Depression and what it's really like

I never thought I'd be willing to try and get pills bc I think ppl are prescribed antidepressants willy nilly in some cases (plus I take a daily amphetamine and dunno about the mix) but I really don't know how much more of this I can take, it's worse than it's ever been, worse than I ever imagined.

antidepressants being overprescribed or not doesn't have a bearing on whether you, personally, would benefit from medication. If you are suffering you are worthy of help.

which is to say, seeking care for your depression is a great idea and I wish you luck and strength

if you haven't tried meds, I would definitely say try them. i had gotten to the point where you are (granted, it was not the first time i'd been there), and finally decided, fuck this shit, if it's gonna make me a sheeple or "not-me" then fine.

i feel fortunate in that my health system/insurance company is fairly conservative when it comes to prescribing stuff and determining dosages

Docs totally know how to handle psych meds plus a daily amphetamine so please don't let that be a roadblock.

also you are an awesome poster, and i would miss you if you decided to not choose life

I was doing ok with a therapist but stopped going a while ago, I thought I was ok and some shit happened w/ life that maybe I woulda been equipped to handle had I been talking it out, the unpreparedness is def my fault bc it could've been alleviated

or maybe it coulda. I don't know. but I know I need to find out what the right path is

I just get so tired, when I get home from work and back to this place, like so mentally lethargic (physically to an extent but not as much). pain is easy - lol as fuckin true detective of all things says, "pain is inexhaustible" - life is hard

i know the feeling. been putting off getting in touch with a therapist for a while now
agree with silby - don't be afraid of trying antidepressants if you think it may help. there can be bad experiences with them, but there are also literal life-saving experiences as well

thank you sarahell/silby/carl agatha for the kind words. same to anyone who has offered them in the past.

do you have trouble sleeping? for me, the last straw was the not being able to sleep for more than 3 hours before waking up and being consumed with thoughts of how shitty my life was and how i couldn't do anything about it, which made me feel worse, because sleep is really important

(and nhex ty as well xp)

I'm ok with not a ton of sleep, because I can usually read or write or watch a game that's on if I can't sleep but I def have trouble getting to it, which sometimes (not always) leads to drinking a bunch to knock myself out and that's just alcohol sleep which isn't really productive from a body sense

I usually sleep 5 and a half a night, maybe more if I got messed up, including weekends

i'm averaging about 4 hrs a night right now - sometimes less, infrequently a little more. it's enough to be functioning, but little enough that i feel dumbed-down and foggy and just exhausted all the time.

the thing is, i don't really care. before i got on meds, the depression i'd been experiencing for a year was a lot of crying, feeling really sad and worthless and just straight up miserable, as well as insomnia at about the same level i've had the last few months. now i mostly feel indifferent - like, i know i'm still depressed bc i kinda want to just blink out of existence, and i think everything ever is just pointless, but i don't really have any strong feelings about it. it's not constant, and i'm not actually suicidal/thinking about ways to die or anything, but it's how i mostly feel day to day.

i'll third the suggestion that you do seek out a psychiatrist and figure out if some meds can help.

and remember it may take a couple of tries to find the right meds, so don't bail if the first time out doesn't work right!

stay with us, please!

at one point i had a confluence of very bad events that put me into a severe depression. i saw a doctor who prescribed meds. i took them for about four months and it totally fished me out from the bottom of the pool. if you're feeling unable to go on, see a doctor. it could work.

I'm gonna call my therapist and try to get back on her schedule - it might take a bit bc it's a mental health clinic not a private practice so have to do intake all over again - and go from there, discuss the possibility of meds

thanks for the kind words, folks. I really appreciate it.

i think there's something to be said for taking medication as a way of taking control and not feeling additional angst about not dealing with yr depression

When my life went off the rails several years back, I'm fairly sure that the straw that broke my particular camel's back was losing my psych support at a time when I needed it most (I hastily quit my job and then lost my insurance in the wake of numerous hard knocks). If you have access to it, by all means take advantage.

i started taking medication almost exactly a year ago and it was a revelation. i'd absolutely been of the opinion that meds are overprescibed, but i'd been depressed and anxious for so long that i'd kind of forgotten that it wasn't normal to spend every waking hour feeling totally worthless.

after a few weeks of medication that fog lifted and i could finally get some perspective on my life and see that my life had all kinds of positives that i'd been wilfully overlooking and i've felt infinitely more positive and capable ever since. it's definitely worth giving medication a try - if you're already at the stage of 'i don't want to be alive tonight' then the only way is up, right?

therapist def seems like a step in the right direction. rooting for u :)

yeah, good call man. it'll improve.

I know I've been making progress because instead of "fuck, how I'm I going to get through this?" my default is "I know I can get through this, but what is it going to cost me in terms of physical/mental health and years off the end of my life." Worst thing about it is that the state of things right now is actually pretty great - it's the whole "I don't deserve anything" and zeroing in on apocalypse stories du jour. Stupid middle-age - it's when you notice the environment around you is changing into a world you're not used to. I would love to see an alternate-universe version of The Prisoner in which the lead is the first spy to have been settled into The Village - bitchin place overlooking the beach, enough room to take the Aston Martin out for a spin, a cool bar in town that has Bartok on the jukebox and doesn't care if you sit there all day, four whiskeys and a constant re-read of The Outsider. And then all the other goddamn spies show up and gentrify the place. Oooooh they're fucking special - they all have secrets and have to be babied and taken care of. Back in the old day they bloody well shot you and that was that. Now they've got their insane marching music that won't shut up, cult self-empowerment, Completely intolerable.

