Depression and what it's really like

good vibes to you, Noodle and dowd and Austin

starting with a new psych and going through your history always unpleasant for dredging stuff up, hope future appointments go better

Starting to feel that the old chestnut about exercise lifting the mood really is true. The catch though obviously being that at my lowest points the motivation to go and exercise (or tbh do almost anything constructive) just isn't there.

Sticking my head into the 'and that's okay/and here's why' thread for the first time earlier did wonders for cheering me up too ('Watch these people bite into a madeleine for the first time' was where I properly creased up...).

exercise helps me regulate but it doesn't cure my sad/depressed moods, you know? i rely a lot on pre-workout drinks to get me going. i feel like they've come a long way from where they used to be, making you feel all jittery and cracked out. now there's one or two i use that are just a solid push of energy with a gentle come down and i can sleep or just chill no problem without any weird mood swings.

i'm really into fitness and proud of what i can do / that i do it almost every day. just being proud of constant work like that i think has helped me a lot. but i mean it's not a panacea, nothing is for my depression.

Well going Andy. I think there is even a lot to be said in even participating, before talking about what regular activity may occur. I don't know what your physical ability levels are, so if you aren't starting from the bottom it may not seem like such a difference but engaging in activity should hopefully help.

Its not mental health but I recently had a discussion about how the activities I do offset what I may consume. Now I work a very physical job but I also drink a lot and eat like shit, should I look buff? No. But it really fucking helps in not going too far.

Anyway, well fucking done, this shit is hard and we all want to understand.

i'm to the point where i don't talk about my depression anymore, because everybody wants to "help". yeah thanks but no thanks folks.

Not entirely sure where to put this but found myself nodding along with a lot of this piece on the way people write about mental health https://medium.com/@tristandross/a-critique-of-the-genre-of-mental-health-writing-part-one-6084087f71a3#.9b0y9roh5

it makes me try and imagine what it would have been like to grow up with the internet in terms of dealing w/ mental health problems. it isn't like there weren't things to read, and somewhat similar forces at play, but the dynamic of "competing" with Sylvia Plath, JD Salinger, and JP Sartre is different than competing with other ppl on livejournal or blogs or whatever tristan grew up with.

as a depressed teen reading The Bell Jar i think i read it as a story about resisting the darkness even tho i knew how Plath's life had ended

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvJ7z64XgAAWhj5.jpg:small

living a purple life tbh

also i really hate the word 'cope'

An alcoholic bipolar woman I knew (a friend's partner) killed herself yesterday (about 40). She was a very lost person - her previous partner was stabbed to death, she drank and took everything she could get her hands on, she was violent and often suicidal. It was hard trying to help her, and it was frustrating how hard it was to get her help - I couldn't get her a GP appointment because she had attacked the doctor, she attacked medics who responded to a suicide attempt and so on. I spent a few days once trying to get her into a psychiatric hospital, because she was suicidal, and wanted help to dry out. She checked herself out within the day. It just feels so wasteful, and I feel so impotent. She wasn't a great person, but she was in a lot of pain, and was still of value. Don't quite know how to respond to it.

i don't know either. sorry.

but it does point out how much i value your empathy and thoughts and posts here. so <3

has anyone here looked into TSM? i'd like to try it, since i'm on my third antidepressant in 3 years and still in a black hole, but i'm with kaiser so i can't get it covered by insurance (it's something like $10K out of pocket).

http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-magnetic-stimulation/home/ovc-20163795

I looked into it, have heard ridiculously good things about it, found a clinic in my area that does TMS/ketamine treatment, but it was completely out of reach financially, which I only found out after paying them $450 for a consult and $650 for an EEG. Doctors who pretend that money doesn't exist and aren't upfront about costs are assholes, imo.

xxp - I have a friend in Oakland who has done it, and I think she's on disability so she can't have paid that much for it

Justine, if I were in your situation, I would look around for a ketamine trial, ideally an open-label one. Having failed multiple antidepressants you might meet recruitment criteria. You can look for trials at https://clinicaltrials.gov and search for "ketamine"

i think these days a lot of private insurance does cover TMS treatments, but since kaiser is all in-house except for like acupuncture and chiropractic, i'm SOL.

