it's true; I feel deeply grateful for your interest in me and this blog.

I'm okay for now. Nothing focuses the mind like a deadline. I've been and will continue to be frantically working on this damn book for a few more weeks. It's about all I think of these days which, in its way, is a blessed distraction from my own internal morbidity. It's also why I haven't posted much lately. Up or down, more writing is not really something I want to do after a long day's work.

Many of you have expressed genuine anxiety over my state. Thank you. I really am okay. And, upon entering my three favorite months - September, October, November - I should be so for a while now.

I know I don't post with any sort of regularity. I'm sorry about that but I find that navel gazing isn't always the best option for me. But, in creating this blog and allowing you to become invested in it, I do have a certain obligation to you. So, let's make a date. On 8 October 2010, when the trees are at their autumnal finest in my region, let's meet outside at 7:30 am. On that day and at that time, I will be outside, enjoying nature and feeling alive. I hope you will join me. (Nevermind time zones, etc. This is about the act, not temporal concurrence.)

as things are...

2010-07-29T16:28:00.002-06:00

hi everyone

I hate to be so morbid and self pitying.

but

I think that those of you who have been following this blog for a while know that I'm not manufacturing this. But, I'm pretty much at the bottom. I don't see any way up. I think about suicide all the time and am waiting for the right, uh, inspiration. Every morning I wake up and think "today is it" but I'm too much of a coward.

I don't know what to do with myself.

I don't know what to say.

I'm sorry everyone...

Depressives Eat More Chocolate?

2010-04-27T08:34:00.003-06:00

A study that just came out says that depressives eat more chocolate. Not me. I barely have one serving of chocolate per month. Chicken and beer are my comfort foods. How about you? Do you find comfort in a particular food?

A Word about Comments and Emails

2010-04-24T19:14:00.001-06:00

I am constantly and deeply touched by the thoughtful comments and emails that you send my way. Frankly, I think that this blog should be no more than annoying to anyone who doesn’t live inside my head. So, when you read it and give it enough thought to respond with advice or words of encouragement, I’m filled with gratitude.

Although I read every response, I rarely reply. Most of the time there’s nothing to say. I’ve said my bit; you said yours and we move on. I hope that you’re not offended or distressed by this.

Anyway, that’s all I had to say this time around. After that post I published last night, I popped on to check my email. I had a surprising number of emails and post comments so I thought that a blanket statement would be apropos. Thanks, everyone, for caring and I wish you all the very best on each of your journeys.

And now this blog will return to its regular programming. Coming up: more whining, self-loathing and avoiding the obvious. Stay tuned!

Is Self-Help Even Possible for a Depressive?

2010-04-24T02:01:00.004-06:00

I don't know if that question can be accurately answered as a general rule, but I'm starting to come to the conclusion that, at least for this depressive, the answer is no.

The last few months have been a bad time for me. I want to say the worst ever but its hard to compare a current period with those of the past. I tend to lie to myself and can usually convince myself that things were better than they were. So, it could be that things now are just as bad as they ever have been but just now, down here in this pit, I can't imagine that they were ever worse.

One thing's for certain. I'm self-medicating with alcohol a lot more than usual. Comes with the territory, I suppose, of being a work at home writer. To a certain degree it doesn't matter if I drink, professionally speaking. Nevertheless, I need to slow down in that regard. I have no specific plans as to how I'll slow down but I need to. Maybe I'll cut out spirits at home. That should probably put me back where I need to be. Okay, I'm saying this now. No more distilled alcohol at home. Beer and wine will continue to be okay; booze by the bottle is out. Hold me to that.

But that doesn't address the larger problem. These days I really, really hate myself. I don't know if low self-esteem and self-loathing naturally come with depression but in my case they are part of the same lovely package. And these days the self-hate is very strong within me. Some days I wake up and am instantly overwhelmed with a grand, undefined disappointment in myself. By mid-morning it festers into a real, seething hatred that leaves me shuffling around the house, grumbling to myself about how horrible I am.

And my marriage isn't doing great either. No surprise there, I suppose. How lovable can I be, slurping down booze and grumbling about how much I suck? My wife remains mostly upbeat about life - more about that later - but she can't seem to stand to touch me. I don't really need to say more than that, do I?

Professionally, things continue to improve, which is kind of a surprise. Being a freelancer takes a certain amount of self-sales. It doesn't track that I could sell something which I so totally loathe but I do. Gigs continue to roll in and, I don't think I've mentioned it here yet, I got a book deal a few months back. I know how annoying this must be if there are any aspiring writers that read this blog - how can I have a book deal but spend my time whining? Well, I think that's part of the problem.

I've discussed this before; the more responsibility I have, the more incapable I feel. Trust me, being under contract to write a whole book is a heaping helping of responsibility. Even though I'm working on it apace, more or less, I still feel panicky the closer I get to the deadline. That's partially why I'm up blogging at 2:30 in the morning instead of sleeping - I woke up worrying about the book. So, the more incapable I feel, the more I hate myself and the more I hate myself the more depressed I get.

But there's one possible bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Like many writers, I'm on my spouse's health insurance. She recently started a new job so we get new health insurance in June. I haven't seen the policy yet but I'm hoping that it will cover mental health - something we've never had before. If it does, I think its time I seek professional help.

Typing that out loud for the first time made me cry just a little. Pathetic.

Anyway, yes, I'm ready to give up on self-help. DIY solutions take a certain amount of motivation and depression is a great killer of motivation. Self-help depression therapy seems like a self-defeating proposition. At least, I think it is for me.

So, here's hoping the new insurance policy will cover my brain. I'm not sure what I'll do if it doesn't.

Still here...

2010-03-02T16:15:00.002-06:00

Hey, everyone. I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. Not having great times here and it's hard to make enough sense of it to blog coherently. But I'm still here; slogging through each day. Hopefully I'll have it in me to say more later.

Night Terrors

2009-11-29T12:29:00.002-06:00

Woke up screaming last night. It's been a long time since these night terrors last happened - last December. And here it is, the end of November. Is there something about Christmas that gives me these terrifying nightmares?

Aspergers and Depression

2009-11-21T07:38:00.001-06:00

I’m not sure what set me off in this direction in my thinking but here I am, wondering if I have Aspergers.

First, an update on life as I know it. Things have been going poorly. The economy hit me hard and one of my two sources of income crumbled away. My other source, writing, is actually doing very well. I signed a book deal – my first – in October and other gigs continue to come in even without my seeking them out. I’m making less than I was, which wasn’t much, but I’m happier in this work. So, I should be happy overall but we are talking about depression, right?

My social world continues to shrink and, although I don’t like social situations in the least, I can tell that the almost complete lack of them since I started working at home is taking a heavy toll on my overall emotional well being. I’ve considered spending two or three mornings a week working in a coffee house. I wouldn’t have to deal with anyone but just being out and among others might help.

My drinking has increased. I’m not ready to say it’s a problem yet but it’s worth mentioning.

Depression has wrapped itself completely around me. I’ve succumbed to it in recent months and have found an odd comfort in the resignation. I haven’t taken St. John’s Wort since the summer.

On to Aspergers. Like I said, I’m not sure what sent my mind down this path but I’ve been thinking about my severe social dislike and awkwardness and wondering if this might have something to do with mild autism, which is an oversimplified way to describe Aspergers. Check out the Wikipedia entry on Aspergers if you’re unfamiliar with this condition and really want to know.

I have most of the symptoms. Some points of my life that seem to really mesh well:

The speech thing – My mom tells me that I was a very late talker. She doesn’t remember my first word because I just started talking in complete sentences one day. (I’ve always thought that was odd. Wouldn’t one remember their baby’s first word or utterance regardless?) Also, in elementary school I used to go to speech therapy. I don’t remember the specific problem – I actually forgot about it until college when suddenly one day the memory came flooding back when I met the son of the woman who was my speech teacher. Weird, right?

Social situations – I’ve beat that one to death; that’s a definite check in the yes column.

Misunderstanding other’s nonverbal communication – check.

And so on.

A few points where I don’t seem to fit the condition: I think I’m a pretty good abstract thinker. My professional writing is nonfiction but I have written fiction in the past and greatly enjoyed it. I also like reading fiction and think that I’m pretty good at picking up on the subtext. However, having a degree in English literature could have given me the training to approach this formulaically.

Lack of empathy – this is the biggest reason that would make me question my having Aspergers. I think that I am hyper-aware of other people around me and their reactions to what I say. I often will stop mid-sentence because the slightest change in my listeners expression. People do think that I have an odd speech pattern and I do tend to go on obsessively about a few topics, both aspects of Aspergers.

So, I took the Autism Spectrum Quotient test this morning and scored a 30 which is rated as above average. I always feel like I’m screwing up these self administered tests, though. I’d just spent an hour or so reading about Aspergers so I recognized the symptoms behind the questions. I realized that I was overcompensating and trying to not be to eager with a “yes, yes, that’s me exactly” sort of response. So did I drive my real score down? Who knows.

What will I do with this new information? I have no idea. Probably nothing. However, it does make me feel even more justified in refusing the social anxiety medication that was prescribed to me years ago. It might have treated a symptom but not the problem if I do indeed have Aspergers.

Robert Enke Suicide

2009-11-11T13:02:00.002-06:00

Clearly, depression can get anyone, anywhere.

UK Counselor Directory - www.counselling-directory.org.uk

2009-08-11T05:46:00.003-06:00

Hi everyone. Not a lot is happening with me. Thanks once again for the kind words that you send me.

I'm just dropping in to share a website that was emailed to me. Rather than give you my take I'll be lazy and just paste the email:

I work for a website called Counselling Directory (www.counselling-directory.org.uk) which is an online web directory listing counsellors and psychotherapists all over the UK. Each counsellor has a profile stating what areas they specialise in, a bit about their background, and their qualifications. All the counsellors registered with us will have a relevant qualification and insurance cover or proof of registration with a professional body, so we are assured of their professionalism. The site also has a wealth of information about various types of mental health illness, as well as a blog about the latest health news.

The search facility on the site means you simply type in your postcode or town and the site produces a list of all the counsellors in that area, allowing the individual to browse through them and select and contact one that would be exactly suited to their needs. The site is free to use.

We developed the website when a friend was going through a difficult time, and didn't know where to find help close by. The site has been running for four years now, and we're always looking to try and get our name seen by as many people as possible, as we know from feedback that we provide a valuable and much needed service. We've recently been featured in an article on the Times website, we have a high Google ranking, and have had lots of positive feedback from site users and counsellors alike.

Pretentious?

2009-06-28T09:40:00.003-06:00

Why is it pretentious to use the right word? I got called out for saying that my uvula is vestigial.

Darkness envelopes

2009-06-27T14:27:00.001-06:00

There’s a part of me – a big part of me – that wants to burn all of this. I once had passion; I once had a grasp on what there is and what there isn’t. Or at least I think I did. And I think that I will get there again. But for now, there’s just what I have in front of me. And that’s not much. It never has been.

Back on the SJW

2009-05-22T09:05:00.002-06:00

Black days engulfed me right after that last post. There was no real trigger - is there ever? - I just suddenly found myself back at the bottom. If this is mild depression I can't imagine what those with right proper depression go through.

Money is part of it and it might have been what started down the slide but I really can't blame my middle-class poverty. I think it was probably more of where I put my focus rather than the actual cause. Money's been tight now for, well, over a year but I've been up and down plenty in that time. But it's always good to have an excuse for the negative thoughts, isn't it? Gives one the idea that if it weren't for this one thing everything would be roses.

Besides, what better thing than money to focus on? It is the measuring stick of our culture, isn't it? If I'm going to be depressed and plop on a healthy dollop of low self esteem then there's hardly a better way to justify those feelings than to concentrate on the thing about which society agrees with me - I have no money and colossal debt therefore I am a mean little man.

The amazing thing about my depression - and many others' I'm sure - is that it creeps up on me so subtlety, so stealthy that I don't even know it's there. I can't say when for sure that it started, just that for the last week and a half it's had me under its control. But at the time I simply believed that I was worthless and deserved nothing. Depression didn't occur to me.

The tip off came yesterday. I had two night terror dreams two nights ago. Twice in the pre-dawn hours of the morning I woke up shouting and in a panic. Both times I managed to go back to sleep. And then I slept very late into the morning. I had no reason to - I'm no more or less rested these days than usual I just couldn't stop sleeping. Then once I'd finally rousted myself and was thinking about my chores for the day I thought, 'wouldn't it just be easier to put a gun in my mouth?' I thought about where I could do it that would a) cause the least amount of mess and b) cause my wife the least amount of shock.

Then I realized that I was ticking through the symptoms of depression. The big D was back. So, I took a St. John's Wort capsule at lunch but forgot to at dinner. That's because I fell asleep AGAIN at 6p and slept right up until my wife came home at 8. I was too groggy and distracted by the fact that I'd missed making dinner for us to remember my pill.

Got it in this morning though and, as much as I can, plan to three times a day from here on.

It's so hard but at the same time so comically predictable. I'll get to that herbal week I promised soon but for now I need to climb out of this hole.

An Herbal Week

2009-05-04T09:47:00.003-06:00

For the third or fourth time since launching The Pursuit of Happiness I'm going to try to take this blog in a new direction. On a more or less weekly basis I'm going to pick a ______ and Depression theme and produce four or five entries about it. Why? I'll get into that at the bottom of this post.

This week I'm going to get into herbs and depression. Obviously the big herb in depression therapy is St. John's Wort. I have discussed SJW, especially my experiences with it, ad nauseam in the past. Tomorrow I'll cover it a bit more thoughtfully. Then later in the week I'll get into other herbs that directly or peripherally can be helpful for those suffering from depression.

Personally, I'm a big fan of herbs. I first got into them when I a) fell in love with pesto and b) priced fresh basil in the grocery store. Suddenly an herb garden with lots and lots of basil made a lot of sense. Now I keep a fair sized herb garden with oregano, chives, sage, arugula, rosemary, three types of basil (sweet or Genovese, columnar and African blue), mint and a few various others that change from season to season.

This all began a few years before my diagnosis of mild depression. When that happened and my therapist tried to take me straight to medication I instead turned to my herb garden. I knew about St. John's Wort but had never grown it nor did I want to. I thought that I probably couldn't produce a consistent enough dosage for it to be effective.

