Depression and what it's really like

it never completely goes away

been coming to terms with ^^^that fact recently. I've dealt with depression for as long as I can remember, so I'm figuring it's just a part of me. With that in mind I've realized that being depressed is mostly just fucking boring! Being in some damn purgatory of wanting/not wanting to do shit just sucks. Somehow that logic has gotten me out of the house recently. I go find some place else or some other way to be depressed and bored. At least mixes it up.

Feel the need to punch someone, anyone, in the throat. Dunno where that's come from but been feeling it for a while.

Please tell us more. We're here to listen.

oh hai. i think my medication stopped working. not sure how i feel about this yet.

Has that happened before? Can you consult your doctor about this? Recently it seemed my anxiety meds stopped working, but then I realized, considering the circumstances, I would probably have had a complete meltdown without'em. lol

I went off antidepressants (Effexor) earlier in the year, but recently I had to ask my doctor for something else, because in just the last four weeks:

- Both my and my wife's cars were broken into while they were sitting in our driveway.
- We had to have two of our cats euthanized for incurable illnesses.
- My car broke down and may not be repairable in a cost-efficient way.
- Our home was broken into WHILE WE WERE IN BED ASLEEP and both of our laptops and my wife's work laptop were stolen.

After the second thing listed was when I asked my doctor for something, and she gave me a 3-week prescription for clonazepam plus a followup appointment. But adding on the second two items, I feel like I'm suffering from PTSD or something. The pills are barely keeping me together, I can't sleep without the lights on and even then it's only 3-4 hours a night, I feel like I'm coming completely unraveled.

Has that happened before? Can you consult your doctor about this?

it may have happened before. but i've been on this drug (lexapro) for nearly 5 years and so reverting back to how i felt before is a little jarring. i want it to be one way! but it's the other way!

i did talk to my doc today -- we're gonna add buspar to the mix. never tried it; heard varied things about it but will give it a shot.

I really hope it helps. Good luck.

Hope it works for you!

I'm feeling better...really stepped up my efforts to get a new job, rather than just sitting around. Do get 'attacks' of tension/sadness for no reason, but just try and go out for a walk when this happens.

Good luck all!

Phil, maybe get a mild sleeping pill? Sleep deprivation is horrible.

Jel, happy you are doing better. :-)

i took buspirone for a while. it made me dizzy for five minutes or so each time i took it. ime i'm not sure how much any drugs ever helped me. i guess they must have to some extent, but then again, if i'm on the fence about it, how dramatic could the results have been? i don't really get depressed anymore. get sad about life here and there, but when it dips past sadness i recognize it as my neurotransmitters being depleted and i need fresh air, sunshine, nourishing food, moving my body, life-affirming social situations/creative things, etc

still get anxious on occasion, but recognize it as temporary situation in the body, and don't feed it. just try to be as kind to myself as possible and ground myself physically. only reason i am glibly dispensing "easy for you to say" testimony is b/c i was a total mess at one point, like in that movie where sigourney weaver plays a detective or whatever, but now i'm pretty good in general. personally subscribe to the ayurvedic or tcm models that such stuff is caused by psychophysical energies acting up (which is almost a given to a greater or lesser degree in our frantic culture) but i understand if others are like, whatever dude. but yeah, i've become acquainted with severely uncomfortable states and try to make friends with them these days until they pack off and depart, which they always do, obv. it's just a learning experience about things that come and go, aka everything

Our home was broken into WHILE WE WERE IN BED ASLEEP and both of our laptops and my wife's work laptop were stolen.

AHH! AHH! FUCK! I might need to up my dose just reading that Phil. Sorry to hear about your run of fortune. Hope things turn around for you, pronto.

yah, where the hell do you guys live?

Cleveland Heights, which is generally a good, safe neighborhood, but with Northeast Ohio hit so hard by the ongoing recession, and bordering East Cleveland being such a shithole, there's been a real uptick in crime. I am just so freaked out by the idea that someone was in our house, while we were there. I know Leigh-Anne went downstairs for something at like 1:30am -- they could have been in the house then! She could have been hurt!

Oh wow, this is in Cleveland? I know East Cleveland. I'm sorry Phil, that's just awful. Intruders are #1 thing I'm scared of, so I can see how that would affect you and your wife so deeply.

Man, I'm saying, an alarm system can run you as little as $30 a month plus installation.

Our home was broken into WHILE WE WERE IN BED ASLEEP

Phil, I'm so sorry this happened to you guys. Mr. Jaq and I had the same thing happen (including laptop and wallet full of ID and checks for deposit stolen) when we lived in a loft. It took us both a long time to feel comfortable and safe enough to sleep w/o lights, and it kicked my generally held in check OCD up to the point of it being a real problem. I didn't want to medicate myself to sleep - I wanted to be able to react if, heaven forbid, I had to in the middle of the night. So we would have one of us nap heavily while the other was vigilant, for awhile. After a few months, the anxiety faded, only to be brought back in full when some utility workers found my wallet + ID on the roof of another building. It took a lot to stop thinking about this person being in the same room with us as we slept.

