Does anyone remember that book "Been down so long it looks like up to me"? By Joan Baez's brother (can't remember his name = symptomatic,yes?). Well, I am THERE. I haven't a clue what not being depressed is like. I can remember being sickened/depressed at age 5 (earlier?). I am almost 60 yrs now and I've been on Prozac since it first came on the market in '88/89. I wouldn't dream of trying to live without it. I thank the pharm.Gods for allowing me to chemically block suicidal thoughts most of the time and 'dismiss' casual but diurnal inquietudes. I have accepted, with misery and shame, being part zombie for the last 20 years. I just wanted to say hello and join the club. Thanks for the opportunity.
Hi, Mona,
Just a note to thank you for taking note of my introductory note! I feel like warmed over death today and have just had a blazing row with my wife and I immediately retreated and fantasised about ending it all. Is the one who shouts the loudest the bigger fool? I think that rage is at the root of my MDD. And I am depressed that I'm maybe too old to address that rage now. It's like the joke about the gunfighter who was asked by his Alienist " When did you first run away from home?" and the gunfighter answered " My home ran away from me. I fell off the tailgate of the covered wagon when I was only a nipper blah blah blah..." Old joke but I feel that somehow I never got control of my life and I've been sitting and whining in the dust on the trail all my $#@ life!! This feels good, tho', to be able to speak out into the void and think that somebody might be reading this text. Thanks Mona. And thanks Twister - all the above rattle is addressed to you too.
Patrick
Hello Jeremy,
Trust in the anonymity of this site and the good graces of the counsellors and especially the other depressives in here. I don't know how old you are but , if you have the bucks, go see a therapist and don't be afraid to dump. The pot fills up and up and up and then it spills and others have to suffer the toxic waste spilling and splashing over them from your(mine also)pot-cauldron-deepblack abyss. We have to find a way at least to lower the level of waste in the bowl - this site is good for a start. Better if you have a wise therapist to listen, hear, and not judge. Wish I had one. Last psychiatrist I had (10 yrs ago) became my lover and it set me back 20 yrs in the end. She's only now fading into the holocaust of my memory as just another gigantic Gordian Knot I couldn't untie. Who has the wit to use a knife on the Knot when both mental hands are tied to his/her sides?? I don't really know whether "I" own it or "it" owns me...
Talk to us
Patrick
Dear Ms Eclair
Did you specialise in Anglo-Saxon at the university?? Welcome to my line of sight and I'd like to introduce you to Mona and Twister and Jeremy who were kind enough to write a note for me when I opened my Clam Shell a few days ago. I also forgot to drop in a word or two about my etiology and YES, my maternal grandfather and mother were both depressives, undiagnosed and untreated, my mother also was a depressive and was haphazardly treated by a chemist pal down the road (we called pharmacists 'chemists' where I came from...) ALL, all of the above had raging tempers and cycled between generalised sadness and towering rage but without falling off into psychosis. I'm not much different - I have the greatest difficulty remaining calm in the face of the slightest frustration (and, no, my zen inner babblings don't help for more than the first 20 seconds of the rising tide of screaming anguish...). And, no, I am not physically violent - never have been - not even as a full-blown working alcoholic ( 15 yrs sober now) nor as a drug snaffling moron ( sober and clean for 10 yrs now).
I hope I can go on speaking like this and hear others speak up too on this site. I need to know that there are caring people out there who want to communicate and want to help themselves.
Patrick
Can one of the counsellors or one of the members talk to me about cyclothymia, please. I know it's about rapid mood cycling but I'm having a dreadful time with this up and down,up and down mood swinging and now I've gotten to a stage where my messed up relationship of three years is giving me a roller coaster ride up and down the mood hills even several times a day. I'm exhausted from all the shouting and all the retreating and all the despair and all the rising-to-the-occasion and feeling-better-for-a-hours thing. I'm sick of it and rolling from rage to despair is making me crazy. All I want is a bit of peace and quiet. Can I up my Prozac from 40mg to 60mg per day?????? I cannot afford a doctor here in this country and I'm inclined to think now that I had better run for Canada (my home) soon and leave all this anxiety-ridden relationship stuff behind.
I know that this is not a good forum for precipitous advice-seeking such as this but can anyone talk to me about this panic
"gotta go, NOW!" running-away feeling I'm having now?? I have a strong feeling that a night's sleep won't alter anything.
Welcome Grammy. I joined this website just a few days ago myself and I like that it's there and I can reach out to it whenever I need to and that there are counsellors and good people like yourself reading and talking to me. I'm on a mickey mouse Canadian pension so I'm as broke as you but at least we have the internet. Can I just suggest that, even tho' it's your hobby, that you make time to go to some kind of citizens' group for the company. Not to make work for yourself (hard to get enthusiastic when you're subject to depressions) but just to be around people. I live in South Africa and I've only been here for a few years but I don't drive and it's too dengerous to walk anywhere (I've got bad knees anyway) so I don't have the opportunity to go out and meet people as I used to in Canada ( my wife has the car and we only go shopping on the weekends - her friends are all Afrikaans speakers which effectively excludes me).
We're on the point of releasing our two grown boys into the world so that we can be alone together and not responsible for their needs ( they're adults for heaven's sake). Invite them for supper like adults and them expect them to go home to their own homes and not sit around waiting for you to cook breakfast the next day!! It's not easy, Grammy, but it's your life and you have to own it. I'm working on owning mine and I know that it's going to sound mean and so on when I break the news that their 'childhood' on a soft couch is over.
Empty nest is a shock but it is a new and exciting time that comes to us all. Chin up and keep coming back.
Patrick
Thanks for joining the website Suzy, I admire the fact that you're still able to continue at work in the corporate world and deal with your BPII. When I was a little younger than you (I suppose?) I was in the aircraft industry as a contracts administrator and handled multi$M accounts while a practising alcoholic, drug-user and general failure as a human being! I went to AA and then to drug rehab and then retired and worked all the programmes gratefully. Grateful that I recognised all the years of self-medication and the mess that that got me into. Failed marriages (2), alienated son, (1) and saddened lovely sister ( she and her adult kids are all the family I have now) and I ran the gamut from Prozac to Effexor and back to Prozac ( the Effexor was playing havoc with my HBP).
Now, I'm married again and battling for privacy with two grown adult boys in a crampped apartment ('luxury' designed for two only) and I feel the need to crank up my Prozac to 60mg per day rather than the 40mg I take now. I'll see my doctor here and get his scrip for the increase. I wouldn't live without Prozac now. I have MDD but sometimes I wonder when I get frustrated with my living situation whether or not I might be BPII also?? Why am I scared of Lithium? I guess because I remember a pal from my youth being diagnosed with BP after a lengthy psychotic episode of Manic elation and he looked so zonked from his drugs ( was it just Lithium?) that I ever after feared the stuff. I can't be a zombie. Is this always the case or was he being loaded down with tranquilisers at the same time as the lithium. This was 1975.??? Can you tell me about your meds and how you stay on top of things with the BP??
Patrick
Suzy - thanks for the info about Lithium and Devalproex. I'm going back to Canada for good next April 2008 and I'll see a psychiatrist there about altering my meds to complement the Prozac. God knows, maybe the move back home will eliminate the erratic tripping I'm subject to right now. I feel a bit less anxious about the lithium now that you've talked about it; maybe it'll work for me without ruining what little composure I have when I'm on the even keel that Prozac gives me. Must rush off now tho' I've more to say to you - going for a lunch in a very good Greek restaurant!
Patrick
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