Depression and what it's really like

Instead of citizens advice, what about contacting Shelter? They helped a friend out who was nearly made homeless with advice and support

tbf I only tried Shelter once but got annoyed with them because they don't have a queue for calls, there's 5 minutes of prerecordings then it just says "all lines are busy" and hangs up. I was already in a bad mood so I didn't feel like sitting through that repeatedly until I get through. I think I called them just after CAB though which was so disheartening I'd just run out of energy for it. Maybe I'll give them another go.

Been thinking I might be getting very unwell. I keep having these long, vaguely hallucinatory, déjà vu trances, and the TV just told me to kill myself. Well, it was an advert that said "why not do it yourself?" And I say, clearly, "why not kill yourself". I don't feel suicidal, but it's not a good sign.

When's your next chance to speak to a professional about this?

Well, I have an appointment the start of december - I can get one quicker, though I don't relish the thought. Getting locked up again goes against my 'new start' idea.

At least you're aware of this? Like, it's ideation rather than hallucination at this point, hopefully you could talk it through?

Yeah, insight is still good. It might not be a problem, or it might be the start of something more. Just going to keep taking my meds and hope I even out.

If it helps I wouldn't even really interpret that as "hallucination", just some weird kind of confirmation bias. When I'm feeling suicidal everything I encounter seems to be about suicide too. I'm still perfectly aware that Prince or whoever didn't actually write that song to encourage me to kill myself.

Yeah, totally.

Oh, I also had moment where I got confused and thought I was waking up after having fallen asleep watching the election results, and the BBC said 'Clinton Wins Presidency'. My prophecies come true but are usually 50-50 - like predicting the sex of my brother's kid. Which is arguably worse than useless.

Anyway, warm wishes, hope you feel better soon.

ditto that, and do take care!

Take care, bro

Hope you are doing OK dowd.

I am hoping that my plunge into suicidal thinking (as opposed to my regular suicide ideation that I can usually ignore or at least not get to me quite so bad) is due to a combination of shitty circumstances and changing medication and it will maybe get better soon. I've been on amitriptyline for a week now which isn't really long enough for it to work (2 weeks I was told) but I seem to have regained some ability to concentrate. I have frequent mild headaches/feel weird which I'm putting down to prozac withdrawal/amitriptyline kicking in but at least I'm getting some more sleep now. World events aren't exactly helping but I've got more pressing matters at the moment, I need to keep myself together to be strong for my wife. In some ways that pressure may be a vicious circle adding to feeling hopeless because I'm struggling to deal with it and she needs me to keep it together which makes me hate myself for being so pathetic, & so on. It doesn't help that I lost my uncle to cancer a month before my wife was diagnosed. I barely got a chance to grieve for him and don't think I've really dealt with that at all.

Colonel, the mere fact that you are talking about it the way you are talking about it and framing it that way is a good sign IMO

My therapist called me this morning to make sure I was doing OK. That was really thoughtful of her.

I wish I could get a prescription for an anti anx today. I'm in a pretty bad place. I have a pretty high caliber chamomile + linden + catnip tea which helped a little bit last night.

Last night's circumstances launched me into my full suite of panic/suicidal ideation/catstrophizing/dissociating for a couple solid hours, my partner bravely kept me company through it and dialed a support hotline for me. I've got just one pill of my prn lorazepam left but I'm gonna try to get more from my doctor asap.

I've been googling up articles to share on burning thru amped levels of cortisol & adrenaline

http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/exercising-to-relax

This one seems decent.

Going to hibernate for a couple of days. Glad I have Dillon for company, though he stole my bed when I went to the toilet. http://i.imgur.com/BwYiJmb.jpg

dillon otm

My husbands boss gave everyone the day off to deal with the election results so he went hiking to try and calm down bc he's totally freaking out, but the dog ended up covered in ticks so now he's freaking about that as well :(

Physical distance from the US this week is making it easier for me to not let the election fuck with my head but hugs to everyone on this thread <3

P.s. Svend, I talked to my dr and she doesn't seem very willing to refer me for TMS unless I do classes and therapy first. Kaiser is getting their own TMS setup next year.

don't think i'm depressed, just wake up every day, spend an hour and a half thinking "why am i even alive?", then trudge thru work and repeat

like, i don't even know any more, anybody i ask i tell them this is as good as i've ever been, cos at least i'm going to work, right?

wish i had some kind of opiate pill that wd just soma me thru the days

yeah the tvs gone to fuck hasnt it

Anybody on Vitamin D? Dr wrote a rx for me, says it could give me more energy (my D levels are low-ish)

Starting to get some insight as to how anxiety -> depression -> anxiety into a vicious loop. Just can't imagine any alternative way of being besides swinging back and forth from totally stressed and scared to totally despondent and tired... starting to learn that it's not normal

I got tested for it a few years back. Mine were very low.

feels like a bit of a fad to me - my gp told me i had low vit d levels a year or two ago when my chronic illness was bad - recommended trying supplements. more than one friend got told the exact same thing. i'm not saying the vit d levels weren't low, but the supplement changed nothing for me and it seems a bit strange it's a sudden piece of advice.

maybe for mental health it's different or more valuable - dunno.

it was something that the doctor said, "could help, couldn't hurt"

i've heard all that too. always a placebo hope, right?

Vitamin D supplements have to be large enough to move your levels in blood testing, the usual recommendations don't do that. Most people with low levels require something like 2000iu to 5000iu/day for a while to raise their levels into the normal range.

