Depression thread

[fishjim]

hurtling into deep space is a good thing, then. You're the enterprise, not the voyager?

Neither. I just finally accepted my psyche's soundtrack is basically "Into the Void" -- meaning, my suicidal fantasies have nothing to with me and everything to do with rage at our species. Once I got that, the rage became a blessing. It's like a little creative rocket that don't stop.

[Dick]

Ig, I'm rooting for you dogg.

Lately I've been wondering how the old biennial crippling emotional meltdown is going to work now that I have a wife.  It's not like I can just stop picking up the phone and answering emails for 6 months like I used to.

[G.C.R]

Got nowt to add but hugs, Iggy.

[Ignatius]

The psychiatrist (who, according to her husband, is the best psychiatrist) must have conferred with Jess... She prescribed me some generics and free samples on account of my hard upness w/r/t health insurance, and referred me to a cognitive therapist.

[elpollodiablo]

Iggy man I hope you get on the mend swiftly. Sorry I ain't have any more than that.

[Ignatius]

That's all I need. You guys are real good at making me feel like taking care of this is something worth doing.

[clare]

The psychiatrist (who, according to her husband, is the best psychiatrist) must have conferred with Jess... She prescribed me some generics and free samples on account of my hard upness w/r/t health insurance, and referred me to a cognitive therapist.

Awesome news! I  hope it keeps going as well as that.

[peacocks]

Yeah! That sounds great and I hope things start looking brighter in all other areas as well, really super soon!

[Lucy]

Well done on talking to your family and getting to the psychiatrist! Those steps can be really tough, but you're already gaining a little bit of forward momentum! Glad to see you're getting some good real-life support, and those of us on the internet are rooting for you as well.

[jm]

Stuff has been hitting me pretty hard lately, and I've just generally been feeling pretty much like garbage and like the things I love doing the most have come to nothing really positive. I do have the world's best girlfriend, though.

[Chet]

You are also very metal. Chin up.

[alistarr*]

It's easy to say and sometimes hard to believe when you're feeling down about everything, but the things you love doing don't have to come to anything - the real point is that you get to do them.

[jebreject]

Yes, definitely. Something I need to remember as well.

[jm]

You are also very metal. Chin up.

Ha, thank you.

It's easy to say and sometimes hard to believe when you're feeling down about everything, but the things you love doing don't have to come to anything - the real point is that you get to do them.

This may be true.  I just kind of wish that some of the things I did connected—to an extent anywhere near the extent that they connect with me—with other people.  Where those things are concerned, well, ART IS HARD, I guess.

[clare]

You are also very metal. Chin up.

And your parents have the Amberola, that's enough to raise a smile here! (and my dad got really into looking for that song too:-)

[Em]

Man, I am sorry to keep mucking up the depression thread by being all "Woo!" but man, past few weeks I have felt better than I have at any point since I was first diagnosed. Zonisamide for the win. I guess it doesn't work all that often, but when it does, man it really does! It's like, I know I should stay vigilant and all that, but it's a totally different feeling--not like I'm on the edge of anything. Plus, without so much Abilify (and no lithium) in my system, I keep getting thinner. Yay! Next steps: start weaning off the clonazepam some, as I've been on a very high dose for a long time and it is definitely fucking with my memory. That'll be fun.

[Chet]

Don't be sorry. Surely part of this thread should be about recovery? And it can act as encouragement to others. I am glad you are doing well!

[Ignatius]

Good to hear, Em. Like Chet said, it's encouraging to read. I've been feeling really tired and slow in the daytime and occasionally dizzy as I get used to sertraline + Abilify, but the obsessive brain-spirals of despair have slowed down considerably. Science is really weird, guys.

[clare]

Yep, the good stories are really important here. I've suddenly started to clean. I want to be tidy and clean. I'm wondering if it's 3.5 years of PND finally lifting, or if it's something else. I used to be able to clean regularly, but since being pregnant with E it's been very hard.

[auto-da-fey]

Em, that was good to hear. And Iggy, I am rooting for you, dude--I have thus far utterly failed to move to Newark as planned, but if you (or mountmccabe for that matter, who I think also expressed interest once) want to hit a sporting event there this spring (I won't even pretend to know who the teams are or which sports they play, but that don't mean I'm not interested), hit me up. I still have every long-term intention of becoming a semi/part-time Newarkian eventually, and participating in the local community . . .

On a much lesser level than anything here, but in the spirit of things-that-are-going-somewhat-better, it has been a Serious Writing Month for me. I wake up, I stare at a laptop monitor, and I squeeze about 1500-2000 words a day through gritted brain-teeth, then watch a movie if time permits. That is all; nothing more, except maybe going out to buy toothpaste or something. I've written a fair amount over the years about the toll these periods take on me--generally a sort of profound alienation from self and world that leaves me completely unable to relate to anyone, which has led to some of the worst moments in my otherwise lovely relationship. It's really hard for me to pull myself back together from these episodes; I often wind up just riding them out, numb and vacant until I'm forced/jarred by life, work, or whatever fortunate external factor comes along. Whatever that term was that Jess once posted about low-intensity, functional bi-polarity, I certainly related to it.

Anyway, this time around, it's been going better. I'm not very excited about the stuff I'm writing (which you'd think would make it worse), but I've been both productive and emotionally together this past week, which is a pretty rare occurrence. I think it might relate to the fact that I'm overdue on a contract--usually in my world there's no real deadline in the big picture, and so everything has to be effectively self-motivated, which drains my mental battery fast. When there's some sort of urgency/outside force at play, maybe it keeps me more centered. I dunno. Although now I've lost my focus by posting, oops. 

[peacocks]

...everything has to be effectively self-motivated, which drains my mental battery fast. When there's some sort of urgency/outside force at play, maybe it keeps me more centered. I dunno. Although now I've lost my focus by posting, oops. 

That is exactly where I am at a lot of times with my job when I am not in the field or organizing data. Especially now when my main task is writing an epidemiology centered community newsletter and waiting for it to rain. I have been thinking about how to create my own structure but it hasn't gone beyond "how do I create my own structure????"

[auto-da-fey]

I have been thinking about how to create my own structure but it hasn't gone beyond "how do I create my own structure????"

I don't want to derail this thread too far from its more pressing topics, but yeah, this has been my perpetual dilemma. On paper, it looks like I've solved it--by any objective standard, I've accomplished a lot in the past half-decade. Experientially, and emotionally, man, I just have no idea, and remain befuddled by the general structurelessness of the majority of my days--like, slip slightly at 11am, and a whole day is lost, never to be recovered. If all goes well, I will be effectively on my own from May through the end of the calendar year, and it kind of terrifies me.

[fishjim]

Whatever that term was that Jess once posted about low-intensity, functional bi-polarity, I certainly related to it.

I think you mean hypomania? That's how I've come to relate to my creativity, too.

Over the holidays, I saw this painting by a local artist at the SFMOMA and it said a lot to me - for example, that depression is actually a shared (i.e., social) thing, and that in a way it's electrical in nature. It can electrify us, or it can electrocute you. Our development as artists and individuals is how we learn to control the current.



Chris Johanson
Untitled (Figures with black presence)
2002
Acrylic on paper

[Ashley]

Man, I was going to do so many things this weekend, and meet so many new people.

But nope!  I keep telling myself I didn't go out because I'm broke and it's more embarrassing to go out when you're too poor to take care of yourself than to get out for the sake of getting out.   I can't even scrape together $5.  But there were so many cool events on the go!

I would feel so much better if I just had a group of friends that made me feel normal. 

[Anne the Man]

We'll do our best.