But my diagnosis specifically was mild depression brought on by social anxiety. I still wonder if that is BS b/c the drug she wanted me to take was actually for social anxiety and I'm the suspicious type. However it felt right because I was pretty sure I was depressed and I've been socially anxious my whole life; don't need a diagnosis to know that!

So I read up on the herbs that I already happened to have and made a list of the ones that were said to be helpful against depression as well as relaxing or useful against anxiousness. Anyone who's suffered from depression knows that even temporary relief is blessed, one reason that I think depression can lead to a lot of addictions.

Anywho…
I harvested all of the herbs on my list - five or six, I think it was - and mixed them with about an equal amount of green tea. The stuff tasted like muddy feet but it really did make me feel better. I was working at an office at the time and would come home and lunch to a cup of the tea. It always left me feeling relaxed and, not happy, but content. The effect usually lasted two or three hours.

So that plus the previous entries about SJW have been my experience with herbs and depression. We'll get into more specific discussion about this through the rest of the week.

Why am I doing this?
OK, for anyone still reading and for my regular readers who are probably the only people interested in the why of my new _______ and Depression series.

I'm doing it specifically because I'm out of money. I've been working at home, freelancing for three and a half years now. As everyone else in the world is saying, the economy finally got me. I'm having a much harder time finding clients, my savings have dried up and my taxes were a lot more than I expected.

So I'm trying to turn some of my hobby and navel-gazing sites, like this one, into money makers.

Now, my motivation may be crass but it is one of necessity. Even so, my voice here will remain the same honest, confessional voice that it always has been. Hiding behind anonymity gives me the freedom to be much more honest than I can in anything else that I do.

So, to my loyal readers, I say thank you for the support and comments that you have left on this blog and sent to me personally. I hope that you will continue to read and you enjoy the new direction.

That Space Between a Good Time and Bad Memory

2009-02-28T09:45:00.000-06:00

I attended an industry event last night. It was great fun. I got to spend time talking to people who actually DO what I spend my professional time just writing about. I met members of the industry that I hadn't yet and spent time with people whom I truly admire for their craft.

The drive home was very happy as I reflected on the night. I'd had a great time, made new friends, and learned a little more about my industry. I thought about the different articles I could write, the magazines I could sell them to, what I could blog about, etc.

Then this morning I woke up and started to work on a blog post. That's when the social anxiety monster started whispering in my ear. He reminded me of a less than intelligent question that I asked. He pointed out how fat I must have looked next to some of the prettier people at the event. And he plainly stated that I clearly embarrassed myself and should never show my face around any of these people ever again.

If I let my typical pattern continue I'll have myself convinced that the night was a total disaster for me within a few days. By next weekend I should be in full on depression mode.

Even if I'm conscious of the process, can I stop it?

Nothing To Report

2009-02-19T05:23:00.005-06:00

Just checking in to report that there's nothing to report.

My year isn't quite as bright and shiny as it was but I still haven't had any really dark days. Still off the SJW, too. It's odd, that. I just realized one day that I had forgotten to take it for a few days and I didn't miss it one whit. I still have a massive pill bottle of it in my desk drawer.

A few things have cropped up but they hardly rate as depressive episodes, just emotional bumps. The first was yesterday I had to get nasty with a magazine that owes me money for some work that I did last summer. I hated doing it and even though I was in the right I still felt small and mean for the rest of the day. That's an odd thing; I know I'm not alone in it. The more I am in the right and the greater the insult to me, the worse I feel when I overtly react to it.

Another is a dear friend lost her mother. As you might imagine I have few friends. This has less to do with my sometimes apparently abrasive personality and more to do with the fact that I simply let few people in. Well, she is one. She's quite a bit older than me and it wasn't unnatural for her mother to go. But I don't really know what to do. I called her when I heard and we talked for around 30 minutes. She discovered her mother collapsed in her (mother's) house so she had to live every minute of that horrible day. Now she's descended into her family as they deal with everything that has to be dealt with. I want to do something for her but I feel like I'll only be intruding. I may give her another call on Friday.

Finally, an old friend who's been gently trying to reconnect with me for months finally forced the issue. I cut him off years ago. I was having a very bad year with my family and … well, it's all stupid and the details are pretty boring if you didn't live them. Suffice to say that I was petty with him and was just being stupidly stubborn. So, he lives a continent away now and pinned me down via facebook. He sent a long, nice email just catching up. No mention of my pettiness. He ended the message by saying that I was someone for whom he felt great affection. Those were his words, great affection. I don't think anyone has ever said that to me. It was startlingly disarming especially when said between two heterosexual men. It made me regret the years.

But, like I said, nothing of the deep, black depression that has engulfed me in the past. Just life.

So that's my update for now. Cheers all!

photo by elisafox

Depression Rock?

2009-01-28T21:07:00.001-06:00

More info here.

Oh, and one more thing

2009-01-18T14:52:00.003-06:00

Forgot to mention, I have another book review coming up. Penguin contacted me and wanted to know if I'd check out Climbing Out of Depression: A Practical Guide to Real and Immediate Help so as soon as it arrives and I can carve out a few hours to read it I'll let you know what I think.

Ray's Shiny New Year

2009-01-18T14:32:00.002-06:00

Hey, wow, did I leave this blog hanging or what? What a bleak entry that last one was! I was on no sleep; exhausted and sure that I'd never get a peaceful night again.

Then the dreams stopped.

Literally stopped within a night or two of my having written it. I have two theories. One is that I needed the therapy of describing them to someone. (Thanks, readers, for your feedback and more importantly just being there for me to describe them to.) Or two they were holiday related. The date on that post is Dec. 28 meaning that Christmas falls right in the middle of that period of a solid week of nightmares.

But for now they've stopped for whatever reason and I'm grateful.

I've actually been feeling pretty well these last few weeks. I don't have any reason to but when can a depressive look outwardly to explain his feelings? The economy is hitting me hard. A significant portion of my income is based in a sector of US business that is really hurting so consequently my checkbook is, too. Frankly I don't know how I'm going to make it through next month.

Nevertheless I've been in the best mood since New Year's Day that I can remember for months. It might have to do with my clean desk. I ritualistically clean down my office and package up everything from the old year sometime in the first week of the new year. There's nothing quite like a clean desk and office. It's a silly little thing but there it is.

I even realized yesterday that I haven't taken SJW for days and haven't missed it.

It's all almost disconcerting!

To sleep perchance to dream

2008-12-28T07:07:00.000-06:00

I think these dreams are a new thing. Well, not new but something new that I’m being forced to deal with.

I don’t exactly remember when they started but it was sometime in the last fifteen years. Dreams sometimes concerned with remarkably mundane or conventionally scary stories would fill me with terror. The dream would feel real and hopeless and terrible and all I could do was scream. I’d wake up actually screaming.

At first this only happened a couple of times a year. It was startling then and later just kind of funny. My wife’s reaction was the funniest to me. She’s a pretty deep sleeper and would roll over and say, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ or something equally tender. The dreams were no big deal and, though one particular night was ruined I could make it up soon enough.

They gradually became more frequent. Occasionally I’d realize that I was in one of these dreams and I’d understand that I could escape by screaming. More often though the screams or excited exclamations, because sometimes my wife will understand what I say especially if she’s already awake, are just a spontaneous and natural reaction to the terror that I think I’m actually experiencing.

Now the dreams themselves are the strangest part of this. Of course they are dreams so they have that natural feeling even amongst unnatural progression and circumstances. Very often they are involved with my either having been left or imprisoned. Sometimes I dream that my wife is leaving me and as I try to find her ‘cause I just know that if we can only talk… as I try to find her I realize that everyone around me suddenly have malevolent intentions for me, vague but unmistakable malevolency. Then my wife appears as their leader either laughing or leading the charge and I scream. Or in other dreams I’m bound in the dark and I know that my disinterested captor is a terrible, monstrous man. The panic in these isn’t about what he plans to do it’s simply that he’s caught me.

OK, I know that there’s nothing less interesting than another’s dreams so I leave that there. You get the idea of some of the basic themes without having to sit through the specific plots.

As of a few months ago I was having these dreams once or twice a month. Still bearable and, though no longer funny, I was dealing. But a couple of weeks ago they suddenly became more frequent. I’m having them nightly now. Twice last night. In fact I can say with a fair amount of certainty that every time I’ve fallen asleep during the past week I’ve been awoken by one of these dreams.

Now I’ve read that we only remember the dreams that we wake up during so perhaps I have always had terrifying dreams but now they’re waking up more frequently. Or perhaps whatever torment bubbles up from my subconscious during them gets closer to the surface all the time.

But whatever the reason I can’t take much more of this. And I don’t have a clue as to how to fix it. I’ve tried sleeping pills; they only leave me trapped in the terror longer before my groggy body can wrench me out of it.

3:30 am - Boxing Day

2008-12-26T03:41:00.002-06:00

It’s a month on since my last post. In that time a lot has happened but not much has changed. I received some nice and thoughtful comments here and in private emails – none of which I acknowledged or responded to. I received a couple of link exchange requests that I’ve been too distracted/lazy to deal with even though it takes little more than a cut and paste.

In short I’ve been in full-on wallow. My business is hurting, money’s tight and suicide has crept back into my idle mind. I’m having trouble sleeping and when I do sleep, which is never more than one hour at a stretch, I have complex and stressful dreams. They are generally concerned with abandonment or imprisonment, conditions that I’ve never really suffered from.

I’m a mess.

Doing the Big Work

2008-11-19T02:59:00.002-06:00

It's 3am and I'm awake with a pretty remarkable headache. So I sucked down a fistful of ibuprofen and some sinus pills. Now I'm just surfing the inter-tubes looking for some entertainment to take my mind off of the dull thud. I found this:

I'm a big fan of Marc Maron. His perspective of human nature is often provocative and always interesting. I know that I should probably add a lot of caveats here but just step back an enjoy this bit for what it is. Did you do it? Are you sure? OK, now you can make a comment.

Depressed or Lazy?

2008-10-23T09:48:00.005-06:00

I wrote this post, Am I Depressed or Just Lazy, some time ago. At the time it was really a rhetorical question. I believed that I was about equal doses of each. The post was really about me trying to poke myself into action. If one admits a personal foible in public then he will be more conscious of it and therefore more corrective of it in the future, right?

But perhaps I'm not as lazy as I thought. Perhaps I'm more depressed than I've believed. Here's why I say that. That little post has become one of the most popular on the blog thanks to search engines. And it turns out that a lot of people have this same question, "Am I depressed or lazy?"

I've been noticing this for months and wondering what I could do about it. I'm certainly not equipped to deal with anyone else's problems nor would I presume to offer advice but I know how to find some people who are so equipped. So I thought I'd track down a blogging psychologist that might answer some questions about this issue. Should be interesting reading and it might even help some of those readers that find The Pursuit of Happiness after trying to resolve their own laziness vs. depressiveness.

So help me out. I jotted down a few questions but they don't seem to get to the root of it:

Where does this question come from? What is the apparent connection that many of us feel between the symptoms of depression and simple laziness?

It strikes me that only a depressed person would come up with this question. Someone who is simply lazy would likely not confuse his or her “condition” with depression. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

What would you suggest to someone who is asking him or herself this question?

What else should I ask? And anyone know of a pro that could expertly answer these questions?

All suggestions welcome...

Relisted

2008-10-23T06:10:00.003-06:00

The Pursuit of Happiness has made another list: Top 100 Men’s Health Blogs
Check it out.

LetsFaceThis.com - Received in my Email Today

2008-10-20T01:58:00.000-06:00

Did you know that, in Canada :

* Nearly one in three people will be affected by a mental illness in their lifetime?
* Almost 46% think people use the term mental illness as an excuse for bad behaviour?
* One in four are fearful of being around those who suffer from serious mental illness?

This October, help Sunnybrook Foundation and Presenting Partner, Manulife Financial confront the stigma of mental illness and raise funds to support mental health research and care.

Let’s Face This – Confront the Stigma of Mental Illness is an innovative grassroots web campaign designed to raise much-needed funds and awareness in support of mental health treatment and research. It is being launched in conjunction with Mental Illness Awareness Week, taking place from October 5 – 11.

Why is it important?

Despite the prevalence and impact mental illness can have on people’s lives and the lives of their loved ones, in many cases it goes undiagnosed and untreated.

Why? Because there is a persistent stigma surrounding mental illness which can leave individuals too ashamed to seek help; too embarrassed to confide in a loved one, and left feeling alone and helpless.

What Can You Do To Help?

We invite you to visit the website - letsfacethis.ca – and post a photo and message on the “Tree of Support”. With each new photo added, the “tree” will grow, symbolizing growing awareness, education, fundraising and hope for those suffering from mental illness.

Let’s Face This reminds us that mental illnesses, like depression and anxiety, are not the result of personality flaws or character weakness, but, like other illnesses, are biological in nature. And like other medical conditions, respond to treatment and care.

I invite you to join me and countless others confront the stigma of mental illness.

Let’s Face This together and confront the stigma of mental illness.

My Big Week

2008-10-13T10:51:00.000-06:00

This is probably the only work that I’m going to do today.

Last week was probably the biggest week of the year for me, both professionally and personally. I attended the most important annual conference of my industry, I presented two lectures (and was paid well for the effort), my wife came with me for the first time and I tried to do it all without St. Johns Wort.

This was primarily a packing decision and I’m really not sure why I did it. There were other concerns such as being able to take my thrice daily dose without having to answer questions from my colleagues and being overly cautious about airport security but I think that perhaps I just wanted to see if I could pull it off.

Conferences like this one mean that you get to interact with others who uniquely understand your professional worries and joys. It’s always a high and I look forward to this one all year long. Plus just the vacationy aspect of the event, even though one is working the whole time, makes it an upbeat thing. Perhaps I thought that I’d try coasting on this energy.

Now, I was worried about the lecture as you know from previous posts. (I survived, by the way. My wife was very complimentary, which she never is so falsely, and a handful of the audience came up to further discuss the topic both hours so I guess I pulled it off. There was also discussion with the organizers afterwards of my returning next year. So I suppose we should put this in the professional successes column.) But it was the first thing of the week and, again, I thought that I could coast on my relief that it was over and leave SJW out of my life for at least one week.

