Why Meds Are the Answer

These are things I wrote almost 20 years ago:

Saturday, 7/27/91
“Just make up your mind to be happy.”  Why is that about the
stupidest thing you could possibly say to a depressed person?  No,
really, I ENJOY feeling this way, so much better than such a
superficial feeling as happiness—this gut-wrenching pleading with God
to die.  I can’t stand life, I want out, why does God refuse?  Nothing
helps.  LET ME DIE.  I’ll gladly trade places with anyone.  I’m no good
to my children, no one understands.  Please let me come home.
But God never listens.  He does what he wants and letting me die is
apparently not in his game plan.  Ask and ye shall receive whatever God
wants to give so why bother asking.  Oh yeah, I forgot that other
jewel—“you can’t expect to grow spiritually if you don’t work at it.” 
You know where working at it got me?  In the hospital!  Because working
at it just proves you can’t have it—you can’t be close to God unless he
wants to be close to you.  He picks his people—I’m not one of them.  So
it’s better to ignore him and not feel the rejection.
Who do I blame—ME, ME you idiot, not everyone else. 
Concrete objects, people to blame are life buoys—hoping you can point
to SOMETHING SOMEONE WHY you feel this way.  So you can
believe it’s changeable.  Not just inevitably the way you are
PAINRIDDEN WITH NOTHING!  There’s absolutely nothing bad in my life to
cause this.  Don’t you see why that makes everything so much worse? 
It’s just ME.  INESCAPABLE.  Death is the only possible way out; only
way to escape ME, maybe it’s at least worth trying.  Anything would be better.

Now here's something I wrote just two months later, when lithium
started to work:

10-4-91
 On September 10 Dr. R. started me on lithium. Lithium is a metal, not an anti-depressant.
Eight days later I cooked dinner. I know this is no big deal to you--it
was a major step for me. I started planning things to eat, making
grocery lists and going to the store. Please bear with me--these are
things I was unable to do for over three years. I had to resuscitate
Dan several times for saying things like "Why don't we go to Homecoming
when the kids come Friday?" I made bread! Dan and I were both so scared
we'd jinx it if we mentioned these amazing changes that we didn't.
September 29th was a rebirth. It was a beautiful 80 degree day, and for
lack of a better word, I'll just say I took PLEASURE in it. I've barely
been able to sleep since, just remembering the emotion. I not only had
not taken pleasure in anything in almost 4 years, I had forgotten it
existed. I'd forgotten what it was that made most people want to live.
I had no more idea why people wanted to live than they did why I wanted
to die. I didn't know I could describe depression as a lack of pleasure
in anything and everything because I didn't remember it existed. I
almost cry every time I think of the sun, just remembering the pleasure
of sitting on our deck on a blanket with our ice chest and picnic
basket and kids. It was fun! You don't know how long it's been since I
experienced fun.
Another symptom of depression is the belief that God does not love you.
  Other people maybe, but not you. He doesn't like you either and would
just as soon you not have become a Christian. I had two amazing
thoughts pass through my head Sunday night. One, life is good, and two,
maybe God even loves me, maybe.  I have hope and can see possibilities.
You can't imagine what a miracle this has all been.

Back to the present time--
See why I think clinical depression has everything to do with your meds?  It's just not plausible that I worked through whatever mental demons were causing my depression and learned to overcome negative thinking and spiritual anguish in less than two months.  Unfortunately, the lithium worked for less than six months. 

Anger Turned Inward

Yesterday I had my second meeting with my new psychiatrist--the one connected to my out-patient therapy group.  I don't get to keep the one I had in the hospital because he strictly works with in-patients.  I knew when I came out of the meeting that I felt more depressed than when I went in, but it took my group digging at me to find out what triggered the slump.  I was angry at the psychiatrist and I had a perfectly good reason to be angry.  In fifteen minutes time, the doctor told me for the second time that I was on some very expensive drugs.  She told me I was taking less than one-half of the average dose of one of the medicines.  She told me I was in the 40-60 age group and that when she turned 40 her optometrist told her she needed bifocals, but she resisted because it made her feel old.  She told me she didn't have her son, who is ten years old, until she was 34.  And she told me while a physician only treats the body, a psychiatrist treats 33 facets of the whole person.  All I said was my glasses were trifocals and I didn't feel any better.  Oh yeah, she also demonstrated while scissoring her arms up and down that I needed balance in my life.  Do you see where I'm going with this?  She talked at me with no regard for my needs.  She did and said nothing of any use to me.  Instead of telling her what I needed--that I still wasn't sleeping, maybe I needed an increase in that very expensive medicine, that I fought depression for 35 years, so I was pretty sure it wasn't caused by my getting older, I turned my anger at her incompetence inward, at myself, because that's what depressed people do.  We don't even know we're doing it.  The professionals think if they can change our thought processes, we won't be depressed.  Maybe that's true; all I know is that when I'm on medication that's keeping the depression at bay, I don't have those negative thoughts.  I don't get mad at someone else but turn it on myself.  I've been unable to find a medicine for the last seven years that will keep the depression manageable, so maybe I'm stuck with trying to learn how not to think in a depressed pattern and that'll have to be good enough.  But don't you think it's a hell of a thing when your psychiatrist makes you worse?