n.i.c.k., that is fucking bullshit they weren't straight with you about the costs. when i mentioned TMS to my husband and he looked into it, he immediately suggested some ways we could pay for it out of pocket, but i think i'd need to do more research on the success rate before feeling ok with spending 10K.

thanks for the rec, silby!

as a depressed teen reading The Bell Jar i think i read it as a story about resisting the darkness even tho i knew how Plath's life had ended

― nom de grrrrr (Noodle Vague)

i haven't read plath but i do find it of some help to hear from people fighting it, even if i know that they're fighting a losing battle. "you can make it if you try" by sly and the family stone, for instance, i still find that to be a really uplifting song, and that's despite knowing that sly did try, and he didn't make it. it's the song. if somebody tells me to my face i need to "try a little harder" it's an insult, but when sly and the family stone sing it it inspires me.

since i only ever post to this thread when i'm doing terrible i guess i should say i'm doing better. not functional, but i'm making it through the days at least.

Restless as a rat stuck in a cage but there's nothing outside the cage

Justine -

My mother got approved for magnetic treatment in Oakland at some place on Webster this past Friday, she also has Kaiser. I also heard her doctor talking about a ketamine trial happening at Kaiser in San Francisco.

I feel incredibly lucky to have waltzed into near-perfect maintenance meds by accident. Took bupropion for smoking cessation - and one day I woke up & realized I hadn't thought about suicide in over a week. Been on it more or less ever since, about 8 years now. When I forget to take my meds I reliably sink into a horrible black pit, but as long as I maintain, I'm pretty normal. Really feel for you peeps for whom the chemical equation isn't nearly so easy. Not sure if this is the right thing to say, but there's at least one dorky Canuck quietly rooting for you.

Hey thanks, svend - I'll email my dr and ask some questions

My meds are as good as they've ever been, and I find myself in the horrible situation of not being willing to risk the current state for a better one. I still get really sick from time to time, but it's not along with the suicidal/self harm problems of my twenties. I'm not a gambler - when I'm up I stick. So maybe other meds/techniques would be better, but I can't risk it. A decade of going in and out of psych hospitals has made me risk averse.

I still get really sick from time to time, but it's not along with the suicidal/self harm problems of my twenties. I'm not a gambler - when I'm up I stick. So maybe other meds/techniques would be better, but I can't risk it.

yeah, I can totally relate to this.

I got The Self-Esteem Workbook and the first chapter is all about physical health, which is great.. but I'm stuck at the page where you plan your meals/snacks for an entire week. Food related tasks are positively herculean in my experience

god yeah i can't food shop for more than a couple of days, tops. never mind planning meals in advance

i think it's weird to do this, like, how am i supposed to know what i will feel like eating 4 days from now? I don't want to be locked in to that. One of the joys of being an adult and living alone is that you can eat whatever you want.

Isn't the idea to get the banausic shit automated so if you're riding a trough you don't have to spend any effort on it? I def find that if there's pre-prepared foodstuffs available I'm less likely to say "fuckit, I'm eating whiskey tonight." Doesn't preclude going off-plan if you're functional & feel like doing a Jamie Oliver.

how am i supposed to know what i will feel like eating 4 days from now?

ha i usually don't feel like eating anything so... it's sort of like writing to-do lists i guess, it makes things less abstract, more countable, more manageable.

yeah, what hd said (re troughs)

i know most people can just sort of whip stuff up on a whim but um not me

Oh, I understood that different than just making sure you have some relatively healthy low-effort comfort food in the kitchen. Yeah, sure, when I go get groceries every week, I make sure I have stuff like trail mix, canned beans for beans and toast or nachos, oranges/grapefruit, the broccoli mac n cheese entree I'm microwaving right now, etc.