We left on Tuesday. By noon on Friday I was curled up in a ball in my hotel room bed full of self castigation and doubt. I told everyone that it was a dodgy breakfast burrito that I’d had at a local diner.

I slept for a few hours that day, skipping some of the best seminars of the week, before I was able to roust myself in time to catch the last event of the day. There were meetings on Saturday, too, but I was able to make those.

Overall, the week was good. I mostly enjoyed myself and I feel recharged professionally. I’m taking today to decompress but I learned an important lesson. St. John’s Wort works for me but I have to stay on it or risk a crash. I’m not sure if the pressures and eustress of the week got to me or just the fact that I’d laid the herb aside caused me to plummet but either way I’m convinced that it wouldn’t have happened had I just packed it.

Live and learn!

Hide & Seek - Book Review

2008-10-02T09:58:00.010-06:00

Hide & Seek
A Neurotic's Hilarious Journey
by Wendy Aron

Let’s say that you have to go on a trip to a city in a foreign country. You’ve never been there and you don’t speak the language. It doesn’t matter whether you want to go or not; you have to go.

Now, you can take one companion with you and you’ve narrowed your choices down to three. First is your insanely rich grandfather. You love your grandfather and he loves you although you don’t have a lot in common. He’s promised that you will only have the finest on your trip – first class travel, the best hotels and meals in the finest restaurants.

Second is your brainy cousin. Again, you love your cousin and he loves you and you have as much in common with him as any two people of the same generation. The advantage here is that this cousin is a professor. He teaches the language and culture of the very same country where you are headed. In fact he goes there about once a year. He can pay his own way and promises to show you the most interesting and intellectually stimulating bits of the culture that you’ll be visiting for the first time.

Third is your friend. She makes you laugh.

Whom do you choose? It’d be a tough decision but I’m pretty sure that I’d take my friend.

This is Hide & Seek. I didn’t want to take this trip to Depression and I’m not particularly fond of being here. But reading this book is like being able to go there with my friend who makes me laugh.

Other books could tell me all of the different types of depression, what causes them and what treatments work. Of course we all read those books and they help a bit but a commiseratory laugh seems to help a heluva lot more.

Hide & Seek focuses on one year of Aron’s life in New York. The loose frame of the book is built when we learn that her therapist, upon whom she’s come to depend, might be moving to LA. Aron spends this year frantically trying all sorts of different solutions to losing such a valuable person in her life. She tries speed dating, assertiveness training, aromatherapy, etc. Each step in her journey is told in hilarious vignettes where she describes the bizarre solutions offered to her by even more bizarre people.

Aron’s had a rougher time of it than I have. My whiny little “mild” depression pales but when she says things like ‘we depressives react this way when that happens’ I can instantly identify. It’s nice laugh at depression with her; she lifts the darkness.

Wendy Aron's Website

Amazon Listing for Hide & Seek

Dealing with Depression - Naturally

2008-10-01T05:44:00.005-06:00

(Guest post by Sarah Scrafford on behalf of X-Ray Technician Schools a complete guide for online X-ray technician programs.)

Going through depression is like going through labor – only you know how much pain you’re in. While the result of labor, no matter how long, is a bundle of joy, depression ends up taking its toll on both mind and body. I should know, I’ve been through the symptoms a couple of times in my life – you’re not able to eat or sleep, you’re scared to get into bed because of the nightmares that haunt you so you drink yourself to sleep, getting out of bed each morning is a drag because you can’t seem to think of a reason to get up and face the day, and your mind wanders in its own lonely and sad cocoon irrespective of what people around you are saying and doing. I do have one good thing to say about depression though - it can be cured without medical treatment if you’re mentally strong enough. Here are a few pointers from my suitcase of memories to help those battling this disease:

Keep yourself busy: There’s no better antidote to the slow poison called depression than work, work and more work. The more you try to drown yourself in some useful activity that contributes to your self-worth, the better you’re bound to feel. So get up, get out of the house, go to work, and throw yourself whole heartedly into the tasks that await you, and you’ll see a remarkable difference in your mental status in as little as a day or two.

Surround yourself with loved ones: One technique I used to pull myself out of the quagmire of depression was to talk, talk and talk some more to friends. If I was not hanging out with some of them, I was on the phone with a few others. Even though my heart was not in it, I took part in all their activities, mostly the ones that painted the town red. And believe me, pretending to be happy and carefree actually resulted in the feelings becoming a reality.

Avoid substance abuse: Sure, alcohol or drugs can provide you with a momentary escape from the ghosts that torment you, but the relief is fleeting. And when the effects die down, the ghosts come back with a vengeance that leaves you even more devastated. It’s not going to be easy to stay away from the bottle and the pills, especially when you’ve become addicted to them for their soporific effect, but a little will power goes a long way. Stay true to your resolve for a day or two, after which the going gets easier.

Get some exercise: A good sweat is enough to chase away the demons that are swirling in your mind, so put on those running shoes and jog your blues away. An iPod loaded with upbeat songs is the only thing you need for company. Alternatively, you could take up a sport and let the adrenaline flow as you battle it out with your friends – the camaraderie and laughter will make you forget you were ever depressed.

Give meaning to your life: Turn your life around so that you find some sense of purpose to your presence on earth. Involve yourself in an activity that fulfills your soul and makes you want to face each day with renewed vigor. This will prevent you from slipping back into your moody, reserved persona.

By-line:

This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the topic of x ray tech schools. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.

Too Distracted to be Depressed

2008-09-29T09:31:00.004-06:00

A comment on my last post: “Are you alright? Please just post a single line to let us know. K”

I’m really touched, thanks. I’m doing OK. Here are some highlights from my rambly life.

For the last few weeks I’ve been immersed in two speeches that I’ve been hired to present early next month. I’ve had a lot of trouble with them because, though I love the topic and the research is a fun to do, anytime I work on them I start to think about the speeches themselves and my mind clamps shut. Given my social anxiety it should be no surprise that I’m pretty nervous about them. I understand that lots of people have trouble with public speaking so I have no way to compare my reaction to others’ but I haven’t been sleeping, I’m drinking even more than usual which was already more than is healthy, my other work has been neglected, I’ve been prone to overreact often with rage– basically I’m a nervous, twitchy wreck.

I have a good friend who’s enthusiastic about everything that I do. I have few friends but she has lots and most of them seem to like me. I asked her if she could gather some of them for a rehearsal of my speech. She did and Sat. night I got to give it a dry run. Things went pretty well although I have some clear holes that need patching. They kept telling me that I’m charmingly disorganized. The interpretation is obvious.

Otherwise life is churning along. One advantage to having a major roadblock in one’s future thinking is there isn’t room for a good, all encompassing depressive episode. Things haven’t gotten really dark since I misinterpreted my St. John’s Wort dosage earlier this summer. That might be the herb or it might be the speech. If the dark engulfs me later next month I suppose I’ll have the answer to that one.

Finally Hide & Seekis being released on Wednesday. I really enjoyed this book. Look for my review here tomorrow or Wednesday.

It’s made me think again about aromatherapy. New-agey flotsam and jetsam aside this might be a helpful thing for me. I think I’ll look into it sometime after the speeches.

Improper Use of St. John’s Wort

2008-09-02T18:12:00.001-06:00

As you know I’m convinced that St. John’s Wort works. One has to be religious about taking it or its benefits wear off in a matter of a couple of days. But what is a person to do if he is going to be out all day? It takes two pills three times a day for the brand that I take and carrying a pill bottle around just isn’t practical. I also don’t want to advertise that I’m taking it.

My solution is to simply throw four or six pills in my pocket before I leave. Most of the time I can remember to take them and it’s easy enough to do take them discreetly. Problem solved.

Well, it didn’t work today. I had to leave the house just before eight. I work at home so this was unusual. I was going to take pictures of and interview some people who were harvesting an interesting crop. I packed up my camera, notebook and four pills to cover me for the day in case it took that long.

It didn’t; I got home at noon. I fixed lunch and dug in my pocket for the pills. They weren’t there. I thought that they might have fallen out at some point and I didn’t think much of it. But then I felt some sort of grit against the cloth of my pocket. Then I realized what might have happened and pulled the pocket out.

Sure enough the ground up St. John’s Wort, or at least some, of it was still there but the pills weren’t. It was a hot day and I wore jeans because I knew that this crop was particularly scratchy. The result being that I stood around in the hot sun for almost four house sweating into my jeans and dissolving the pills with my sweat.

Hmm, I thought that this would be an amusing anecdote but now that I write it out it just seems kind of icky. Anyway, here’s the punchline.

Ready for it? Here it comes!

My left leg has been in a good mood ever since. Hahaha!

Surviving Ben’s Suicide – Book Review

2008-09-01T13:26:00.009-06:00

Surviving Ben’s Suicide
A Woman’s Journey of Self-Discovery
by C. Comfort Shields

Surviving, quite simply, is the story of a woman whose college boyfriend committed suicide. The narrative follows the story of Ben and Shields’s relationship, his growing depression and suicide, and how Shields spent years trying to make sense of it.

The story unfolds slowly as does the full picture of Ben’s mental struggle. In an almost ABAB pattern the chapters toggle back and forth across time over the bright line of his death. Time moves forward along each story line but the reader is left feeling jolted back and forth. It is a jarring effect but I’m not sure if it would be more enjoyable if it were written more linearly. The back and forth disallows the reader from settling comfortably into the story of young love or the healing at the end but it also provides some relief from the darkest parts of the tale.

But that’s technique; let’s talk about the meat of the book. There is no question that Ben suffered. If the fact that a healthy, intelligent man in his mid-twenties chose to kill himself doesn’t convince one the final chapters of Surviving make clear the severity of his emotional or mental problems.

It is also clear that Shields, the narrator, suffered. Not only did her lover and friend kill himself but just a few years before she had survived a bus accident that killed another close friend. The years of the late teens and early twenties when one is deciding what life will be is a bad time to deal with even one accidental death.

I found it difficult to connect with this book. I understood going in that it was about dealing with the suicide of a loved one but in the aftermath and even before Ben’s suicide Shields’s perspective seems to be the most important thing. Naturally this is intrinsic in a story told first-person but her preoccupation with how everything and everyone affected her is almost myopic. That’s not to say that Surviving isn’t a compelling read; it is. I’m only saying that Shields occasional preoccupation with how everything affected her is distracting. In my life it is far more likely that I’d be Ben rather than Shields so I suppose that this skewed my perspective a bit.

On the balance I’d have to say that I enjoyed reading this book. As Shields points out there is a definite stigma against suicide in our culture as well as a stigma against those who are “only” lovers and not married – something with which I’ve dealt. Surviving is certainly worth a read if you are seeking to understand suicide or inspiration for dealing with the death of a loved one.

You can check out some other reviews on Surviving Ben's Suicide's Amazon.com page.

a book I'm reading

2008-08-30T05:35:00.002-06:00

It’s Saturday morning, about 6a. I’m the only one up. Usually my wife is up by now but she has to work a very long day on Fridays - 14 hours - so she deservedly sleeps in on Saturdays when she can.

I’m trudging through a book that is at the same time fascinating and frustrating. It’s one of the two that I mentioned earlier I plan to review for this blog. I’m always very torn when I don’t love a book which I’ve been given to review. First, the book was free so I feel like I owe someone a positive reveiw. Second the book was published and I have an idea of the incredible amount of work that went into doing so. Third, whether I like it or not, the writer has been judged on some level to be a better writer than myself - I haven’t published a book - so I have to wonder if I even had the right to not like it.

But I’m torn about this book for other reasons. It’s written in first person so to read it is to live in the writer’s head. I only point this out because with every page I am more and more annoyed with every character in the book, especially the narrator. Even so, I can’t help but be fascinated by the story and continually drawn to turn the page. On that level I have to admit that the book is a success.

I’m still not sure how I’m going to review it.

But that’s not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about an English teacher of mine who died during my junior year of high school. I’ll do that later. I’ve noticed that my entries here tend to ramble so I’m making a conscious effort to shorten them.

If I’m going to do that then I’d better stop this entry right now.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

2008-08-29T09:49:00.002-06:00

For no other reason than I just feel it in the air today...

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

-lifted from BobDylan.com

Light therapy for depression

2008-08-25T22:06:00.004-06:00

(Guest post by Tim Desmond who hosts a website offering phone counseling and information on treating depression.)

Light therapy (also called phototherapy) has been studied as a treatment for seasonal depression for more than 20 years. More recently it has been shown to be one of the most effective treatments for nonseasonal depressional as well. Several studies have shown lightboxes can achieve significant relief from depression more than four times faster than medication. It is estimated that a significant percentage of people in the US suffer from light deficiency. Symptoms of light deficiency include depression, lack of motivation, lack of energy and carbohydrate craving.

What kind of light to use

Both natural sunlight and commercial lightboxes have been shown to treat depression effectively. While there is some evidence that exposure to light in the early morning is most effective, other studies suggest that different people respond best to getting light at different times of day. Average exposure time in most studies to a 10,000 lux lightbox (lux is a unit of brightness) was thirty minutes. If choosing to use sunlight, thirty minutes on a clear day at midday is ideal. Commercial lightboxes and the sun can both produce vitamin D, which is believed to play an important role in causing and treating depression. However, the sun can only do so when it is high enough in the sky for UVB rays to penetrate the atmosphere. Depending on your latitude, the sun may only be high enough in the sky to be able to produce vitamin D for a few hours around midday.

Whether you choose natural sunlight or a lightbox, it is very important that you do not use any sunscreen. Sunscreen blocks your body's ability to produce vitamin D. If you believe your depression might be caused by a vitamin D deficiency, you should also take a vitamin D supplement.

Click here for an ideal lightbox.

Blogsvertise.com Sucks!

2008-08-20T17:47:00.011-06:00

OK, so I thought that I could make a bit of money from this blog. That's not wrong is it? I don't blog anywhere else for free - in most cases I'm paid by the blog owner - so it's almost an involuntary action for me to expect money for blogging.

