Depression and what it's really like

almost half of my life lost to this shit, my entire youth GONE FOREVER, spent in total misery, and now that i'm picking up the pieces, everyone my age is about 18 years ahead of me in life development

let me be the first to say ... Wrong!!

:-)

yeah, it's not like there's nothing to gain from the experiences i did have. mostly life lesson kinda shit, compassion for people who struggle or weren't gifted an easy life. a lot of it was beating out the really poor way my parents raised me... school of hard knocks kinda shit. but maybe i have a chance to break the generations-long cycle of BS my family's been stuck in.

only bad thing is i never developed deep emotional relationships with anyone, which is a pretty essential part of the human experience. all relationships and friends were like my parents: narcissistic aholes, maybe even one legit sociopath in the mix. depression made getting over that hump seem impossible... compounded with the fact i never had anything in common with anyone i grew up with! or work with! not many people seem interested in life outside of football, beer, family, and 1-2 recreational activities.

let me be the first to say ... Wrong!!

:-)

maybe that's not universally true. it's just tempting to look at the people you grew up with, work with, and see the lives they have and then feel envious about it. phonecalls with the person you're going to marry ... your mom and dad call you to tell you they love you and about meeting for dinner over the weekend ... cruise vacations with massages, pictures of friends and Good Times on your desk, crew of best buds going out to the shore to party ... basically just living life. and then i see that and realized i never had any of that, wasn't even capable of feeling it for a very long time, and it's like ... jesus christ what did i miss out on. and i want to experience it, too, but everyone my age is done with it already, or are locked into their own worlds. poof! gone.

it's very frustrating not "making the most of your life", especially when you're aware you're gonna die one day. and then have this illness which makes it really difficult to do anything or enjoy anything ... all the while being completely aware of what's going on. it's like torture.

not many people seem interested in life outside of football, beer, family, and 1-2 recreational activities.

All this means is that those people are probably kind of boring?

not many people seem interested in life outside of football, beer, family, and 1-2 recreational activities

well, for some people that qualifies as deep emotional relationships, and by their metric you've probably had very deep emotional relationships.

but leaving aside learning from negative experiences, it sounds like you're focusing on the negative experiences at the expense of whatever positive experiences you must've had. even if they're outnumbered by bad ones 10:1 there's a perfectly good rationale for focusing on the positive ones instead - not that that's natural or easy to do!

also focusing on an idealized "what could have been" or "what should have been" is a real motherfucker. i mean, there's going to be people in their 50s who made fortunes, went waterskiing in cabo every summer and had mad strings-free sex and they're going to be sitting around going "oh man, i wasted the last 18 years i should've been sitting on top of annapurna with monks contemplating my navel"

"i wasted x years of my life" is an argument you can always win with yourself, if you choose to argue that route

just realized i've been suffering from this since i was 11 years old. almost half of my life lost to this shit, my entire youth GONE FOREVER, spent in total misery

i won't dispute that you have been suffering for almost half your life, but your "entire youth", well there never was any such thing except in novels and movies, and it's gone forever for everyone, and besides since it was miserable you should be glad it's gone forever, you now have a chance to do all of that stuff in your youth you could not do until now. and total, 100% misery? that can't be right! there must be bright spots in amongst the suffering.

it's very frustrating not "making the most of your life", especially when you're aware you're gonna die one day.

I said very nearly these EXACT words to my wife this morning in the car. What I said was, "It's not like I'm about to die, but I definitely have more years behind than ahead, and all I do is waste my life every single day working a job I hate at a company I don't believe in. Nothing I do has any meaning."

did she patiently say "but you accompany me to my job every day and that's meaningful to me"

Sadly, no. And most days I don't even do that, I bike to work.

goods points late great, might be my attitude that's making everything seem like shit. still have a lot of work to do it looks like. i had some fun times during the utter worst of it, and i suppose some people would say, "well i never got to do that!!!" just as jealous as me, and in fact people have when i'd share some war stories. it's all relative i suppose.

there's definitely a brighter future forward, i can see that, there's just this machine in my brain that turns everything into a big pile of turds.

might be my attitude depression that's making everything seem like shit

xpost

i bet she was thinking that!

and bicycling is fun, isn't it? that means something.

You would think! Instead, being the person I am, I'm beating myself up because I didn't bike today and I'm 10 miles short of a 2,000 mile goal I set for myself. So, you know, a failure.