No One's Fault

I planned my suicide for a year.  Nothing anyone did or didn't do had any effect on my decision.  Throughout 2010 I set dates to get past to help me make it until Christmas.  I wanted one last Christmas with my family, but once that was over I had exhausted all of my resources.  I didn't have the strength to climb over even one more day.  I'm posting this so my family can know for sure nothing was their fault.

This is something I wrote in July 2010:

       I’m not sure how I’m going to get through the weeks I’m staying with my grandsons.  Maybe just seeing them will cheer me up.  I think I probably should be in the hospital, but that doesn’t do any good except to keep me from killing myself, and I’m not sure I want to be kept from killing myself.  It’s not like some magical drugs will suddenly appear if I’m hospitalized.  There’re no other drugs to try.  I have nothing to look forward to except more years of this pain that remains incomprehensible to those who haven’t experienced it.  There is nothing to alleviate this sense of gloom and dread “that obliterates any enjoyable response to the living world.” [William Styron, Darkness Visible]  I copied Styron’s words about “presenting a face” and I wrote “Splintering” to try to make you see that I have 35 years of practicing how to be sociable when I feel like shit.  Yes, there are moments of gladness, but they are ruined by the knowledge that only pain will follow.   “What makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come.” [Styron]  I already had six years of unremitting misery and now I’m expected to survive this additional seven plus God only knows how many more.  I’ll give the hormones a chance to act, but I don’t think I’ll have the stamina to make it to Christmas. 

If the depression is never-ending there is no answer but suicide.

Diametrically Opposed Sensory Input

My sisters were a huge help to me while I was in the hospital (and after my release) and would never really mean they'd hate me forever, but one way I coped with the pain was seeing the humor inherent in my situation:
On Sunday Sis One says "You aren't trying in here.  The nurses and staff tell me you're cheerful and friendly and smiling and one of their favorite patients.  Quit faking and show them the real you or I'll hate you forever!"
On Monday Sis Two says "You're going to quit using bad language to the staff and cooperate with the program and be nice or I'm going to hate you forever!"

Already having to edit this post--no, my sisters didn't really say they'd hate me forever.  And to their credit they immediately backed off the advice-giving the minute it was pointed out to them that maybe they could play a better role by just being supportive--which they did.  Nevertheless, I thought it was funny that they told me these two opposite things and I needed all the laughs I could get.

The Cruel Joke

  Once upon a time a girl woke up to find herself in a deep, dark pit.  It was so deep she couldn’t see even a glimmer of sky shining at the top of the pit.  No one seemed able to see the girl in the pit, yet she could hear them talking.  They said things to her:  “Why don’t you climb out of that pit instead of wallowing down there in self-pity?  I was in a pit once, but I just picked myself up and climbed right on out.”  She tried to climb out, but she couldn’t find any footholds; every time she made any progress up the walls of the pit, she’d suddenly slide back down and the floor of the pit would drop even deeper, if that were possible.  She grew more and more miserable in the pit and it was hard to remember a time she hadn’t lived there.  Occasionally someone would pass by and yell down at her, “What have you got to be miserable about?  I’d count my blessings if I were you instead of moaning about what you don’t have.” 

          One day the girl looked up and saw something light at the top of the pit.  Every day it grew larger until she finally recognized it as sky.  The floor of the pit had miraculously risen to the point that she could climb out.  She felt so much better to be out of that hole.  But soon thereafter, a doctor told her she was sick and began cutting off parts of her body and giving her poisons to kill whatever was making her sick.  The girl really didn’t mind at all, because compared to being in the pit, these were happy golden days.  Nobody said, “Everybody gets sick—get over it!”  To the contrary, people were kind and loving.  They asked how she was doing and didn’t appear to expect her to get better all on her own.  No one told her if she died it would be incredibly selfish of her.  The girl got better and was glad all that was behind her. 