Right or wrong, I thought I'd give it a shot. Besides the Cheezy Adspace on the left column I signed up for the program called blogvertise.com or blogsvertise.com. The idea is simple - bloggers and advertisers are paired up and bloggers are a paid a few bucks to write an entry about the advertisers' products or sites. The first entry went well so I thought we were in business.

I got a second assignment and wrote the entry below. It was rejected because it wasn't "related to advertiser." I didn't understand this because it is precisely and only about the advertiser; how could it then not be enough about the advertiser to pass muster? The rejection email went on to make several points that in the mind of Lori, the blogvertiser employee who sent it, explain the reasons for the rejection. They are:

Make sure there are 3 or more links to the sponsor's site in your blog entry.

Double-check the links to make sure they are all working correctly and not tagged nofollow. (click on each link to verify it is working)

Make sure you submit the permanent URL so we can find the entry.

Make sure you have not copied & pasted content from the advertiser's website.

Make sure your entry is long enough and is related to what the sponsor's site is about. Minimum of 2-3 paragraphs long.

Please review the rules and guidelines for any possible other reasons why your blog entry was rejected.

I went through each point but still couldn't see the problem.

Now, let me say one thing at this point. I write professionally. This is how I pay my bills. I'm used to conforming to the needs of whomever is paying me. I don't take it personally when something is rejected or edited; one has to grow a thick skin about such things.

I replied to this particular rejection letter politely explaining that I didn't understand what the editor was looking for and requesting some direction. Lori didn't respond. I send another email, this time to the more generic email address for the site - info@ or something like that. Still no response. By now a few days had gone by and I received an automatic email telling me that time was running out. It said I'd better accept the assignment and write my entry or else.

Now I went to the help page on the site. I posted a message there explaining the situation and providing all the information they could possibly need. At this point I'd put much more work into this issue that what they were promising to pay me. Well, they still refused to talk to me.

I've had enough. I'm done with this outfit. If they can't take a moment to answer a legitimate question from a blogger, however obvious the answer may be to them, then I have no time for them.

So, I’m becoming a fan of St. John’s Wort. What other supplements are out there? Let's see what's available from FitFuel.com.

Stress Control Supplements - These are probably closest to the kind of supplement that I've been talking about on this blog. These pills promise to relieve stress and, as an added bonus, cut down on weight. In other words, relax yourself thin with these babies.

HGH Boosters - I have no idea what HGH is but if you're afraid your HGH levels are low then this is the stuff for you. According to the website it is an anti-aging and bodybuilding product that will provide peak performance in every aspect of life.

Gluten Free Foods - Do you have Celiac disease? Here are some specially prepared gluten-free foods.

This post brought to you by FitFuel.com

1:25 am

2008-08-14T00:24:00.003-06:00

Had a professional setback on Monday.

I don't completely understand the connection between life events and my depression but they are most certainly intertwined. When I get hit with something like this it can trigger a low point which is where I am just now. But it also doesn't take external stimuli to send me spiraling.

I'm sucking down the SJW religiously but I'm having trouble climbing out. Right now things seem pretty bleak; I may look back later and decide that this was just another run of the mill trough but it doesn't feel that way right now.

Suicide has been much on my mind. I did an odd thing this afternoon. Sleeping pills really knock me out - more so, I think, than most people. Half a dose hits me hard and keeps me down all night. Around 5p yesterday I took a full dose. When my wife got home at 8 (her usual time) I was out cold and didn't wake until 10. I didn't have any reason for doing this except that it just felt like the thing to do. As I was fading to sleep I wondered if it was a suicide trial run.

But now I'm awake and it's one-thirty. My sleep's going to be fucked up for days now.

Three reasons I don't kill myself:

I'm a coward
I don't want to leave my wife alone with the debt we have
I'm still curious to see what's going to happen next

How long will these hold true?

One Hundred Blogs

2008-08-11T05:32:00.004-06:00

It's a very lovely Monday morning. Since I don't have to punch a clock Mondays don't carry the same sort of soul-sucking dread that they used to. This particular one finds me in my favorite chair, fresh cup of coffee just beside me and a brilliant sunrise blasting over my neighbor's roof. (Literally, as I typed that the sun rose! When it has a close, defined line like a nearby rooftop it can happen that quickly.) I've got George Winstonplaying in my earbuds and all is about as well as it can get in my little world.

So why, under such circumstances do I choose to be pecking away at my depression blog? Well, it's only to recipricate some link karma and announce that my little collection of whiny, navel-gazing ramblings have made another list of superlative blogs. Check out Top 100 Mental Health and Psychology Blogs at UniversityReviewsOnline.com.

I never promote this thing except that I sent the first couple of entries to Digg. (At this point I have no idea why and would most certainly not do such a thing now.) But somehow it attracts attention and brings in a modest amount of traffic. I really don't know why. The writing is sloppy. The topics are repetitive and, just like my own mental health, seem to swirl about without reaching any firm conclusion. They offer nothing of value to the reader that I can see. (This isn't meant to criticize regular readers in any way; only to express my bewilderment.) But, like I've said before, this blog does do something for me. There is some therapy in shouting into the void. And others seem to enjoy it for reasons that pass my understanding. So on we go.

Upcoming Book Reviews

2008-08-09T05:54:00.004-06:00

I forgot to mention that I've got a couple of book reviews coming up on this blog. Look for my review of Surviving Ben's Suicidelater this month and Hide & Seek: How I Laughed at Depression, Conquered My Fears and Found Happinesssome time in September.

Since last time...

2008-08-09T05:42:00.002-06:00

I’ve had a rough few weeks. Something I’ve probably mentioned before is that it is very hard for me to blog about my mental state when it’s at its lowest. Thus this blog has never served the purpose that I hoped it would when I first set it up. But it does have some value to me and, quite surprisingly, to others. So I keep it up.

A few truths about this blog have developed recently. I’m sharing these because since my last entry a few weeks ago some readers have communicated to me their dissatisfaction with the sporadic nature of this project. Knowing how I write this thing might help these readers understand why I dip in an out of it as I do.

I never read old entries. I don’t like reading what I’ve written here. This is unusual; typically I read and reread what I’ve written endlessly, especially editable web content. But I learned early on that if I look back on this blog then I just want to delete it all. I’m glad I had the foresight to do this anonymously or there’s no way I’d let some/most of the whining that I’ve done here stand.

I don’t always blog when I want to. There have been a number of times over the last few weeks when I really did want to sit down and pour out an entry but I didn’t. Mainly because my proper writing career is becoming busier all of the time and for most of the past few weeks I was dealing with looming deadlines. Right now my nearest deadline is two months out; my latest deadline was yesterday and I just made that one. So, I couldn’t spend my writing energy here. Think I’m depressed now? Check with me when the electric company has cut power because I stopped paying the bill!

I only blog when I want to. I tried to establish a regimented schedule for this blog as I do with my professional blogs but that just didn’t work. Any value that this project has evaporates when I try to put it on a schedule.

Oh, and one more thing. As evidenced by my previous entry I will from time to time be posting sponsored entries. I will maintain the honest, confessional voice that I’ve established here but the topics might seem a bit strange. Please just bear with me on these; can’t fault me for making a buck, right? Between us, you’ll always know that they are sponsored by the last line of the entry, ok?

OK, back to the last few weeks. As I mentioned above I’ve had a lot of deadlines. This means more work and that’s a good thing. But it also means that a lot of different people have been depending on me for lots of different things. I learned that this can be a source of anxiety. It makes sense – if I get anxious in social situations then it seems natural that I’d get pretty anxious when others in my society are counting on me for something.

Another source of stress is the fact that with each advancement I make in my career I find myself with a whole new audience to disappoint. It never occurs to me when I’m trying to get that next great gig but when I do I always tell myself that here’s another first impression for me to totally screw up.

And the cycle starts – I get anxious and nervous, I start to feel stress because I just know that this time I won’t be able to pull it off, nervousness turns to self-loathing which turns into a full-on fit of depression. Then I spend a day or two curled up in bed or, more likely, drunk. Then I roust myself, develop a plan and execute it - usually just in time for the deadline.

Now, imagine going through that over and over with overlapping deadlines and you’ll have an idea of how I spent July and the first week of August.

I refused a new job offer last week for obvious reasons.

Oh, and regarding the St. John’s Wort… As you know I’ve been trying to find a brand that I like. Here in the US herbals aren’t regulated so I never know if I’m getting the same thing from brand to brand. I tried a few different ones and found that I preferred Nature Made. I’d bought a new bottle back in June but it just didn’t seem to be doing the job this time around. Around mid-July I crashed really hard. As I was slogging through my emotional fog it suddenly occurred to me that I might be taking the wrong dose.

I checked the bottle and sure enough it said two pills three times a day. My previous bottle – a different brand – had been one times three and it just didn’t occur to me to check when I switched back. Things improved noticeably after that.

One more thing before I close this behemoth of an entry. Suicide returned during the darkest days of July. I hadn’t even noticed that it had left but it had and I can now say SJW really works. For months I hadn’t thought about suicide and it was lovely, looking back. But now its back and it’s probably going to take me a while to shake it. But now I know that I can.

Until next time,
Yours,
Ray

Of acne, haircuts and mental health

2008-08-09T04:48:00.001-06:00

Let’s talk acne. Why? Why not.

I had this terrible bowl style hair cut as a kid. My mom used to cut my hair to save money. Instead of putting a bowl over my head she’d take a piece of scotch tape and stick it horizontally over my bangs. Then she’d cut just above the tap leaving a straight line that left me looking for all the world like Moe Howard.

What’s this have to do with acne, you ask. Well, when puberty hit the skin that for all of those years had been trapped under my bangs became a veritable mountain range of nasty puss-filled bumps. I had to make a decision – change my hair-style and risk the humiliation of displaying those nasty zits for a week or so while they recovered or grin an bear it with a hair style that I had suddenly realized was pretty silly looking.

My final solution was a flat top! Believe it or not but I actually thought that I looked pretty good with my head sculpted into a box. It temporarily solved the zit problem.

About year later my face exploded again and I went through a couple of years with full blown acne. I scrubbed my face and used whatever creams, etc. I was advised to but it never really helped much.

Interestingly, given my typically delicate teetering between a relatively normal mental state and attacks of social anxiety or depression I never really developed an acne complex. These feelings I get have never been that tied to my outward appearance; they are more about my feelings of worth and relevance to society in general.

This entry sponsored by Murad Acne.

Distractions

2008-06-17T06:57:00.001-06:00

I ran out of SJW a few days ago and haven’t noticed a thing. But then I’ve been really busy. Sometimes it seems that if I just keep active then I don’t have the time to dwell on depressing thoughts.

I’m behind with work but that pretty typical for me. In fact I shouldn’t be writing this right now – I have way too much paid writing that I need to do but I’m very distracted right now.

Two reasons:
1) I recently noticed a gig for which I’m particularly qualified. Its main draw is that it is quite different from most of the work I do all day so it will be a break from my normal routine. That and another job means more money and I always need that. So I contacted them yesterday and I can’t focus on anything because I keep checking my inbox. This is unusual. I work for so many people and am always signing up for more work so this process is really rather routine. I’m not sure why this job is sitting larger in my mind than most.
2) I have to get my pictures made tomorrow. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I hate looking at myself. I don’t think I’m an attractive person and I’ve gained a lot of weight. Add that to a big steaming pile of social anxiety and you get a lot of second guessing and self loathing. I have to get the pictures made because I’m at the point in my career that I need a site about me. (ugh!) My writing is all over the Internet and I’m starting to lecture. I need a spot where everything is drawn together so editors and event organizers can see the whole package.

So I’m not getting any work done because these things are keeping me anxious and distracted. But at least I don’t have time to for depression. I can feel it waiting in the wings, though. No doubt as soon as things slow back down it will come swooping in.

OK, I’m off to order more SJW.

Will the Real St. John Please Stand Up?

2008-05-28T08:36:00.002-06:00

Circumstances have led me to take three different brands of St. John’s Wort products – see below. If faulty memory serves this is the order of things. When I was blogging about notable increases in mood I was on Nature Made. When I ran out of that I went to the store and picked up the only thing I could find with SJW in it, the Nature’s Way product. I have no remarkable memory of the time during which I was taking this but I do know that it was during a few months that were especially stressful for other reasons. Now I’m on the store brand and generally maintaining. The sting of my lows is blunted a little bit and since it seems most like the Nature Made product I suppose this is the best that I’ll get from SJW. I’m tempted to pull receipts and actually compare the timeline to what I’ve reported here.

It’s frustrating that there is no regulation of herbal supplements here in the US – or at least that’s how I understand it. Having little basis for this conclusion I nevertheless assume that stems carry far less of whatever in SJW is effective than the leaves. But there is no requirement that products claiming to contain X amount of SJW carry the good bits or the bad bits.

I think that I’ll order the Nature Made again and see if I notice the change I did the first time I took it. But it appears that I’ve taken SJW about as far as it will go. I should try walking again…

Nature Made – St. John’s Wort 75 Capsules
Supplement Facts
Serving Size 2 Capsules
Servings Per Container 37
Amount Per Serving
St. John’s Wort Aerial Parts Extract (Hypericum Perforatum) 300mg
Hypericin (by UV) 0.9 mg
Other Ingredients
Cellulose Gel, Gelatin (non-bovine), Maltodextrin, Stearic Acid, Magenissium Stearate, Tribasic Calcium, Phosphate, Water

Nature’s Way – Mood Aid with 5-HTP & St. John’s Wort
Supplement Facts
Serving Size 1 Capsule
Servings Per Container 60
Amount Per Serving
Thiamin (as Thiamin HCI) 250 mcg
Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) 284 mcg
Niacin ( as Niacinamide) 3.33 mcg
Vitamin B6 (as Pyridoxine HCI) 330 mcg
Vitamin B12 (as Cyanocobalamin)1 mcg
St. John’s Wort extract (stem, leaf, flower)
0.3% dianthrones measured as hypercin 300 mg
Skullcap (stem, leaf, fruit) 100 mg
Korean Ginseng extract (root) 33 mg
L-5-Hydroxytryptophan 3 mg
Other Ingrediants: Gelatin (capsule), Millet, Magnesium Stearate

Store Brand – Natural St. John’s Wort
Supplement Facts
Serving Size 1 Caplet
Amount Per Caplet
St. John’s Wort (hypericum perforatum) (aerial parts) Standardized extract (0.3% hypericin) 300 mg
Other Ingredients
Dicalcium Phosphate, Maltodextrin, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Croscarmellose Sodium, Tricalcium Phosphate, Stearic Acid, Magnesium Stearate, Hypromellose, Hydroxypropyl Cellulose, Polyethylene Glycol

Press Release: “DEPRESSION: OUT OF THE SHADOWS” TO PREMIERE ON PBS MAY 21

2008-05-12T01:51:00.000-06:00

Press release emailed to me:

Comprehensive Look at Depressive Disorders Focuses on Individual Experiences – Including a CEO, a Successful Entrepreneur, a Gang Member and a Journalist – Along with Leading Medical Experts
~
Documentary to Promote Dialogue on Depression Through Public Awareness Campaign in Partnership with the National Alliance on Mental Illness and YMCA of the USA
~
Jane Pauley to Host Post-Broadcast Panel Discussion

January 2008 (St. Paul, MN) - Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) and WGBH Boston announced today the broadcast of DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows, a 90-minute documentary about clinical depression that will air nationally on public television stations on May 21 (check local listings). Written, produced and directed by Larkin McPhee and produced by TPT and WGBH, DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows tells the dramatic stories of people of different ages, from diverse backgrounds, who live with various forms of depression - and explores the causes and treatments.