Not depression-related for me but since getting my levels in the normal range I've definitely seen fewer minor illnesses if nothing else.

yeah, the doc prescribed supplements, because outside + regular food wouldn't have elevated them. I never took them. I also haven't had a cold/flu/anything in about 2 years, so idk.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/07July/Pages/The-new-guidelines-on-vitamin-D-what-you-need-to-know.aspx

The NHS recommended D supplements, and my GP mentioned it when I was talking to him last (I was asking if I needed supplements now that I'm vegetarian, he said my bloods were fine). I should probably give it a go.

i think i'm going to go to the dr next month and ask about that. i had such a bad winter last year. i don't know what it had to do with being seasonally affected vs. having a bad time at work/life but if there's something i can do this time it would be good.

Found out I have sleep apnea (I stop breathing every 2 minutes on average, God only knows what damage this does to my brain in the long run), so I have to use one of those bloody CPAP machines at night. Was really really hoping it would boost my mood/energy levels the way everybody said it would, but no, I'm just tired and depressed plus I now sleep with a huge fucking hissing thing strapped to my face.

Just read a month of these posts in one go, by the way, best wishes to you all; this disease fucking sucks

Hey james reading quotations from your kid on the KSTDT thread has made my day on more than one occasion

Found out I have sleep apnea (I stop breathing every 2 minutes on average, God only knows what damage this does to my brain in the long run), so I have to use one of those bloody CPAP machines at night. Was really really hoping it would boost my mood/energy levels the way everybody said it would, but no, I'm just tired and depressed plus I now sleep with a huge fucking hissing thing strapped to my face.

― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Saturday, November 19, 2016 2:37 AM

Yeah, trying to use the CPAP was the low point for me. But it actually got me to lose the 40 pounds I had put on, and when I lost the weight, the sleep apnea went away. Don't know if your apnea is weight-related...

in the same boat - if i could shift the weight off my neck, the apnoea would go away, but that means shifting the weight off all of me, and the world sucks enough without giving up food

Me too! I gather fat in my neck like a beast. The CPAP actually catapulted me into losing the weight, that's how much I hated it. Unfortunately, for me to lose weight, I had to cut out the following completely: bread/rice/pasta/potatoes/sugar/alcohol. Luckily, I'm not a drinker. 4 pounds came off every 3 weeks, but it was hell.

Well I could try living on cheese and ham I guess :/

Used the CPAP as a trial and there's just no way

Don't beat yourself up (although I think I cut out dairy too :( I never thought I'd succeed, but the inability to sleep made me freak out enough to finally do it. Do it with a nutritionist through your doctor if you can...they can work out a menu with you that isn't horrible. It helped me to have an appointment every three weeks to weigh in.

I meant to say, don't beat yourself up over CPAP, it don't work full stop

Cheers, iago., nv, i will do some more weight research, as that may well be a contributing problem here
And justin, thank you... She is a good corrective to depression

I've been humming along on a thin veneer of hope and tenuous positivity for the last several weeks but there have been a number of times over the past handful of days when the veneer became translucent and I could see the ink-black void beneath. It's starting to freak me out that most of the people around me aren't freaked out, are just continuing with their daily routine as if nothing in the world has changed and will continue happily unabated forever! Kinda feeling a strong pull to self-medicate in hopes of seeing things the same way. But still feeling hopeful that taking some regular positive action can help pull me out of this before I totally sink.

I'm mostly just venting atm. I'm not quite there yet but I've been down this sadly-familiar road before.

good wishes heading your way, man. i liked your posts about doing something positive to change things post-election - i think you were def on the right track there even although it might not feel it right now

fwiw, i've found recently that physical exercise makes a big positive difference to my mental wellbeing - worth a shot if you're not doing something along those lines already maybe?

Thanks, brother. My lifestyle definitely tends more towards the sedentary so, yeah, that's always a thing to do, I guess.

also there's always posting on ilx, a glass-bottomed boat gliding over the ink-black void

I've been humming along on a thin veneer of hope and tenuous positivity for the last several weeks but there have been a number of times over the past handful of days when the veneer became translucent and I could see the ink-black void beneath. It's starting to freak me out that most of the people around me aren't freaked out, are just continuing with their daily routine as if nothing in the world has changed and will continue happily unabated forever! Kinda feeling a strong pull to self-medicate in hopes of seeing things the same way. But still feeling hopeful that taking some regular positive action can help pull me out of this before I totally sink.

I'm mostly just venting atm. I'm not quite there yet but I've been down this sadly-familiar road before.

― The Pleasure Principal (Old Lunch)

i think something i do as a depressive is to assume that other people are doing better than they actually are. we all have ample incentives to present ourselves in an inappropriately positive light. hell i do it myself when dealing with people in person.

for me it's a struggle because the only way i can continue to be a defensible human being, i have to keep looking at the ink-blackness, but that tends to, well, sort of impair one's functionality. so many people around me in despair, and i can't give them any concrete reasons not to despair, but at the same time living in this sense of absolute refusal... i don't know what i'm saying.

all regular activities tend to end around christmastime. losing what tenuous routines i have will be tough.

I know it's hard to think it matters, but I really like you, and look forward to you getting through this. All of you, really - I've been a poster/reader here for well over a decade, and this is a curiously pleasant place of nice people. It's got me through more than one spell in hospital. And that inky blackness: it's not the truth.