Grapefruit being a huge no-no when on SNRI's tbh #becarefulouttherekids

deciding what to eat is my least fav part of cooking, I'm much happier when I can get a week's worth of decisions out of the way at once

I often like choosing stuff on the day but I might but ingredients in advance, like I dunno, a piece of meat on a Sunday or something, then decide what to do with it on the day I use it. I guess how we relate to food must be a pretty huge thing - for me it is tied to mental health in some way - I'm not an overeater as such but I definitely get a probably unusual amount of joy from food - I alleviate sadness by going out for dinner or by cooking something complicated. I do find having a full fridge or cupboards makes me feel more calm and safe - again this shit must come deeply from family somehow. Similarly stockpiling booze - I buy bottles of wine just so I always have like 30 unopened ones - I often buy bottles of wine intending to open them on a given evening then holding off for another time.

might buy* i mean

Cooking is probably helpful to anyone trying to manage living in a chaotic world - it's something controllable, with fairly instant results.

i think that's prob true. food is a simple pleasure.

30 bottles of wine is getting pretty serious. I often don't plan or just have some random ingredients but coming home hungry to an empty kitchen is awful

yeah some are like in a wardrobe. i do drink wine regularly but not daily.

you need a cellar, then you're only a few moves away from the dream:

http://i.imgur.com/5sdHQJ2.jpg

lol - that is quite strongly evocative of satan/hell

there was a point where cooking was helping me keep on an even keel and trips to the local Asian supermarket are good for me, because obv they don't sell alcohol and it's amazing how much good stuff you can get for 5-6 quid. But I keep breaking my daytime drinking rule when cooking recently. Drinking and cooking can be so pleasurable, but very problematic when start doing it 3-4 times a week and in the daytime.

I went to an organised diet group for a while and everyone else swore by planning all their meals a week in advance and I was just like ???

I cannot even imagine knowing all the variables that far in advance: what do I feel like? what do I have time and energy to prepare? what does the shop actually have? oh, I forgot this thing that's about to go off so I'll have that instead, etc. and going through a cookbook even for 1 meal provokes such indecision and anxiety, the thought of picking several in advance and sticking to them, argh

plus at the time I was living with someone who would often frustrate my dinner plans by not "feeling like" whatever I'd bought, announcing that he was tired of a former staple or that he'd never liked something he'd been enthusiastic about previously, etc, and the timetable thing might have started some kind of war

re hardcore dilettante's post yesterday, I wish bupropion was prescribed for mental health issues in this country (UK) as I'd be curious to try it. I have a lot of ADHDish traits but the NHS doesn't really recognise adult ADHD and the doctors I've asked just say, "your record says you have 'chronic depression' so even if your mood is fine any difficulties you are having must be due to depression," so something which is used to treat both in the USA would interest me.

My depression is definitely comorbid with ADHD (primarily inattentive), so yeah, it's a nice synergy. I augment the bupropion with very small doses of vyvanse - some kind of amphetamine, I think, too lazy to look it up - as required, especially when I've had all the coffee I can take. Helps militate against the self-flagellation triggered by not being as productive as I'd like, but has tradeoffs too - end-of-day irritability and exhaustion, feeling like my blood vessels are about to burst Ebola-style, so I keep it as-needed & very low doses.

Space cadet, can you blag your way into trying bupropion for "smoking cessation" purposes? I only know a small handful of people that it's helped, honestly, but for those few it's a lifesaver. Shows that one-size-fits-all solutions to mental health problems are bullshit. I think the current method of classifying depression & its cohorts by how symptoms present isn't very useful at all; anecdotal evidence and intuition suggest that we probably need ways of measuring neurotransmitter levels & stack that data against symptoms, personal history, (& I dunno what else: neural mapping? Tasseography?) in a much more nuanced way than we're probably currently capable of in order to determine effective individual solutions.

Hmm, I'm not sure - they've asked if I smoke a few times in the past and I've said no but they may not have recorded that, plus I suppose I could claim I've started and want to stop, though I'm not a very convincing liar...

Any idea if the irritability is the Bupropion or the Vyvanse? I am p. irritable and easily tired (and with high blood pressure) anyway so maybe not such a great daydream after all!

I often like choosing stuff on the day but I might buy ingredients in advance, like I dunno, a piece of meat on a Sunday or something, then decide what to do with it on the day I use it.

yeah, that's my m.o. too

just eat the same thing all the time, then it doesn't matter

Sorry if not clear - if I'm just on the 'prop I'm fine, mostly. Any side effects I described above were vyvanse-related.