“Depression is one of the most debilitating illnesses on earth, and yet people are ashamed to talk about it,” says McPhee. “This is a medical illness that can devastate lives, ruin relationships and keep people from achieving their dreams. My greatest hope is that people watching DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows will be able to better recognize the signs and symptoms of this elusive illness and seek help. This is a highly treatable disorder.”

Among the personal profiles in DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows are novelist and journalist Andrew Solomon, whose mother’s death contributed to his depression and left him unable to work or take care of himself; Ellie Zuehlke, whose bout with post-partum depression after the birth of her first child led her to thoughts of suicide; Terrie M. Williams, a successful public relations executive and social worker who found herself sobbing for hours on end and did not realize she was suffering from depression; Philip Burguieres, once the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, who resigned unexpectedly from his position after collapsing from untreated depression; Hart Lipton, a teenager who suddenly became depressed when he was in the sixth grade, and after four years of struggling with the illness was eventually diagnosed with a bipolar disorder; and DaShaun “Jiwe” Morris, a member of the Bloods gang who became depressed and suicidal after years of neglect, violence and crime. He is the author of an upcoming book about his experience called War of the Bloods in My Veins.

Williams, who is African-American and the author of a new book about her experience and that of others, Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting, said, “As reluctant as those in the general public may be to discussing depression openly, in the African-American community, it is much worse. The high rates of poverty and unemployment that disproportionately affect our community contribute to and compound depression. This is a lapse that must be addressed.”

The film also features several of the nation’s leading mental health experts who explain current theories behind the causes of depression, and pharmaceutical and counseling treatments that have proved successful. These include Dr. Helen Mayberg, who discusses her groundbreaking research into the use of deep brain stimulation therapies to treat depression; Dr. Carlos Zarate, who has conducted promising research with a drug called ketamine; and Dr. Charles Nemeroff, who explains how depression is rooted in both genetic and environmental factors.

Following the broadcast of DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows, veteran journalist Jane Pauley, who wrote about having a bi-polar disorder in her autobiography Skywriting: Out of the Blue, will host a nationally televised panel discussion with mental health experts to discuss the issues raised in the film.

"In an era of breathtaking advances in understanding the human brain, one of the most important developments is taking place outside the laboratory and it has far-reaching implications: mental illness is becoming part of the national dialogue. DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows is a timely and important contribution to the conversation and I'm delighted to have a role in it,” said Pauley.

In order to create a more open dialogue about depression, and reduce the social stigma that prevents many people from seeking professional help, TPT, under the PBS initiative, TAKE ONE STEP: A PUBLIC HEALTH CAMPAIGN, has secured two national partners, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and YMCA of the USA, to participate in a major public outreach initiative. This will include screenings and panel discussions in major cities and on college campuses, a multi-media Web site that will provide a vast array of research material and resources on depression, and summits organized by local PBS stations across the country that will encourage mental health providers to strategize with public and private institutions.

“We’re very pleased to have the support and resources of NAMI and the YMCA, so that we can provide as many people as possible with current information on depressive disorders,” said Phylis Geller, executive producer of DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows for TPT.

Laurie Donnelly, executive producer of DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows for WGBH said, “The film is a starting point for conversation and thought, but it’s critical that people who see the film know how to take the next step in seeking the proper care.”

DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows is a production of Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) and WGBH Boston. Producer/Writer/Director: Larkin McPhee. Executive Producers: Laurie Donnelly, WGBH; Phylis Geller, TPT. Senior Producer, WGBH: Anne Adams. Major funding for the program and Take One Step: A PBS HEALTH CAMPAIGN is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Public Television Viewers and PBS. Additional support for DEPRESSION: Out of the Shadows provided by The Ritter Foundation Inc. and Mental Insight Foundation.

About TPT
The mission of Twin Cities Public Television is to “harness the power of television and other media for the public good.” A not-for-profit educational, civic, and cultural resource, TPT presents original productions for national and state broadcast. Productions include the DragonflyTV science series for kids; Emmy Award-winning programs include Benjamin Franklin; The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer’s; and Suze Orman: The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life. One of the most watched PBS affiliates in the nation, TPT is based in St. Paul and operates six digital stations in addition to analog channels tpt2 and tpt17. The organization is also an active member of the community, bringing outreach and literacy programs to local schools and community groups.

About WGBH

WGBH Boston is America's preeminent public broadcasting producer, the source of one-third of PBS's primetime lineup and companion online content as well as many public radio favorites. WGBH is a pioneer in educational multimedia (including the Web, broadband, and interactive television) and in technologies and services that make media accessible for people with disabilities. WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors: Emmys, Peabodys, DuPont-Columbia Awards-even two Oscars. In 2002, WGBH was honored with a special institutional Peabody Award for fifty years of excellence. For more information, visit www.wgbh.org.

If it's a Placebo Effect I'll Take It

2008-04-02T12:04:00.003-06:00

When I went off the good St. John last autumn I explained that it might have made me too happy and I couldn't have that.

Sounds perfectly silly when I say it like that.

Anyway, I spent months letting that nugget of truth or whatever it is a nugget of seep into my brain and lodge itself there. Now that I've taken the brave step of trying to work through happiness I find that the stuff seems to work really well. An hour or so after taking it and about the time that I completely forget that I've done so a sense of pleasentness comes over me. It lasts for a few hours and I don't crash afterwards. If I remember to take a pill at every meal - and that's turning out to be a pretty good challenge in itself - then I seem to maintain a generally happy disposition. Now when I feel myself slipping down I can think back and almost invariably realize that I forgot my Wort with my last meal.

Placebo effect? Maybe; but I'll take it!

If it is a PE will this entry mark the end of its effectiveness?

...and back on the St. John's Wort

2008-03-26T14:42:00.003-06:00

That last post was so silly and pitiful I thought that I'd give the Wort another try. Today is only the second day. If I have another giddy fit I'll just have to push through it.

Spring is charging towards my part of the world. Every year I have this feeling that I'm ill equipped to deal with it. Previously I just thought that I was overwhelmed by the happy season; now I have the depression excuse. Nothing like a good excuse, eh?

Perhaps the Wort will help me enjoy it without giving me the feeling that I'm supposed to DO something about it. I don't mind that feeling until it replaces pleasure and I'm left with nagging self-doubt.

that's not what I mean

My Journey

2008-03-22T10:02:00.002-06:00

is at a stand-still. No self help; no herbs; just full on self-indulgent self-loathing.

It's kind of comfortable...

Doing the Split

2007-11-19T09:24:00.001-06:00

So I decided to go ahead and start a new blog for the daily writing experiment.

In my view blogs stagnate for three reasons:
1) The blogger becomes bored with it.
2) The blogger says what she came to say.
3) The blogger can't figure out how to say what needs to be said.

While number is probably the commonest reason, number three has been my reason. For a long time the next thing to talk about has been suicide. There are lots of reasons that I don't want to get into that. None of them are that it's too upsetting. I think about suicide so much and with such regularity that it's become as much of a companion to me as my depression. Both are so deeply rooted in me that I'm quite sure that I would be a radically different person if they were gone. I wouldn't know how to function.

Writing about suicide is hard because it is so incredibly self indulgent and as I've said many times I desperately want to avoid having that happen with this blog. In a recent post at Trick-cycling For Beginners the blogger really captured my feelings about this way: "Often, what comes across is a person who has allowed themselves to become defined by their illness; obsessed with it, enveloped in the sick role." This isn't how I live my life and it isn't how I want to write this blog. It would be difficult to explore suicide without seeming to wear the sick role too proudly.

Another issue with discussing suicide is that it is so desperately cliche'. I suppose that this complaint is quite similar to the one of the previous paragraph but it originates from a different muscle. Suicide is almost laughably boring as a symptom of depression. Actually all the symptoms are which is one of the reasons that the big D is so frustrating - being trapped in a set of incredibly predictable emotions and reactions and being completely unable to break loose from them. But suicide is so after-school-special.

But one of the biggest reasons that I haven't explored it yet is that there is so little to say about it. As distracting as my continuous contemplation of it is, there's really not much to explore there. I think about ways that I could do it then I think about how scared I am of it and how courageous successful committers are. And that's about it.

Perhaps this broke the log-jam. Probably not. But I'm back to focusing this blog on depression. If you're interested in my one-hour-a-day project then first I have to wonder what the hell is wrong with you and second I will direct you to Caution: Writer At Play.

Day Two

2007-11-14T14:38:00.001-06:00

A strange turn of events has come upon me. Just a day after I decided on a change in direction for this blog I received this email:

Congratulations!

I'm writing to inform you that you've won the Best of the Web - Blog award from Psych Central, the oldest and largest mental health resource online that's been reviewing online resources since 1992.

The top ten list in depression was compiled with input from our readers, one of my associate editors, and myself. It reflects the excellence in regular writing of entries related to this mental health concern that we feel is consistent and worthy of people's time.

That's very flattering, isn't it? Of course the skeptic in me told me that it was all BS. But they published their list today and they seem to be an organization with at least a little cash behind them. This list of worthy, at least in their estimation, depression blogs was published today and I've seen a huge uptick in traffic. Besides their site, http://psychcentral.com/, I've received hits from http://foxnews.com/ and http://www.reuters.com/. It appears that they released a press release announcing their list. Presumably it is with a PR company and it probably cost them a little. So, thanks to them and especially to http://www.findingoptimism.com/ for first taking notice of me.

But this creates a dilemma for me. Do I continue my blog about depression or do I stick with the new journey that I announced yesterday? Or do I combine the two and push forward with my daily one hour rants but keep one eye on my depression during them? That last option seems very tiresome to me.

Here's the option that I'm most likely to settle on, at least at this point. I'm probably going to set up a new blog for my daily one-hour project and return this one to its original depression based content. I'm big about letting other people obligate me!

But I'm going to sleep on it. I try to do that. Even though this is a relatively minor decision in the greater scheme of things it is one that might have an much greater impact in the future so I want to give it time. I've been doing this for a long time - sleeping on it, that is. I'm very slow to make decisions anyway - tip: never go clothing shopping with me - and I find that trying to avoid making a decision on the same day that it was presented creates a lot less buyer's remorse situation in life.

Nevertheless, for now I'm plowing ahead with the one-hour project on this blog for today. So, if you care to take the journey with me I started this at 2:38p; it's now 2:56 so I have a ways to go.

Yesterday became a bit strained after around 40 minutes. I had a few things on my mind that

Wait. Before I forget, I also received this email:

Hi,

I’ve been looking through your blog and thought that this might be of some interest to you. This week Beliefnet, the largest online community for spirituality and inspiration, is announcing the launch of their new social network, “Beliefnet Community.” The network is geared toward spiritual seekers and faith-based groups, and will offer resources for study, inspiration and entertainment. You might find Beyond Blue blogger, Therese Borchard’s material especially interesting.

Designed to meet the needs of both individuals and groups—including intimate, small groups as well as multi-dimensional, large organizations—Beliefnet Community will offer award-winning content and online tools allowing members to work together virtually or in real-world small groups. Assemblies of all types and sizes—from book clubs and support groups to Bible study and fan clubs—can create and customize their own websites, calendars, discussion forums and content feeds.

Everyone is very excited -- we hope you'll check out www.beliefnet.com/community

I tend to want to help out whomever wants to take the time to email me. Even on my bigger blogs I entertain whomever wishes to contact me even if it is a blatant plug like the email above appears to be. The reason is that the Internet is a wide and wild place and anyone that wants to make a go of it here has my support. I think that it's a great think that a huge, multi-national corporation has pretty much the same ability to contact and get links from blogs like the ones I run as does a small time entrepreneur.

For instance, there was a controversy in an industry I write for a couple of months ago about a big firm that introduced a new, slick website, full of flash animation and super-sexy graphics. Their publicity guy emailed a bunch of bloggers that write about the industry with an invitation to preview the new site. It gave them a special link and told them when the new site would be made available to the public. Of course the idea was to create some buzz but so what? Some purists complained that this was blatant corporatism and should not be tolerated.

But here's the great thing. A couple of months later a fellow emailed me. His email was clunky and, quite frankly, a little difficult to follow in places. He had created a device designed to help consumers deal with a particular aspect of the industry. He built a website to sell this product. He contacted me because I'm an influential writer in that industry and he a) wanted advice about his site and b) he wanted to send me his product for review on my site. I'm working on that right now.

You get my point, I'm sure. As far as Internet promotions this guy with an idea and the multinational corporation are on more or less equal ground. I know the corporation all of the advantages that come from money and lots of personnel and there's not a lot that I can do about that but within the realms that I control they are equal and I'll treat them as such.