Like basically all I can think all day is "I wish it was 4:30pm so I could start drinking or go to sleep or w/e."

Phil, it's possible that your job just really sucks, quite honestly.

phil i used to ride my bike 30 mi/day and it was a huge point of pride in my life, now six years later i am unemployed and smoke every day and i have literally nothing to do for 3/4 of the day, and i have a new bike and it's got a layer of dust on it, i look at it forlornly every day and can't even bring myself to spin around the block for fear my heart will implode if i touch the bike

sounds like you shouldn't be beating yourself up, unless you think it's appropriate for me to immolate myself or something

Oh, my job unquestionably sucks but there's a lot more to it than that, it's just the most prominent example of my shitstain life right now.

i'm also of the opinion that depression is a symptom of an unhealthy society/planet.

Discussions of depression as a mental disorder keep getting overlapped with discussions about sadness, oppression of the spirit, ennui, grief and despair. All these subjects are worth discussing, but they should not be conflated.

The key difference is that depression as a mental disorder is entirely dissociated from any external or contingent conditions. It can strike at people who have every conceivable reason to be confident, happy and bouyant, who nevertheless feel crushed, tortured and utterly negated.

phil there are shiny bits of magic in that shitstain! you have to stare at them while ignoring the stink.

The key difference is that depression as a mental disorder is entirely dissociated from any external or contingent conditions.

That may be true in a clinical sense, but I really don't agree with it at all. We ascribe reasons for being confident, happy, and buoyant in kind of an arbitrary way, inasmuch as people often have their own subjective reasons for feeling those feelings. I don't think it's as much that there's no external reason for depression as it is that depressed people aren't buoyed by the "right" conditions (i.e. the conditions that induce happiness in others). For me, the key is shifting perspective in such a way that you're able to ascribe some kind of meaning and value on an objectively meaningless world. So I do agree that depression is mostly the result of a skewed/constricted perspective, but I think that perspective is absolutely triggered by a societal construct that doesn't jibe with certain people's brains (my hat's off to anyone who can sit in a cubicle for 40+ hours/week and not become depressed).

It's kind of facile, I know, but I tend to think of depressed people as those who couldn't resist pulling back the curtain and seeing that the Wizard was just some dopey old dude. It ain't easy to get that genie back in the bottle (to mix metaphors just a scooch).

xp

If the oppression of spirit caused by sitting in a cubicle for 40+ hrs a week is a normal and predictable outcome of that (in)activity, then it would hardly qualify as a mental disorder. Where things can get tricky in teasing apart the externalities from the mental disorder is that clinically depressed people often operate at such a low level of efficiency that the external conditions of their lives often look very depressing (in the non-clinical sense).

The key difference is that depression as a mental disorder is entirely dissociated from any external or contingent conditions.

i don't think this is actually true, you can be diagnosed w/ acute depression as result of a death in family, pregnancy, getting fired, coming back from afghanistan or any other big life change. and it can be the result of a medical condition, etc.

i guess my point is that at one time or another everyone probably is going through huge life changes, and i think everyone at some point has some reason to feel tortured or crushed, you're absolutely right though that depressed people operate at that low level of efficiency, it's like having a low immune system for existential problems

going through huge life changes something

are there settled differences in depression rates in different lifestyle cohorts? my depressed buddy definitely feels affluence is a negative factor, but obviously not negative enough to rid himself of it.

no

helloooo everybody!

i have a question and i'm not sure what thread to put it on, at the risk of being offensive i'll put it here because it seems well trafficked:

i recently ran into a statement that i'd never seen before and struck me as flatly bullshit, but who knows. the idea is: most psych meds in the US are provided to the poor for nothing. (if you can't guess i ran into this idea in the rightwing universe)

instead of just laughing at it, i tried to figure out what degree of (un)truth there was to it -- well, what % of antidepressants, antipsychotics, antiaxiety drugs, etc. are provided via medicare, emergency medicine, and so on.

where would i even begin trying to find numbers about this? ye people in the med industry, does this strike you as a big lie?

xp

there's problems in figuring it out because there are differences in access to services and self-reporting in different lifestyle cohorts and that's really tough to disentangle, let alone working w/o a comprehensive mental health care system that has long-term records on these things

it's also a fast-changing field right now, i think

If the oppression of spirit caused by sitting in a cubicle for 40+ hrs a week is a normal and predictable outcome of that (in)activity, then it would hardly qualify as a mental disorder. Where things can get tricky in teasing apart the externalities from the mental disorder is that clinically depressed people often operate at such a low level of efficiency that the external conditions of their lives often look very depressing (in the non-clinical sense).