We recently discovered a divey arcade game bar on Western Ave. in Koreatown. The return-on-investment with cheap drinks and $10 in quarters has far exceeded the last six months of therapy.

re-reading this thread has made it hit me: quitting drinking has brought my depression back. in the last two months i've rolled back to 3-4 hours of sleep a night, eating more poorly than ever, poorer hygiene, total lack of interest or motivation to do the things i love to do (and at a time where i'm probably most needed in many respects)

i'm seeing a doctor this week for other reasons, i should talk about this too.

it might depend on how/where you drink, but for me total abstinence proved near-intolerable because i missed the company of a good night out. i've had to recalibrate to try and make sure i just have the odd good night out rather than an endless succession of blurry and painful nights out. it seems to be working tbh.

yeah i've been very careful about a gradual "reduction in forces" rather than cold turkey--even gotten myself into the habit of club soda at my local bar so i can still catch up with the regulars and get some writing done--i'll be down to No Drinks Altogether by next week, and hopefully that'll help me calibrate myself better against whatever (if anything) i get prescribed in the next week or so. never intended to be Total Work Stoppage for All Time, just enough to reassert my own control over the thing that had become a crutch.

yeah i had to go down to zero before i could get any kind of control. and those cravings at zero can be very hard to wrestle with - but you have a plan, and that's the thing to focus on i guess when the little booze voice starts nagging away. looking beyond the immediate - the hardest thing for anybody depressed or craving. but it can help. wishing you just enough strength to make it where you wanna be Hoos.

oh and reading back what you said about sleep and such - giving things up you love/need is fucking hard, maybe your brain and body have to just wrestle with that for a while and the pay-off is this downtime?

i talked to the doc about anti-deps today--first time in...6 years? woof. should be waiting for me at the pharmacy when i get off work.

good luck, hood

hoos*

good luck!

Hoos you got this

best of luck to you man, for real

so here's something interesting

i've tried this SSRI before and some familiar side effects are hitting me--heavy muscle tension in legs, shoulders, neck, constant jaw clenching. the muscle tension is making me move a little stiffly until i become conscious of it and adjust; the feeling is a little "robotic," and it just hit me that 10 years ago i wouldn't have had the presence of mind to recognize this as just muscle tension. it would have been "i don't like this--i feel like a robot." but i don't feel like a robot. i'm just tense, and entirely capable of relaxing myself.

doctor's advice was "you'll likely get hit with some of this early on, i'd advise you to wait out the month & when it's time for a refill we can discuss if they're still strong enough that you want to adjust"

so that's the plan

the perspicacity of age paying off for a hoos

at one point i had a confluence of very bad events that put me into a severe depression. i saw a doctor who prescribed meds. i took them for about four months and it totally fished me out from the bottom of the pool. if you're feeling unable to go on, see a doctor. it could work.

i've been grappling with whether to do this myself for the last few weeks. i am certainly the most depressed i've ever been but...i feel this way because a lot of shitty stuff happened in my life? is it right to medicate in this situation? i guess the general advice in this thread seems to be to go for it .

imo "i am certainly the most depressed i've ever been" is a good reason to see a doctor, ESPECIALLY (not in spite of) "a lot of shitty stuff happened in my life".
My gf's father just died so she's started seeing a therapist. her mother is taking antidepressants and sleep medication with the intention of setting a timetable to get off it. I think that medication and therapy to counteract particular life lows when you can't overcome them on your own is absolutely the right way to go if you're finding your work / personal life severely suffering. That's what it's for!

i think of meds as being like those robot exoskeletons that are in development to help people like dockworkers move big items singlehandedly - meds are basically tools to help lighten the load and let you get shit done without hurting yourself

That's a great analogy

great and also setting me spinning on something something capitalism but i'll save that for another thread lol

I definitely need to recalibrate my meds, I've been on Paxil for ages and ages with workable/sustainable life results but this year things have taken a serious turn for the worse in both the depression and anxiety depts. suspect an increase in my 30mg dose will not be the ticket and I may be in need of a non ssri

worst episode in over ten years. *after* i started the wellbutrin. idgi.

realizing (again) that it's hard for me to connect with people about anything if i can't talk to them about the central thing i struggle with all day. so trying to be more open about it, even with people i'm not comfortable falling apart around.

great and also setting me spinning on something something capitalism but i'll save that for another thread lol

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, July 30, 2015 11:22 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i feel you maybe. good luck out there.

Yeah for sure. I reigned in a long tirade about capitalism as the root of much anxiety (after an article about how rents are getting really high in Chicago gave me a nice little anxiety attack to start my day) just this morning.

the stress is too damn high

otm