So even though this email - the one I posted above - reads like it could or could not be a form letter it does show some attention to detail and it is somewhat relevant to my blog. Additionally, I don't think that there is a way that the send could have found my email address other than doing a human search for it. Given these things I've relatively comfortable that it's not spam in the traditional sense so I pasted it here and gave the sender the link back to her site which is the most likely intent of the message. And if I decide on returning this blog to its depressing roots then I will likely review the site here.

What was I talking about before I interrupted myself?

Oh, right, how yesterday went. Like I was saying, I had a few things on my mind at the outset of the hour that I wanted to talk about but I ran out of topics at around 40 minutes. Then it really became difficult to press on. I decided that a list would be the best thing to do. I keep a notepad nest to my keyboard - a habit I picked up in the corporate world - where I constantly jot things down. I started a list of things that occurred to me throughout the day. But I don't spend all of my day in my office and my best random ideas seem to occur to me outside of it. As they did I made a mental note which fluttered away well before I got back to my desk.

Here's my list:
Topics
Writer's Strike
What does this have to do with depression

The first item is of course about the screen and TV writer's strike that is going on right now. I don't have a lot to contribute to it but when I heard it mentioned on the news I thought that I might be able to come up with something pithy here.

The second item is a mystery to me. I remember writing it and I remember that I had something interesting to say but now I have no idea. I suppose "this" refers to the blog but I just can't remember what I wanted to say.

3:25p

This is about the time that I crashed yesterday. Maybe this should be the 45 minute project instead of the hour.

The thing that's largest on my mind just now is the decision about whether I should return this blog to depression or not. I strongly inclined to do so. Like I said before I feel obligated by the actions of others - something that's been with me my whole life and may make an interesting topic here sometime - but also there might actually be some value in what I was doing.

Self-congratulations alert!

I was very surprised at how my blog resonated with readers. I never received more than a handful of hits per day but the response rate was really high when considered as a percentage. By response I mean people that left comments or sent me private emails. When compared to my other blogs which receive a lot more traffic, the response rate was much higher.

That plus this recognition makes me think that perhaps I was contributing something to the world and I should continue.

The funny thing about this is that I will likely move my new project to a brand new blog and thus have two blogs - enough that if they were people they could conspire - cultivating "Ray," my anonymous persona. This is funny because I've been working on my real person in much the same way - carefully cultivating my image as an authority in my field.

I may have to start a split-personality blog next.

Times up and none too soon! Things were getting silly.

A New Direction

2007-11-13T08:42:00.001-06:00

It's been weeks since I posted here but I think about this blog almost daily. For a long time I was planning a post about suicide then I thought I'd post a review of a book on depression that I read. But every time I thought about blogging here I felt a little depressed. So my little project has become exactly the opposite of what it was originally intended to be; it became yet another source of depression for me.

So I'm changing direction. This new course will naturally touch on depression occasionally because it's incredibly narcissistic and depression is a big part of who I am. I'm going to write for one hour everyday. I'm going to write about whatever is on my mind and, in the cases where the well has begun to run dry a little, whatever I can wring out of my mind. I will write directly into the blogger window instead of writing and editing in Word. I will also not edit although I'll pay attention to blogger's. I will write for one hour then hit post and go on. Those are the rules. Simple, straight forward and hopefully I can stick to them.

I was inspired to a degree by NaNoWriMo. It's an interesting idea. I've never taken part; I'm not much of a joiner. But I admire anyone that does. That's some dedication.

Something that I don't think that I've shared heretofore as I've carefully cultivated my anonymity. I'm a writer. I'm not a great writer although I've had my successes. Life bustled me back and forth between corporations for a some years after college until I'd had enough of soulless middle managers lording over me under life-draining fluorescent lights. I quit my job two years ago and decided to give the writing thing a serious shot. I'd written a novel in my spare time over the previous years and wanted to either get it published or start work on a new one.

I wound up with a great gig that allows me to write at home and whenever I want. Between it and some freelance work I manage to pay the bills. But recently I realized that I'd completely lost sight of my original goals. All of the writing that I do now is very utilitarian. There is no art in it whatsoever. And no soul.

So I'm hoping that this daily exercise will reawaken the writer that I once was or at least what I wanted to be.

Let me say it this way. As you can see above I like to set rules for myself. One rule that I set at the beginning of this new career was that I would not write for free. I was keeping a personal blog at the time and I completely stopped posting to it. My three readers were horribly disappointed but I had made the decision that someone somewhere would eventually pay me for every word that I wrote. You see I was a professional writer now. My focus on squeezing dollars from every word and paragraph left me without an option to exercise the writing muscle. And it's beginning to weaken.

The sentiment was right and it's advice that I'd offer anyone trying to cultivate a writing career - never write for free. But this rule should be clarified - never accept writing assignments that don't pay. I doubt that most people would take it to the extreme that I did but since that possibility that there are other freaks out there like me I now add it.

I've been very lucky. The writing gig that I landed simply isn't offered to amateur writers. I've come to understand this more over the last couple of years than I did at the time. I was very happy when I got the job but now after watching better writers than I get turned down by the same organization I realize how the fates were smiling upon me when I applied. I was in the right place at the right time.

It's also a great position from which I can launch an even fuller career. I haven't done so yet partially because of this self-imposed and completely absurd handicap - never write without getting paid for it - but I'm hoping that someday I'll get over that.

I'm still going to remain anonymous. This might seem silly but I want to feel completely free to write whatever I want here. Everything that I write as me is written for on particular reader - my wife. Before I get into that let me say that my wife is a wonderful person. Every stereotype of the "Take my wife...please" image is exploded by her. She doesn't nag. She is totally supportive of me. For the particular construct of my personality there couldn't be a better compliment.

However expecting that everything I write will be read by her is occasionally oppressive to the message of the piece in front of me. It's completely an internal thing. She has never come to me and said, "What the hell is this supposed to mean!?!" then accusing me of attacking me. One reason for this is that she rarely reads what I write. She's not particularly interested in the subject that consumes my professional career and the creative writing that I did before now didn't hold much interest for her, either. I've never really understood that but that's something to explore later. Here I'm just pointing out the irony that I constantly self-edit for her and she rarely reads my stuff.

Anyway by writing anonymously here I know that she won't read it and I don't have that weight in my keyboard. But in writing in a public way I still have some responsibility to write in a comprehensible way. And I think that's what I want.

I've been writing now for 40 minutes. This is going to be hard. I should start jotting down those little thoughts that occur to me throughout the day so I have somewhere to start. I should also probably start new posts for each thought. Endless, run-on blog posts like this one will definitely turn people off. Not that the reader is the goal here. Normally she is but in this case it's all about the writer - told you it was going to be narcissistic - but in case there is someone out there interested in my nonsense I could at least create new posts to compartmentalize the whole mess for her.

Getting back to the NaNoWriMo - I'd love to give that a shot someday. It's all about getting my money in order ahead of time. We don't have a lot of money so I'm constantly chasing bills and therefore thinking about them. I'm an easily distracted writer so I know that money and bills are the mostly likely reason that I'd fail. NaNoWriMo would take some serious discipline and concentration. But the time constraints would also be so very freeing in a way. I often spend/waste a lot, and I mean a lot, of time on the editing process. Not that it's not important. If you've read this far first you deserve a medal or a cookie or something and second you can see want a mess my raw material is. There are probably tense shifts, all kinds of dangling things and, the bane of my writing, comma errors all over the place.

Commas - oh my god! I am terrible with them. I don't know why but I just can't get the rules straight in my head about commas. I have developed some defenses, though. When I'm editing and I come across a comma question I find that I can often flip the sentence or turn it into the two sentences and the problem evaporates. This is a great solution because I tend to write long sentences but short sentences 1) are easier to read and 2) are easier to sell. Go ahead, check it out. Books on the bestsellers rack have short punchy sentences. The books that aren't have longer sentences with lots of unnecessary floral arrangements.

Only five more minutes to go. I've learned a little with this first post. One, as I said above, I should break these monsters up into a bunch of smaller, subject oriented posts - see my sentence thoughts in the previous paragraph. Two, I should make sure that I've used the bathroom before launching into this. (Did I mention that one of my rules is that I won't get up for any reason before the hour's up?) Three, I need to make sure that my wife is occupied before I start. About ten minutes into it she came down and started talking to me. Nothing derails my train like that!

Excuse the Deviation

2007-09-26T17:05:00.000-06:00

but this this kinda cool - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070926/ap_on_sc/vietnam_new_species.

I Walked

2007-09-19T13:22:00.001-06:00

For anyone that cares to know I managed to walk this morning. It wasn't quite as uplifting as I'd hoped it would be but it was pleasant enough. I need to stick to it and make it a habit to really begin to benefit.

Also, the owner of HelpGuide.org emailed me this link: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/depression_tips.htm. I haven't had a chance to look it over yet but I'm the kind of guy who's willing to post links when I can. Link karma and all...

That's all for now.

Routines

2007-09-18T06:44:00.003-06:00

I suppose it’s a human thing to always drift towards routine. Routines are comfortable and reassuring. One can mechanically move through a day without a lot of effort with a routine. But they’re so damned sticky.

My routines have always gravitated to sedentary pursuits and dark interior buildings. Right now I’ve gotten myself into the most exaggerated form of that rut. I literally spend 10-12 hours a day sitting at my computer in a basement. I rarely leave the basement, not to the mention the house. I climb the stairs a couple times a day to eat and maybe to shower but other than that I sit at this computer.

I sit here because it’s my job. I goof off a little, too, but mostly I work. It’s a good environment for work but not that great for thinking happy thoughts. No sunlight, no exercise, no human interaction… It’s a pretty good recipe for downward spiraling depression.

An acquaintance called me on Saturday to confirm plans that we’d made. I had completely forgotten about them and was on the tail end of this cold. (I just can seem to stop coughing!) Anyway, we’d agreed to drive to a nearby city to drink beer and listen to live music at a blues/jazz club he knows. My wife didn’t want me to go because of the cold but I’d bailed on this friend before so I didn’t want to again. I think that she was also a little pleased to get me out of the house both for my sake and hers; she rarely gets the house to herself.

So we went. The time wasn’t really all that extraordinary. We went to the bar, drank beer and listened to the music. But I had a remarkably good time. It was a very refreshing deviation from my routine. Could it be that not acting depressed helps one not be depressed? If I inject things into my routine specifically designed to counter depression, will my depression lift?

I’ve said this before and I’ve silently made this promise to myself hundreds of times but I am going to start walking tomorrow. It will be the first thing that I do tomorrow after waking up. I've tried this before and it really seems to help. It's just hard to do every day. Once it becomes routine it will be easier but until then it will be an effort.

Hold me to it.

Reprinting a Comment

2007-09-13T15:17:00.000-06:00

My last entry (Could I have BEEN more pitiful?) generated a really great comment from Trishwash. Blog comments can sometimes get missed so I wanted to reprint it.

I hear you, brother.

I am currently going back on Wellbutrin after six months off. It's making me a bit manic at the moment. I went off because I didn't want to have to take drugs. I was feeling better and thought I could do without (ha!).

A couple things to keep in mind. 1. When you start a drug, herbal or pharmaceutical, you body will go through an adjustment period. The crazymeds guy some great things to say about this http://www.crazymeds.org/SideEffects.htm. I especially like the paragraph that begins, "These are powerful, alien substances..." While he's referring to prescription drugs, this may apply to SJW. Given that your body and mind need time to adjust, you may need choose a better time to start taking SJW. Sometimes it takes longer than a few days. Maybe getting better will require a good week where you can afford to just be deliriously happy. Or just be. Does your work have an annual slow period or can you create one by working ahead for a while?

2. Maybe next time, start with a lower dose and work your way up to the recommended amount. Maybe half is all you need to get the affect you want.

3. You sound ambivalent about happiness. That might warrant some further reflection. Did it feel good? Maybe too good? Why shouldn't you feel really good? Growing up, did you get the message that good stuff must be experienced in small, stingy amounts? If not, what other beliefs do you hold about good things? That they are limited, rare, untrustworthy, fleeting, bait for the seven deadly sins?

One of the ideas I've been playing with is that everything we do, think and feel is just a habit. It's not always easy, but all habits can be changed. You work best depressed because you are in the habit of working best depressed. http://www.fallingawake.com/falling-awake-book-toc.html is an online book with a good chapter on habits (#9). It's all a bit new agey, but there are some good nuggets in there.

Above all, don't look at this as failure. This experience has given you valuable information that you can use in other attempts to feel better.

Thanks TW. Nobody's alone, right? Cheers!

Off the St. John's Wort For Now

2007-09-12T13:50:00.000-06:00

Why is it so hard to keep this blog up? The question is rhetorical; not because I think that it’s going to cause any reader to lapse into deep thought. It’s because I already know the answer.

1) I’m lazy. That isn’t to say that I’m too lazy to update the blog. Blogging is no big deal. I do it all day. Half of my income comes from blogging. No, I’m lazy about my depression. I whine and moan and appear to yearn for relief but it will take work and, dammit, I’m too depressed to want to work at it. That’s a bit of a joke but then it isn’t, really.
2) I’m comfortable with my depression. Weird, right? I’m not comfortable with the deep, deep lows and it is during those that I promise myself and anyone listening that I’m going to do anything to make it go away. But the normal constant hum of self doubt and self loathing is a comfortable thing. It’s been there for as long as I can remember and, quite frankly, I find it hard to function without it.

That last point is something that I learned recently. I’m back off of the SJW. Here’s why: As usual, I’m behind on my work. I started it a few weeks ago with a promise to take the herb until my bottle was empty. For the first few days I didn’t feel much of a difference. I’m not sure if that’s how it’s supposed to work but that’s what happened to me. Then one morning I felt happy; giddy, in fact. I couldn’t account for it - I just felt happy. But I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t work because I couldn’t sit still. At first I followed my wife around just chattering at her about nothing. When she left for work I tried again to work and nothing came. I couldn’t write! If I can’t write I can’t pay my bills.

I hoped I would get over it. I kept taking the stuff for a couple more days. The silly feeling subsided but I remained distracted. After three days I had to give it up because I was getting behind. Then a few days later I got a nasty summer cold. I’m just now getting over it and I am now WAY behind. So, I need to stay off of it until I get caught up. Once I do, I’m going to try again. If it happens again I don’t know what to do.