That was probably a poor example. More generally, I understand how even people who have achieved a lot by society's standards might peek behind the veil and start questioning the worth and meaning of it all because it isn't fulfilling to them on some deeper spiritual level. Which, yeah, may likely cause them to start functioning less efficiently and ultimately slip into a life that appears depressing even to those on the outside.

the generics cost me around $8 and i'm in a plan

if the gov't is picking up the extra $8 then that's true

if you're using on-brand stuff like abilify then i think the gov't would be picking up $20-40

but that's all folded into the idea that the gov't is giving them free healthcare coverage, which is what healthcare coverage is supposed to do

i can totally see the gov't is picking up the extra $8, it's not that much to pay compared to the costs of getting 5150'd and locked up at taxpayer expense for 36+ hours

i'd find it hard to believe the poor would have better access to psych resources than for physical ailments.

i don't think they can get therapy or psychiatry but an urgent care doctor or gp can prescribe medication at least, and then they need to draw on community resources (things like NAMI) for therapy

unfortunately a lot of people who need those community resources don't know about them, i don't think

you can be diagnosed w/ acute depression as result of a death in family, pregnancy, getting fired, coming back from afghanistan or any other big life change. and it can be the result of a medical condition, etc.

― the late great, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:18 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

[...]it's like having a low immune system for existential problems

― the late great, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:19 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Two great points which adequately explain the tailspin I'm still in the process of pulling myself out of ("low immune system for existential problems" + perfect storm of just a ridiculous number of hardships within a very short period of time = me bottoming out).

to drill down and repeat myself, how would one go about finding numbers for this? ie the number of pills gone out through the private healthcare system vs those in public & charity systems (if distinction can even be made)

by getting a public health PhD

xp

if you're in a tailspin, you're not bottomed out, if you're bottomed out, you're not in a tailspin

that's the negative version of

in the end, it'll be okay, if it's not okay, it's not the end

i find it useful to keep these things in mind during shitstorms

I went to a city psych clinic for a while. The care itself was on a sliding scale (I think I paid $15/visit because I was poor), the meds were cheap ($5 for a month of ritalin). However, the clinic was a model of inefficiency and doctors were constantly leaving for bigger and better things. I'm lucky that I wasn't in desperate need the way some people were because I'm certain they didn't get the care they required with the consistency they required.

if you're in a tailspin, you're not bottomed out, if you're bottomed out, you're not in a tailspin

I was in a tailspin, and I absolutely bottomed out at the end of that tailspin. So I guess a more apt metaphor for my current sitch is that I'm cautiously flying at low altitudes in a shaky plane that I patched together with palm fronds and chewing gum in the hopes it will eventually get me off of this blasted island?

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/12/127106/2456349-tintin_stock_de_coque__19__1958____p_gina_1_super.jpg

Ha.

Also, I think bottoming out is underrated. I'm certainly not out of my own personal woods, but I can always look back at the point of hitting bottom and realize how amazingly well-off I am now in comparison. And it really does give me hope that things can (and will...?) keep getting better.

yeah it's nice, you can see the upward arc of things

try telling the wizard story to this family http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/boy-interrupted/index.html

most psych meds in the US are provided to the poor for nothing.

what they neglect to point out is while that may or may not be true pharmaceutical companies are still being paid up the yin-yang for every last med they pump into the underprivileged classes, who only need the meds in the first place because poverty is one of the largest factors contributing to mental illness and/or depression and/or ill health in general.

not only are pharmaceutical companies still being paid, but it is the middle class paying for them.

and, frankly, anyone who's ever been on welfare can tell you being on welfare is a full-time job. if you don't understand what that means you've obviously never been on welfare.

<i>it's like having a low immune system for existential problems</i>

i like this.

oops. or i would if i had coded it right.

try telling the wizard story to this family

That's awful and sad, but I don't really get your point.

it's like having a low immune system for existential problems

i am so into this.

Sometimes I feel like Julianne Moore in Safe wrt existential problems.

i think wolves is saying that for some people, they never pull back any curtain, the curtain is never there in the first place if the genetic predisposition is strong enough.

xp I really should go back and check out that movie one day