Living in a rented place that could not be permanently modified, I ended up getting these for all the double-hung windows and doing the door lock check many times every night. Eventually we were okay to sleep. Do what you need to do to feel safe, get stronger scrips from your doctor if that's what you need right now.

yeah, so traumatic and gross. my unsolicited internet advice -- do what you need take care of yourselves, but of course w/o obsessing or fixating on it . like don't let desperate ppl win over your default peace of mind. thankfully most ppl want to help and not harm you; although it's perfectly natural to fixate on contrarian scenarios after someone violates your home

I've been sleeping with an aluminum softball bat. Like, in the bed with me, holding the handle while I sleep.

: (

I did buy it dinner, though, so I think we're cool.

We're looking into alarm systems, because while police don't think the culprit was in the house very long, it's possible they cased the house for future burglaries. The other shitty thing is, my laptop was logged in to Google at the time for Gmail, which also means someone could access my Google Docs account, which contained a document which recorded logins and passwords for all of our credit card sites, utilities, banking, etc. It was protected, but christ knows what people can hack these days. So I had to go through and change all of our logins and passwords, and report all of our credit card information as potentially stolen.

i had my laptop burgled while i slept once too :( no fun. i "solved" the situation by actually having a good lock on my door. shitty locks are the cause of 100% of burglaries i've been victim of. get a good lock and don't worry about it any more.

Phil, would you consider getting a dog? It doesn't have to be like an attack beast, but a dog that will bark furiously when something's awry makes me feel a lot safer after some creepy things went down in my apt building.

Dogs also snuggle better than baseball bats.

Then again, baseball bats won't shit in the corner, so ymmv.

They came in through a window. We have great locks and deadbolts on both the front and side doors, and every window in the house was closed/locked EXCEPT for two crank-out casement style windows in our back sunroom. (See photo of room here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/muggingovercoffee/488116636/) They were opened about 5" because that room is like a hothouse so we like to air it out. Someone pulled the window open farther, then pushed on the screen until it popped out.

Keep in mind, from the outside, that window is a good 5+ feet off the ground, and it's only about 14" wide. Whoever did this was very small, but able to hoist himself up quite easily (police took a shoe print off the siding and from the living room), and seemed to know exactly what they wanted and where to find it. But I can't think of anyone who has ever been in our house who would be a likely suspect.

xxp After just recently losing two cats I don't think we could think about getting a dog right now. Certainly not for burglar-alarm type purposes. Although nothing would make me happier than siccing like, a bull mastiff on someone.

Yeah, I have a back-up fleet of chihuahuas in case a burglar tries to come in one of the windows that isn't alarmed.

that would be pretty great if you did

http://www.bestweekever.tv/bwe/images/2008/09/scooterdogs9.jpg

Well, a chihuahua, a maltese, and two hybrids. They're almost completely useless most of the time, but they'd get the job done if someone tried to get in our house.

That picture's great, Phil.

I love it! What a bunch of happy little friends.

i like to sleep with the windows open, but whenever i go out i have to make sure every window in the house is locked, as well as the front and back doors. we're facing a busy street with minimal parking, so *knock on wood* someone out there would notice if a burglar was trying to get in.

how's it going dance

ask me again next week.

ok good luck

sup

it takes 4 weeks to reach full effect. i'm on the second week and i just started adding the lunchtime pill to the breakfast and dinner pills. i don't feel anything yet, except more tired than usual. it's been a difficult week though, for various reasons, so "not feeling better" is par for the course.

how often do you feel like ditching everything medicinal and letting the chips fall, etc

i do, constantly. but the consequences are never suitably epic; i just stay in bed for a few days while considering unpleasantries. and then, i dunno, the same shit just continues forever.

i can't ditch everything; it'd be too tempting to lie there in the dark all day and make bad decisions about my personal upkeep.

the same shit just continues forever

life, in my experience.

(not even meant to be sarcastic. in the belly of the beast myself at the moment.)

i've spent a ridic amount of time on ilx today because i've been down; when i feel okay i just check in on a few threads and go about my business. abnormal ilx use is a cry for help. :-(

so there are things that i *know* help

like especially exercise
and not drinking
and reading
and trying to keep regular hours

some are more difficult than others

but i struggle to do any of them

reading does help. anything escapist that won't destroy your liver does help. i say that while i finish a strong manhattan.

<3

good vibes, homies

for me, i'm indulging in reading, tv, movies, music. the reading's going a little slower because i have trouble concentrating on books at home -- it's only while commuting or killing time somewhere.

re-read this today and it was a to-the-bone gutting:

The almost 35-year-old Terry Schmidt had very nearly nothing left of the delusion that he differed from the great herd of common men, not even in his despair at not making a difference, or in the great hunger to have an impact that in his late twenties he'd clung to as evidence that even though he was emerging as a sort of a failure the grand ambitions which he'd judged himself a failure were somehow exceptional and superior to the common run's--not anymore.

that seems like inappropriate reading material tbh

and yet you have started threads and been tall and beloved (perhaps misleadingly) by randy music critic fans for quite some time now

how have you done it