Struggling With Depression

I’ve posted about this before on Chocolate For Dogs — look up “In The Fight” if you want, but if not, it’s no big deal; things are (as always) a little different now.  In fact, that’s why I’m posting it again, because things are different.  There’s a different audience here on this site, people who may not know me as the guy who ran Chocolate for Dogs, so we have a bit of catching up to do.

For those of you who don’t know, I suffer from depression.  I don’t mean I get a little sad every once in a while; I mean all-out, curl up in bed with the covers over you, not wanting to go on with anything (even — somedays especially — life in general).  Clinical, hard core take-meds-and-see-a-therapist type stuff.  It’s not fun — hell, by definition, it’s not fun — but it’s a part of my life.  You deserve to know about it.

A lot of what went into Like Glass is based on it (although highly fictionalized — I’ve never had a **blink** that I can remember….), and, when you get a chance to read it, Shattered is based very heavily on a lot of what I’ve gone through in the past year.

I’m completely open to discussing it, if anyone has any questions about it.  I don’t know what you’d be curious about, so I’ll try to explain what it’s like to the best of my abilities.  I’m sure I’ll fall short, but that’s life, eh?

Everyone’s been sad; that’s a given.  If not, well, send me some of whatever you’re taking   You’ve gotten your heart broken, you’ve had someone close to you die, something’s set you off at some point or another.  It’s terrible, but life goes on, right?

Now, take that sadness, that grief, and imagine going through that every day, for months.  Yeah, you “snap out of it” every once in a while (a brief interjection: don’t ever tell someone who’s depressed to just “snap out of it”; they can’t, and you’ll just make things worse.  I’ll probably talk more about that some other time if there’s any interest), there’s days where you’re able to smile and joke around like everything’s normal.  But you always end up coming back to that same, deep sadness.

Let’s take it one more step, and remove that initial cause.  No one died.  No one left you.  There’s nothing that’s really “wrong,” per se, but you’re still incredibly sad.  Now, see, the brain — well, my brain, at least — doesn’t really work that way.  It feels there needs to be a “reason” to be sad, so it’ll make shit up.  It’ll take the slightest thing, no matter how minute, and stretch it out into a crises.  Your boss didn’t give you the right amount of praise on the job you did?  You must be worthless.  Your wife (or husband) was in a bad mood — must be your fault, something you did or didn’t do.

That’s pretty bad, right?  Wait, there’s more!

After so long of putting up with it, you get tired.  And I mean physically tired, emotionally tired, mentally tired.  Your brain stops working, your body stops working, you stop caring about anything.  Of course, this just makes everything worse.  You start pissing people off, falling down on the job, ignoring the little things that you normally do to make people appreciate you (whether you know it or not).  So then your life really starts to go downhill, and it really is your fault this time.

That’s when you start getting bad thoughts.  I mean bad stuff.  Stuff like suicide.  Because it never stops.  Someone who’s really struggling with depression looks at it like it is a terminal illness, because no matter how you try to reason with them, they’re so used to everything going “wrong” (either in reality or their imagination), that they just cannot see it ever getting better.

And when you get to that point, you just want everything to stop.  You want the bad stuff to stop.  You want the good stuff to stop, because it’s almost teasing you; you know it won’t last, and you know how terrible it’s going to be once the good stuff goes away again, so you can’t even enjoy it while it’s there.  You’ve painted yourself into a corner, and there’s only one way out, one way to end the pain that you know is always going to be there.

The rational, healthy mind, of course, doesn’t look at it like that.  The healthy mind can see that things will get better, and that things being “bad” is either simply perspective that can be changed, or temporary situations that will eventually remedy themselves.  The depressed mind doesn’t see that, because for some reason or other, that part just doesn’t work any more.

I want to stop this right here, because it may sound too much like I’ve done a lot more research on this, and I don’t want to give any kind of impression that I know more than I really do.  I very well may be wrong on all of this from the general concensus, but that’s how things work in my mind at least.

Yes, for better or worse, I have gotten to the point where I’ve contemplated suicide.  Hell, I honestly contemplate it on a regular basis — today in the elevator I was standing there wishing it would break and plummet rather than make it to the office.  You may think I’m joking, just talking crap about not wanting to go to work, but I’m not.

I’ve done a lot of research into suicide.  It’s an interesting subject for those who are morbidly inclined.  Ways to do it, ways to avoid.  How to write suicide notes (yes, I’ve written one at one of my more dire moments), things to try and avoid when you’re writing them, why people write them and why some people don’t.  I’ve learned that the human body isn’t as fragile as the news reports would have you think — it’s actually damned hard to kill one’s self if you’re not really into pain or trauma.

And forget slitting your wrists or OD’ing on most commonly available medications.  The former will just give you a scar and a trip to the psych ward, while the latter will just be extremely painful, and will most likely lead to a lot of praying to the porcelain gods before you call the hospital.

Just to make it clear, I haven’t attempted anything so far.  I won’t lie — as I’ve already said, I’ve contemplated it on many occasions, and I’ve even made plans, but I haven’t acted on anything.

Yes, I am seeing a therapist, as frequently as she can squeeze me in.  I am seeing a psychiatrist as well.  For those of you who may have thought as I did, that those were the same thing, they aren’t.  A therapist teaches you how to deal with stuff; a psychiatrist has a medical degree and only (where I’m at, at least) spends enough time with you to figure out what meds you need.

I’m currently taking Lexapro (Escitalopram), supplemented with Abilify (Aripiprazole).  The Lexapro did a great job of removing a lot of issues I had with anxiety when I started it, but it did nothing as far as my depression goes.  Abilify is an atypical antipsychotic when used at it’s “normal” dosage (sorry — I don’t know what that dosage is), but when used at a much smaller dose it works well with anti-depressants to supplement their effects.

They worked great when I started them, but their effects have recently started to dwindle, and I’m going to talk to the shrink at my next appointment about switching to something else.

There’s a couple of reasons I bring all this crap out into the open.  One, I want you to know just in case I go off on some whiny tangent about how I need to quit my day job (yes, my day job causes about 80-90% of my suicidal thoughts, but I’m not going to explain that right now), or some other rant that sounds like someone who just can’t deal with things.  I try to hold off on those as much as possible, but some times I just can’t help it, and now you know why.

The other reason is that, if you or someone you know is suffering from depression (God I sound like one of those damned commercials), feel free to talk about it here or on any of the other venues I frequent.  I don’t mind trying to help when I can.  But also know that you’re not alone, and contrary to the stigma that’s out there, it’s okay to get help.  It’s a lot better than trying to off yourself, that’s for damned sure.

Okay, it’s way past my bedtime and the missus is probably wondering why I haven’t come to bed yet when a couple of hours ago I was curled up in there after work (yes, it was a very bad day on the depression front — and to prove a point, nothing really happened that made it “bad”, either).

Catch you on the flip side, and feel free to ask anything you want about me, depression, whatever

–Matt

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