But the day came when the girl looked around and noticed all her furniture had been moved back into the pit.  At first she could get out, but gradually the floor of the pit sank lower and lower until once more  she was stuck at the bottom of a deep pit with no way to climb out.  She would rather be dead than be back in this pit with no way out again.  How she regretted having survived the illness!  She would never have cooperated in being cut on and poisoned just so she could go back to living in a horribly dark and lonely pit.  She felt it was most unfair.  Years went by and the girl hoped maybe she’d get sick again and this time she’d know better than to seek any treatment to get well.  Yet she remained disgustingly healthy.  It was a cruel joke.

I had breast cancer in 1995 and went through a mastectomy and chemotherapy.  From about 1994 until about 2003 I was on medication that kept me from being suicidal and gave me enough strength to handle the depression.  Often anti-depressants work for a while but then stop.  It makes me compare all the stuff in my brain to cockroaches--always mutating to adjust to new poisons so they can keep scurrying around in the dark recesses of my mind.

From Carrie Fisher's book Wishful Drinking

“One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder.  In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls.  Not unlike a tour of duty in Afghanistan (though the bombs and bullets, in this case, come from the inside).  At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of.  They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medications one has to ingest.”

I was always jealous of the manic-depressives because they occasionally got to have some ups.  But after talking with some in the hospital, they explained the ups were not that great either.  One of the most common misperceptions about depression is that its sufferers are somehow weak.  The opposite is true--just living through the day takes, as Carrie says, stamina, courage and balls.

Fun Times on the Psych Ward

Oddly enough, I had some of the best times I'd had in the past year while I was confined in the hospital.  Mainly this was because I was able to talk with people like me.  I didn't have to try to explain something that's unexplainable.  We "got" each other.  It was the first time I met someone else who'd fought depression for years and years without any let-up.  One night we were playing cards.  We'd been turned out of the dining area, then the overhead lights were turned off in the lounge so we couldn't see to play where the card table was.  The only other tables were little round decorative columns about 15" in diameter and maybe 2 1/2 feet tall.  We pushed three of these together like a 3-leaf clover and crowded around them.  The game we were playing required each player to have 6 cards laid down in front of him/her in a 2x3 pattern.  With four of us playing, you can imagine it was impossible to keep our cards straight on three small circular spaces.  Every depressed person I've met also seems to have at least a touch of obsessive/compulsive disorder.  Someone finally said, "Is it really bugging you that we can't line our cards up equi-distant from each other?"  We all cracked up because everyone of us had been worrying with that same thought.  One guy volunteered his first wife had divorced him because she couldn't stand that his red shirts had to be on red hangers, white on white.  "I see nothing wrong with that at all!" another patient told him.  His mother could never send him to his room as punishment when he was a boy because he'd spend hours organizing his closet and drawers.  When I was a camp counselor one summer, the girls could never understand why they could never short-sheet me--I had a plaid bedspread and those plaids had to be perfectly in line when I made that bed.  Just a glance at the bed and I could tell if anyone had messed with it. 

Progress

I did make progress in the hospital.  One of the first nights I was there one of the alcoholics said something innocuous about tomorrow being better.  I just went off on her:  "You fucking idiot!  Tomorrow is never better!  You can say you have a day of sobriety, then a year, maybe five years of sobriety.  I never have an hour when I don't want to be dead!"  The day I was discharged a well-meaning patient (interestingly another alcoholic) said, "When I'm depressed I try to learn a new craft or get involved with helping other people."  I said nothing.  Maybe because I continued to say nothing (or did I have a deranged look in my eye?) she said, "I guess I shouldn't have tried to give you advice.  I'm sorry."  I very calmly replied, "I realized you knew absolutely nothing about depression.  You're forgiven."  But what I was thinking was "Wow, why didn't I think of that in all these 35 years.  If I'd only taken up macrame and been a Girl Scout Leader I could have been happy!"  All depressed people encounter well-meaning advice-givers fairly frequently.  My sister told me I should have said, "You have confused having a case of the blues with major clinical depression.  In fact, I've been a volunteer answering a crisis line for rape and domestic abuse victims for over twenty years and teach scrapbooking.  Too bad it does nothing to alleviate my depression."