This is one of the reasons that I’ve never wanted to take medication. I have other concerns such as the fact that this society is overmedicated and it just rubs me wrong to put more money in the deep pockets of the pharmaceutical companies. But being just too damn happy to function has always been a big fear. I need me and this thing, as bad as it can be sometimes, is part of me. I’ve always felt socially isolated. I’ve always been bluer than my peers. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t think about suicide. And I can’t imagine me without these things. I hoped that SJW would gently ease me away from depression so I could learn to be me without it. I still hope that it does.

Anyway, that’s where I am. Thanks for posting your thoughts. It means a lot to me that people are regularly reading this blog.

Bad Day

2007-08-24T09:11:00.000-06:00

Nothing much to say except the SJW arrived yesterday. It's to be taken 3 times per day and I started at noon.

This morning I'm in a terrible funk. Lowest I've seen in a while. I've also not been sleeping well so I hope that its that and not the herb.

I'm also behind on my work (as usual) so I have to fight through the fog or I'm working through the weekend... again.

Why St. John’s Wort

2007-08-22T09:30:00.000-06:00

There are two main reasons that I’m trying SJW. (It hasn’t arrived yet, by the way.) The first is that it is relatively inexpensive compared to more widely accepted therapies. I live in a smaller community, though it’s by no means remote. The options for most specialized needs are usually limited to one or two. For example, the counselor I’m constantly referring to works at a community funded mental health clinic that adjusts its prices based on the user’s ability to pay. It is the only affordable option that is less than a 2 hour drive away. But when I went I felt locked in to the counselor that they assigned me and I did not like her. Plus her first solution was medication; a medicine that my insurance doesn’t cover. So, though the cost of the visits are tempered, the prescription isn’t.

The second reason is that I can order SJW through the mail and I never have to look anyone in the eye during the transaction. I don’t know if its society’s stigma against all types of emotional problems or my own social anxiety, but it’s a helluva lot easier this way and I’m less likely to back out of it.

So, this is what I’m trying. I tell myself that I’m going to start walking each morning. I don’t know if I actually will but that’s what I tell myself. Right now I’ve designed a life that doesn’t require me to leave the house for days at a time and that’s probably not the best thing for my emotional health even if it’s more comfortable. Maybe with a combination of these two things the lows won’t be quite so low.

Giving St. John Another Try

2007-08-20T06:49:00.000-06:00

I’ve ordered a month’s worth of St. John’s Wort. I tried taking this once before and it had a strange affect on me. Rather than taking the edge off of any anxiety and giving me a break from my depression, it made my emotions extremely raw. Events that would have typically been just a little disappointing were more likely to send me into a flying rage or sobbing. It was strange and I quickly quit the stuff.

But I was at a job that I HATED and this situation dominated my thoughts at the time. My life is very different now so I’m going to give it another try. The main reason why is that I really want to find a non-prescription solution and St. John’s Wort is universally recognized as one of the best herbal remedies for depression. I’ve also read that it’s good for my social anxiety problem so, despite my past experience, I have high hopes. (Can anyone say “placebo effect?”)

I plan to stick to it for more than just a few days despite how I feel. I wonder, though, if that rage and sadness was an expression of how much I hated that job and my boss at the time – things that I hadn’t really dealt with because the veil of depression goes a long way to numb other sources of pain.

It should arrive any day…

Harry Potter and the Curse of the Derivative Ending

2007-08-17T06:41:00.000-06:00

Taking a moment to tear my attention away from depression I’d like to talk about Harry Potter.

I’m not a fan. I’m not an anti-fan, either. I just haven’t been swept up in the Potter mania. I may read the books one day but I’m in no hurry. I think that I’ve seen all the movies that have made it to cable but I’m not sure.

But I do like reading critics’ reviews of these books in the same way that I enjoyed reading reviews of Dan Brown’s runaway Code. I read a particularly interesting one that attacked the final book for being an anemic ending to an otherwise stellar series. There may be something to that but I can’t help but be amused by these critics. Everyone who makes a living from the written word has a novel or dream of a novel in her and wishes more than anything to eventually steer her career in that direction. Some may claim to be content transcribing police reports or compiling prospectuses but don’t believe them. Every writer got into this game to write the great novel. And that includes literary critics.

So when these eventual novelists’ attack the successful work of another it’s hard not to pick up the stink of souring grapes between the lines. They like to say things like the characters have no depth, the plot seems artificial and contrived and the author takes to many liberties with our mother tongue. But the books are selling in the millions so there must be something about the work that works, right?

But my favorite criticism to hate, and one that showed up in that Potter review, is to claim that a book – or any work of art, I suppose – is derivative. When derivative first showed up as a word of criticism it must have been devastating because the word survives today after literarily decades of use as the single worst word that can be leveled at art. It is no longer the polite way to call a book, a painting, a movie shit; to use derivative IS to call a work shit.

But its use always vexes me. What does it mean? The base word is derive and to derive you must derive from something. The critics never explain the source of the derivation. From what did the artist derive his work and why is that necessarily a bad thing? Wicked, the fabulously successful book and now musical that retells The Wizard of Oz from the witch’s perspective, is derivative in every sense of the word. Without Oz Wicked would have never been derived from it. I see nothing whatsoever wrong with that.

So when a critic uses this all too over used word to attack a book, all of their claims that the author might have abused verb usage or created unbelievable characters become baseless. Remove the plank from your own eye, critic! Don’t be so derivative!

Of Interviews and Dating

2007-08-15T06:59:00.000-06:00

My interview yesterday went pretty well. I wasn’t really even that nervous although I have to admit that I knocked back a healthy slug of bourbon when my palms started sweating about thirty minutes beforehand. Maybe not the best option but it did help.

My wife gets impatient with my fear of interviewing people. It’s something that I have to do professionally and so far I’ve wound up friends and mutual admirers with the every subject but I still become a basket case before each one. The worst part about all of this silliness is that, though it’s virtually required for my job, these interviews are never assigned. I have to seek them out.

I hated dating. In my life I’ve probably only asked two or three women out. Sometime in my twentieth year I decided that that would be quite enough of that nonsense and I haven’t asked anyone for a date since. I got set up a few times but that always sucked. Eventually I met my wife and that part of my life has been without want since. I’ve been very lucky there.

My point is I hate social situations. I always have. My sister and I used to call ourselves socially awkward. Then a counselor put a formal name to it for me – social anxiety. And it is this social anxiety, she told me, that causes my depression.

So, you see, interviews are tough for me. Setting up interviews is ten times worse; it feels like asking for a date. I am so grateful for email! The funny thing is that once the interviews have started I become very comfortable because I’m fluent in the subject matter and it always becomes a very easy conversation. No matter how much I tell myself that this will happen, I’m still a nervous wreck.

But I survived yesterday and got that out of the way just in time. I’m trying to get another interview for Saturday so now I’ve got plenty of time to get unreasonably worked up about that.

Tangents Ahead

2007-08-14T05:21:00.000-06:00

If I’m going to blog every day then I can’t continuously write about depression. That would just be too depressing. Besides, there are vast stretches of time where nothing particularly interesting happens and I don’t want a series of entries that say nothing more than “Yup, still hate myself.”

Which I do, by the way. Predictably I completely screwed yesterday up. After doing my hour’s worth of running from 9am to 10 I came home and stewed about it then finally got to work around 1pm. And afternoons suck for me so what little I did get done I’ll have to redo this morning.

I have a phone interview this afternoon. I’m not really worked up about it yet (It’s 6am as I write this.) but I’m sure that as the time draws nigh I’ll have a nice lather going. I haven’t conducted too many interviews although I’m trying to do more. I hope I’ll get more comfortable with them as time goes by but that isn’t likely. It still takes me a few days to mentally prepare for a damned haircut and the event ruins my day.

Sometimes those pills the therapist offered me sound pretty good.

Of Banking and Haircuts

2007-08-13T06:56:00.000-06:00

So my weekend went pretty well. No major peaks or valleys.

Today’s ruined though.

I’ve managed to arrange my life so that I rarely have to leave the house. I can sometimes go up to two weeks before having to stick my nose out the door. I know it’s not healthy and it makes me even weirder when I actually do end up having to deal with people. My wife tries to get me out – she has none of these issues – but it’s just so much easier to stay at home.

But, like I said, today is ruined. I have to go to the bank and sign some papers and I have to go get my hair cut. Since I work best in the mornings I try to schedule mindless stuff like this for afternoons but when I do I spend the whole morning dreading the social intercourse and I don’t get any work done. So the logical conclusion would be to get this out of the way early and have the rest of the day for my work. Well, that doesn’t work too well, either. When I get back I spend the rest of the morning reviewing whatever stupid thing that I might have said and by the time I’ve worked through that it is afternoon and I’ve lost all motivation to work.

Disgusting, isn’t it? Believe me; I’m far more disgusted than you.

Am I Depressed or Just Lazy

2007-08-10T08:01:00.001-06:00

I know of a number of things that would break the depression spiral that I spend most days slipping down. I could go outside and take a walk. I could read. (There are certain books the invariably lift my spirit – Leaves of Grass, Catch 22, The World of Pooh, Roughing It.) I could go to a local coffee shop that always makes me feel better. I could write another entry in this blog.

But all of those things take effort. It’s so much easier to pour another bourbon and watch Law & Order reruns. It doesn’t make me feel better, necessarily, but at least it makes me feel less.

Well, I’m going to try to blog with greater regularity. Unlike previous blog entries my writing henceforth will be less thought out. I’m making it a personal goal to write SOMETHING for this blog everyday. This may get messy…

Tongue-Tied

2007-07-05T09:26:00.000-06:00

So, I haven’t posted in a while. There are a couple of reasons that, in addition to being true, have the added benefit of being relevant.

The first is that the first wash of entries in which I stood up and said that I am depressed really felt good. It lifted my mood considerably just to write about it in a public way. I have no idea way. I’m a very private person and generally find sharing to be a particularly icky experience. But for whatever reason I wound up being less depressed and, consequently, didn’t have much depression to blog about.

The second reason that I haven’t made any entries in a while is that I almost didn’t get everything done last month that I was supposed to. I work from home and earn my living from a variety of different sources. In some cases I have my own customers and in other cases I have clients for whom I perform services. Those are measured monthly and my depression became so dark and debilitating in early June that I didn’t get much work done. And the work that I did do was so disgraceful that I simply had to redo it later. Luckily the clouds lifted as a result of this blog and the pure adrenaline brought on by the approaching deadlines. So, I didn’t have time to post those last few days of last month.

But here we are at the fifth of July. I managed to wrap up last month without missing any of those deadlines. It took me a few days to clean up the resulting mess but now I’m caught up and things are on track. In fact yesterday I got ahead! I was feeling pretty good about myself for a couple of hours last night until the phone rang.

No, it wasn’t bad news. It was my step-daughter-in-law. (Is that right? She married my step-son.) She was calling to speak to my wife – they’re great friends – but being a very polite and outgoing person she chatted with me for a bit as she always does before asking to be passed on. I find her to be very intimidating because in addition to being outgoing she is also very smart – a combination that translates into cleverness.

I am a very slow talker; partially because I put a lot of thought into choosing my words and partially because I have a very mild speech impediment. Most people probably don’t notice the impediment. It’s kind of like a stutter except that I don’t stutter, I just stop and the words can’t come out. It’s as though some mechanically has gone wrong and I briefly can’t form words.

Anyway, it’s no big deal and I’m comfortable with that part of me; except when I’m speaking to someone like my step-daughter-in-law. Then I feel like a slow witted oaf. I try to respond in kind to what she has to say but I’m never really able to. My social anxiety kicks in and I just want to crawl under a rock. By the time I handed the phone to my wife last night I felt completely humiliated. Even though it was relatively early I went to bed while they chattered on the phone for an hour and a half.

But before that I was happy, content and carefree for a couple of hours and it was wonderful.

Putting a Name To It

2007-06-20T12:57:00.000-06:00

My depression has always been a dull throb for me. It’s like a headache that you’ve carried around for a few days that ebbs and flows but never entirely goes away. Sometimes you can forget that your head hurts but when someone asks if that headache went away you realize that you’ve just been ignoring it but it’s still there.

I’ve done a good job of mostly ignoring it but recently the throb has gotten louder; thus this blog. When I posted my first couple of entries I went scurrying out into blog land to see what others were saying about depression. I found a reference to Dysthymia. One of the main reasons that I thought it sounded pretty accurate was that it is long lasting and milder although no less destructive over the long haul; specifically Wikipedia says in time it lead to things “such as high rates of suicide, work impairment, and social isolation.” Boy, does that peg me. I’ll get into those later, especially the big S. In passing I mentioned Dysthymia to James over at Finding Optimism, who has been very generous to me and my blog, in an email. He replied that it seems unlikely since I wrote in an earlier entry that I suffer from most of the physical manifestations of depression. He’s got a good point. But if I’ve had Dysthymia for a long time then I’m due for some physical consequences, right?

In that previous post I described how I self diagnosed my depression. This was later confirmed at a mental health clinic where a counselor, who I did not like, told me after less than an hour of talking that I have a mild case of depression primarily caused by social anxiety. She also promptly told me that I should go on Zoloft (I think) which apparently would help with the social anxiety. This after I explicitly told her at the outset I didn’t want medication.

I’ve been reflecting on that diagnosis over the last few days. Whether she was trying to push the meds for some self-serving reason or she genuinely believed this it would have helped me I’ll never know. I do know that I’ve become very comfortable with her diagnosis. It makes sense, really. I have always been awkward with other people. I wouldn’t call it shy; I’ve often been called that but only by people that don’t know me very well. I’m very opinionated and sometimes quick to take offense and I’m never hesitant to express this to whoever dares cross me. But I do it very awkwardly and spend the next week or more dwelling on the event and invariably beating myself up for it.

Oh yes, I was a joy for my co-workers in the corporate world! Even those I still count as friends were probably as glad to see me go as I was to do so.

The best part about all of this is that any one of these incidents may come up at anytime to torture me. Years later and for no particular reason a memory will jump out at me; refined and distilled by this point to yet another self-told tale of what a blathering oaf I was when this and that happened. I will feel my face heat up and turn red. Typically I’m alone when this happens but if I’m with others I excuse myself to take a moment to savor the bitter taste of the memory once again.

