By the time I was in my early 30s, depression took pretty much everything from me.
It took my sense of self, a taking that started when the depression was really amping up to full-tilt in my mid/late 20s. It took my sense of self to the point where I started to walk a wrong path, be a wrong way, live a lie, and because of my stubborn nature, it would take well over a decade for me to admit this to myself. (My self was whispering the wrong of this immediately, and because depression taught me how to lie to myself, I shut it down.)
All of that self-denial eventually took me from my family, and every day now, I breathe a sigh of relief that that was not permanent, that I was able, somehow, to rectify that.
Depression took my passion, my fire, my loves, my likes, my curiosities, my will, my knowing, my moral center, my talents.
This is hard to write about and it’s even harder to look at — depression took the years of my life when I could have been building a family, when I could have been creating the kind of future I had dreamed of in my teens.
But regret is poison so let’s move on.
When depression first started to get bad, I went to a doctor and got some pills. They turned me into a zombie.
In my early 30s, I tried again. After 3 doses, I got very sick.
What I took from this: there is no help; you can only do this yourself. Pills are bad. I will never take another. (Please note: I always have believed in “experiment of one” and would never ever tell someone NOT to get help if they felt something could help them. I have even guided friends to physicians to get prescriptions and been there as they adjust. “NO PILLS” was a rule for ME ONLY.)
Needing to do this ourselves… What a LIE that is… it’s a core lie of our culture, whether you suffer from mental illness or not. It’s a core lie that keeps us all so much more separate than we are built to be, so lonely, so angry, so fearful.
Fast forward… SOMEHOW I get to a point where the lies are no longer sufferable. I get to a point of inner strength.
I get there thanks to dance and to a million other things I put together in my life. Thanks to the whole “design my life to elevate my mind” approach.
But then more things happen and depression lately has been something more acute for me. This was hard to admit after everything, after how far I had come.
It took me many months, but I found a PCP and then lo’ and behold, I liked and respected her so I opened up about all of this.
She prescribed another SSRI (which seems to be their favorite class), and as I have written about, I landed in the ER with a really bad reaction.
It felt like the same rollercoaster ride. I said NO MORE. NEVER AGAIN.
Then I was back in her office and we decided (due to some research I did) to try another class: SNDRI. (I won’t get into details but this drug works on a cluster of brain chemicals as opposed to one.)
No side effects. None. I breathed and waited.
Not only no side effects but within 10 days there were noticeable positive effects, and yes, this CAN happen. It makes me think that this is the exact right pill that my brain needed all along.
Here’s one of the positive effects: I’m not spending any time regretting not trying this sooner. I don’t have time for that. Depressed brain would have had time for that…
But here’s a little list of what’s going on:
The first thing I noticed (because my husband asked me how it was going and then I was like oh…): I have had a part of my brain for as long as I remember that I call ASSHOLE BRAIN. This asshole does exactly what an asshole does — talks down to me, loves to contemplate death, nihilism, and meaninglessness, and is generally cruel. I spend A TON OF ENERGY fighting this asshole Every. Single. Day. You can imagine that it’s tiring. But…suddenly… ASSHOLE WAS SITTING IN THE CORNER. Quiet. Not saying anything. I realized I could lie in bed at night and THINK POSITIVE THOUGHTS and NO ONE WAS INTERRUPTING ME. I cannot overemphasize the MIRACLE of this.
Then the other night, Craig and I were watching TV and I was LAUGHING AT EVERYTHING. ANYTHING that was remotely SILLY made me laugh.
I heard myself and was yet again amazed. My mother would tell you that when I was little, I laughed so easily. She would tell you that I would sit in front of the TV and just laugh and laugh at the littlest things.
This was that laugh.
Another: any time there is ANY music — in a commercial, on the radio, in my head — I do little dances. That had completely stopped.
And another: I talk. I talk A LOT. I talk in vomitous rivers of excitement. This is ME.
Ten days. On a half dose.
IMPORTANT: Since I’m not exhausted fighting the Asshole Brain, I have energy to do MORE of the other things that I know help. More exercise. Better eating. More play. We can’t let a pill replace those things; a pill, if it’s working right, will help us DO those things.
MOST IMPORTANT: Don’t give up. Keep pushing for the help you deserve. Find a GOOD and KIND doctor. Find a CURIOUS doctor. Research for yourself; be informed. Ask a friend for help if you’re too depressed to do these things. Ask someone who has been there. Don’t accept “okay-ish.” Docs love SSRIs and maybe those aren’t for you. Try something else.