Then the talking starts. This is a new thing and the main reason I try to be alone. No one, not even my wife, has yet caught me and of this writing this is the first time that I’ve consciously dealt with it myself. It starts with a grunt as I try to stop the me in my memory from making an ass of us. Then I babble forth some of the dialogue from the event and finally wrapping it with, “I’m so stupid.” It takes me another few moments to recover then I’m able to move on, generally in a darker mood. Eventually, it fades back down to the dull thud.

My wife says that I talk a lot in my sleep though she claims that she can never understand it. For this first time now, I wonder if I’m reliving these memories in my sleep.

Wow, I really sound like a mess, don’t I? Truly, I’m a functioning adult. These incidents only happen three or four times a month although they seem to be gradually increasing in frequency. They are very swift; usually taking less time than it took to describe them.

Depression brought on by social anxiety – I don’t know if it was a spot on diagnosis or a self fulfilling prophecy but it certainly seems to describe me now.

Dealing With an Audience

2007-06-17T07:26:00.000-06:00

Something unexpected has happened with this little blog. It has a readership. Now of course this was the ultimate intention – it is a blog, after all – I just didn’t expect it to happen so very soon.

Blogging about my depression was really the natural choice for me. I’ve tried writing personal journals about the problem but they invariably turned into ponderous, unreadable and ultimately unwritable examinations of the minutiae of my emotional life; nobody-understands-me manifestos. Blogging and the possibility that others would find and read it, awareness of a potential audience, kept that from happening. The possible pitfall of a blog is to swing too far towards pleasing the reader. The same impulse that drives me to answer “fine” whenever asked how I am has the danger of making this exercise vapidly meaningless.

But back to my small audience. I’ve been submitting my entries to social indexing sites like technorati and digg so my blog wouldn’t be allowed to retreat into comfortable, naval gazing anonymity and I knew that doing so would eventually lead to a readership. I just didn’t expect it to happen quite so quickly. And in referring to my readership don’t think that I’m getting swept up in anything here. I maintain quite a few blogs whose readerships range from two or three a day to ten thousand a day. The point about this audience is that it is huge in my mind when I write. Even though I’ve taken steps to remove the safety net, the fact of a real readership that exists now instead of in the hypothetical future substantially changes the way that I think about this project and, more importantly, how and what I write about.

Take this entry, for example.

So, where do I go from here? Initially I’d planned on a mixture of entries that more or less chronicled depressive events from life, sort of A Portrait of the Depressed Blogger as a Young Man, and entries about my current attempts at self help therapies. This would have all been foundation building. Not that my eventual readers would have cared. I really wouldn’t have expected them to find my blog six months in and go back to read all of the previous entries. But I would have had the foundation making blogging about my ongoing Portrait of a Middle Aged Man easier to maintain.

But the fact of the sudden readership makes me reconsider this plan. This isn’t a intellectual decision; it really happens at a gut level. When I sit down to write or even think about writing this current audience as already standing over my shoulder. Who really wants, I ask myself, to read about what would have been a non-event to anyone else in eighth grade algebra but turned into a festering thorn that took me fifteen years to come to terms with? As much as I’d like to be selfish and can theoretically defend selfishness in this case, now that I have readers with personalities everything’s changed.

Plus the huge amount about depression and the wide variety of therapies available (Light therapy? Really?) is staggering. So many seem to hold promise making it difficult to decide where to start. Dwelling on the past seems like a waste of time when there’s so much to deal with in the present.

What this hell is this entry about anyway? Well, I really can’t say except that I intended it to help me work out the new dynamic of the audience. (An audience for which I’m incredibly grateful, in case that wasn’t clear.) I’m really not sure if I’ve done that.

What Does This Mean?

2007-06-14T08:10:00.000-06:00

I had a dream two nights ago about a medical student who also happened to be a champion barbequer, or whatever the word would be. His ribs were his specialty and had never been bested in competition. People couldn’t figure out what he put in his dry rub but they knew that they liked his ribs.

Somehow, I became privy to his secret. At night he would steal the ribs from cadavers from the gross anatomy class but he was facing two problems. First, he was about to graduate and he was unsure where he could get ribs after he’d moved on from medical school. Second, his ribs were becoming more and more popular and he was having trouble keeping up with demand because removing the embalming fluids was a very delicate and labor intensive process.

So, what does this mean? What mysteries of my soul does this little dream unlock?

I doubt any other than the fact that I REALLY like ribs with dry rub (not too much salt) and if it does I’d rather not know what they are.

My approach to this depression thing is very simple. I don’t want to be depressed any more. I don’t care what started it. I don’t want to delve into my past and I certainly don’t want to participate in any rebirthing therapy sessions. I just want to feel better.

I am willing to do some self examination. It wouldn’t be possible to defeat depression without some reflection. Besides, it’s just a good thing. It’s good to know who I am and what I want. I just don’t want to become a self-absorbed naval-gazer who looks for meaning in everything.

Sometimes a cannibal is just a cannibal.

The Symptoms of Depression

2007-06-12T06:51:00.000-06:00

I really hate the big pharmaceutical companies. I’m a US citizen that it’s generally known here that Big Pharm holds a huge amount of control over politicians. They use this control to squeeze more and more money out of our broken health-care system.

A few years ago Big Pharm managed to make advertising prescription drugs on TV legal. At first it might have seemed silly, advertising to consumers who would have to go supplicate to their doctors in order to get the drugs that they want. Well, Big Pharm was also working the doctor side of the equation and their TV campaigns were wildly successful.

This causes all kinds of problems. Patients taking wrong drugs or way too much for their ailment not only drives up insurance rates for the rest of us, it also creates a population more likely to produce drug resistant bacteria. And it creates a medical community that is more likely to believe in the power of drugs which leads to over prescribing. All drugs have side effects which sometimes require additional drugs if they are severe enough. The whole systems sets in motion a vicious cycle that, whether by design or luck, produces obscene profits for Big Pharm.

I could go on but I won’t. I just want you to get a feel for why I hate Big Pharm and the ads that they have all over TV.

Seven or eight years ago I was watching TV with my wife and one of these Big Pharm ads came on. Sometimes when I see one I delight in picking apart their wording to get to the heart of their deception. In this case the ad was for an antidepressant. The narrator, a silky voiced woman, said with great sympathy, “Do you suffer from…” and she listed around ten different symptoms while images of various sad people flashed on the screen. The deception here was so obvious that I had to laugh aloud.

“Of course we do,” I blurted, “That’s the human condition.”

My wife didn’t say anything. She just kept watching.

“I mean, these are daily things, right?”

Now she looked at me. “You think about suicide?”

“Well, yeah, doesn’t everyone?”

“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

I laughed, “I’m to much of a wuss to actually do it. I just think about it.”

She let it drop then but a few days later she brought up again. She was obviously thinking about it.

I was too. The next time I saw the ad I wrote down the symptoms that they listed. I regularly experienced almost ever one of them to one degree or another. I decided to look them up and found them listed virtual verbatim on the National Institute of Health’s website under Symptoms of Depression. This was the first time that I began to think that I actually had depression.

Those symptoms are:

Persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" mood
Feelings of hopelessness, pessimism
Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness
Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities that were once enjoyed, including sex
Decreased energy, fatigue, being "slowed down"
Difficulty concentrating, remembering, making decisions
Insomnia, early-morning awakening, or oversleeping
Appetite and/or weight loss or overeating and weight gain
Thoughts of death or suicide; suicide attempts
Restlessness, irritability
Persistent physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment, such as headaches, digestive disorders, and chronic pain

This is still a strange list for me. Except for those symptoms that become evident as changes from regular behavior, I’ve had all of these since as long as I can remember. There’s never been a catalyst; this is just how I live.

I don’t know if it will ever change. If I ever make enough money for it, I will seek a professional therapist, one with a holistic approach that won’t say “drugs” in our first session.

For now, though, this is all I have.

Herbal Remedies

2007-06-10T10:56:00.001-06:00

I really haven’t tried too many herbal remedies for depression. St. John’s Wort seems to be a popular one. I might even have heard once that it’s recognized in Germany as a “proper” drug and covered under whatever sort of health insurance system that they have.

I tried it once a couple of years ago – back when I was still toiling away in the corporate world – and found that all it seems to do was put me on edge. No, that’s not right because it sounds like I had coffee-like jitters. It made my emotions tenderer, like a new wound. And the effect was only on the negative emotions. I didn’t benefit from any super highs, no fits of uncontrollable happiness; only rage, sadness, and self pity. It was like it worsened the depression. I thought that perhaps my body just needed to adjust so I went ahead and stuck with it. But it was always temporary and negative. For the hours after my dosage I was always just on the edge of a meltdown and just about the time that that feeling would wear off it would be time for another dosage. I never experienced and overall lightening of spirit like I hoped I would. I finally stopped taking it after I got in a huge fight with a co-worker. I had indeed been inconvenienced by her but I completely overreacted. Luckily we didn’t work in the same department because I really never could look at her again.

So, what’s it all mean? Don’t take this to mean that I think that St. John’s Wort. With most things I’m a majority opinion kind of guy. If so many people find relief with it then there most be something to it. It just didn’t work for me. There’s another, somewhat conspiratorial possibility: Since the FDA doesn’t see fit to regulate herbal remedies it could be that I had a bad batch. It could be that it wasn’t St. John’s Wort at all. Maybe I was taking lawn clippings and my depression produced a predictably negative placebo effect.

I keep an herbal garden and thought I’d try growing the stuff but friends and family like to come over, point at different plants, and ask What is that? Remember, my diagnosis was depression caused by social anxiety. Think I’m willing to just grow my remedy where everyone can see? My wife knows that I’m depressed; I told her when I went to that clinic. But we never talk about it. She bought me a book once but that’s been it. Other than that I just don’t talk to anyone about it. I didn’t even tell her when I tried the St. John’s Wort. There’s not a chance that I’m going to try to grow the stuff.

The only other herbal remedy that I tried was indeed from my garden. I cracked my copy of Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia to Herbs and read up on everything that I was already growing. It turned out that quite a few of my culinary herbs were also traditional remedies for depression or melancholy. I went to the local health food store and bought a couple of cups of bulk green tea then harvested large amounts of the alleged happy herbs – I can’t remember all of the herbs that I used but I know that rosemary and lavender were among them. (I know lavender isn’t culinary. It’s my only none culinary herb. I just love the look and smell of it.) I mixed them with the green tea leaves and started drinking the tea.

It tasted absolutely horrible. I’m making a face as I write this at the memory. Nothing I did to it could make it taste better. In the end I drank it with lots of honey. The honey didn’t take the taste away – with enough honey it just made the tea taste like honey and something horrible - though it did manage to make it a bit more drinkable. But here’s the thing: I really made me feel happier - content, really. For a couple of hours after choking down a pot of the stuff I really did feel better. I actually still have quite a lot of the stuff and I’ve almost thrown it out a few times but can’t bring myself to because it really does help. Unfortunately I also can’t bring myself to drinking it, either.

So, I started writing this post with the idea that I would announce a decision to try St. John’s Wort again – the thinking being that now I work at home I’ll give it another try. But why turn my back on the tea? I think that I’ll try to start drinking it again. I’m pretty sure that the green tea is a big part of what I don’t like about it. I will go to the store and find a different base like plain black tea and mix up some more of the stuff. Or maybe I will try it with just the herbs and no tea leaves. Some rose hips, dried apple or cranberries might just give it the lift that it needs. (I will also do a better job this time of cleaning the herbs. Part of the problem is that there is a bit on dirt on some of the leaves where I didn’t clean them very well. There’s nothing worse than getting dirt in your teeth when you drink a cup of tea.)

The only problem with this is that it is a temporary fix. One day of me not feeling like having my tea or being out of town could spin me right down into the depths again. If my problem is a chemical imbalance as Big Pharm would have us all believe then whatever remedy I find needs to be maintained. But if it’s all in my mind, as opposed to the physical brain, then using the temporary fix of a chemical high from herbs on most days could be enough to bring about the right kind of change in my overall disposition.

Tea it is, then. For now I’ll choke down the nasty stuff until I have a chance to go to the store and mix up some more. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Pursuit of Happiness

2007-06-09T05:17:00.001-06:00

This is the inaugural post of a project that I've been thinking of for a while now.

Here's my story: I'm fighting depression.

*Right, see? I'm already rolling my eyes at myself. I'm embarrassed and a bit disgusted about all of this - the blog, my condition (ugh), that I have to write publicly about it, everything. But let's get back to it.*

I'm fighting depression. I've always known that I wasn't as happy as others or, more importantly, as I should be. Then, in a story that I'll tell later, I got diagnosed with depression brought on by social anxiety. Foolishly I said thank you very much and never again darkened the otherwise sunny doorway of that particular clinic.

Since then I started a home business and had to go out and find insurance for myself. In order to get a package I could afford I had to take one with no mental health benefits. Besides, I suppose when it comes down to it, this is a preexisting condition so it wouldn't have been covered.

Predictably, if I have to take the cheaper insurance package then I can't afford to go looking for professional help to be paid out of my own pocket.

I've been working at home for almost three years. At first it was heaven, given the social anxious aspect of my psyche. The depression was still there but a wonderfully supportive wife and a fulfilling job kept me above water.

But now I'm starting to drown. Circumstances that will be fully explored in later posts are conspiring to to pull me under completely. I really need help. I've been self medicating with bourbon and Comedy Central but these are only temporary fixes and they're starting to have their own detrimental effects on me.

So, I can't afford the professional help that I know I desperately need. What to do? I'm trying an anonymous blog. I'll blather on here about whatever is bothering me, the memories that haunt me, and how successful my self help remedies are. This blog is my therapist.

Its anonymous because I work in a pretty happy industry and I don't want to advertise this depression. Also, I'm terribly embarrassed by this and were I reading an in kind blog written by someone else I would lose all respect for them. Finally, I want to confess without worry and bitch about whomever and whatever I want. I feel restricted from that when I do these things under my own name.

This blog isn't going to be my only therapy. I'm also going to try some herbal remedies. I'll be reviewing these in futures posts.