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WakeboardrB said:

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SlashOZ said:
i highly suggest anti-depressant medication. worked for me. just make sure you read up on the stuff first. some of the doctors prescribe that stuff willy nilly like its skittles or something. its best to know what is up so you are on even ground when discussing with your doctor.

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I'm on two. Remeron and Pamelor.

I can't take the newer SSRI's and SNRI's, side effects are just too much. Hell, I almost killed someone else and myself on Cymbalta.

The Remeron doesn't do much for my depression, but it does help me sleep at night. The Pamelor is an older Tryciclic antidepressant that was used in the days before SSRI's like Prozac and all that other shit came out. It's doing a lot of good. Very few side effects compared to all the new shit. Dry mouth and occasional constipation. I can deal with that. I remember when I tried Effexor, I lost a lot of my fine motor control. I could barely write, let alone hold a pen. That was probably the closest I came to killing myself. It put me in such extreme and outright weird mental and physical problems I wanted to die.

I just went through a rough patch, abnormally long since I've been on Pamelor, but I attribute that to a lot of exreme stress in the past few weeks. Since I started Pamelor like 5-6 months ago, I would experience 1-2 bad days a month. Before that it would be 15-20 bad days a month. So it's definitely working, but when you throw on extreme stress that I have no idea how to deal with, it's just what happens.

I'm out of the woods now, been that way for a few days now. I feel normal, well not normal but somewhat normal. I'm functional, I don't dread waking up and I don't try to sleep as much as possible because being awake was so painful.

But it'll come back. I know that. It's just the way it is. But ya know what, these past few days, I've been enjoying them as much as possible. Feels good to finally feel alive after almost 2 weeks of wanting to be dead.

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WakeboardrB said:
Unfortunately Depression is a life long illness. When I have a cold or the flu, I take the proper medication until it passes.

This won't pass. I'll have it the rest of my life. It sucks, but that's the way it is. I'm not going to wake up one day and just not have major depressive disorder and severe anxiety with panic attacks.

I don't know, it might be easier to manage in the future and if it does I'll cut down or eliminate some of the meds I'm on, but I'll pretty much have to deal with this crap all of my life.

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FTW said:
Get This Guy Some Rope

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you're pretty edgy dude, i can tell you just don't give a SHIT

quite punk rock, i must say

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WakeboardrB said:
Unfortunately Depression is a life long illness. When I have a cold or the flu, I take the proper medication until it passes.

This won't pass. I'll have it the rest of my life. It sucks, but that's the way it is. I'm not going to wake up one day and just not have major depressive disorder and severe anxiety with panic attacks.

I don't know, it might be easier to manage in the future and if it does I'll cut down or eliminate some of the meds I'm on, but I'll pretty much have to deal with this crap all of my life.

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I don't know how much this helps, but whenever I talked to my mom about my dark spells she would tell me that nobody is happy all the time, and it's not a reasonable thing to expect... it left a big impression on me. And it makes the good times that much better when there's such a contrast with the bad times.

The functional debilitation is rough, I'll give you that, and it's hard to address. But I think that incremental changes in lifestyle can lead to a more stable emotional equilibrium over time. The etiology of such misery is impossible to trace in this context, but I've always felt that depression is the body, or the subconscious, way of informing the consciousness that the current living situation is untenable and that real changes need to be made. It's also a way of signaling to others that your current social or occupational role isn't working out for you, or that you need help coping with it.

Again, I don't know to what extent I'm able to empathize with what you're going through, but IMO part of the beauty in life is the pain... life isn't perfect, and if it was perfect, it would paradoxically be anything but. We would be like ants if we were satisfied all the time, going through the motions of life with no inkling that anything could be any different, never considering that we might want or need more (or less) of what we have. Don't let these emotionally dead, macho people tell you that you're wrong to have feelings. Hollow men have far too much influence over our society, but it doesn't need to be this way forever, and in the meantime we don't need to let it harm us.

Regardless, I believe in you. Life can be really good for all of us, I honestly believe this.

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SlashOZ said:

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WakeboardrB said:
Unfortunately Depression is a life long illness. When I have a cold or the flu, I take the proper medication until it passes.

This won't pass. I'll have it the rest of my life. It sucks, but that's the way it is. I'm not going to wake up one day and just not have major depressive disorder and severe anxiety with panic attacks.

I don't know, it might be easier to manage in the future and if it does I'll cut down or eliminate some of the meds I'm on, but I'll pretty much have to deal with this crap all of my life.

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what makes you think that?

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WakeboardrB said:

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SlashOZ said:

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WakeboardrB said:
Unfortunately Depression is a life long illness. When I have a cold or the flu, I take the proper medication until it passes.

This won't pass. I'll have it the rest of my life. It sucks, but that's the way it is. I'm not going to wake up one day and just not have major depressive disorder and severe anxiety with panic attacks.

I don't know, it might be easier to manage in the future and if it does I'll cut down or eliminate some of the meds I'm on, but I'll pretty much have to deal with this crap all of my life.

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what makes you think that?

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I'm a realist. I'm not going to pretend that it's going to go away. Just like my drug and alcohol addiction, that shit is going to go with me to the grave, but now I have the choice to not use drugs or alcohol. But I've seen people with 5-10-20 years clean start using again. It's a part of me, it's in my brain chemistry.

Same with depression and anxiety. It might get better, but it might get worse and I'll end up taking a .45 hollow point to the head.

I'm not going to fool myself, this shit is life long. It will stay with me until I die. Like I said, it might get better or it might get much worse. But I know with 99.9999% certainty that it will be a part of my life until I die.

I'm not going to fake it and pretend that everything is going to be gravy from here on out. I've spent the majority of my life running from this shit and it turned into a serious drug addiction. Hell, even if I didn't have these mental problems, I'd probably still have the addiction component.

I'm not going to fool myself any more. I have to face the facts. Maybe in the future there will be a cure for depression and addiction, but there isn't right now. It's like AIDS, you can manage it and lead a pretty normal life, but it's incurable and you'll have it for the rest of your life.

My brain is seriously fucked up. And the drugs didn't help.

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Pigasus said:

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FTW said:
Get This Guy Some Rope

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you're pretty edgy dude, i can tell you just don't give a SHIT

quite punk rock, i must say

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SlashOZ said:

weird. i got depressed for about two years. took meds. they helped. got off the meds and things are normal now. sorry you've given up on getting over your depression. i don't think that is a wise choice.

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WakeboardrB said:

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SlashOZ said:

weird. i got depressed for about two years. took meds. they helped. got off the meds and things are normal now. sorry you've given up on getting over your depression. i don't think that is a wise choice.

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Depression is not a static diagnosis. I've known people that have gone through depressive spells and gotten over it and never had any problems after.

Mine is different. It's chronic. It's severe. And it's a miracle I haven't put a bullet in my head yet.

Glad you were able to get over your depression, but just because you did doesn't at all mean that everyone can. This is something I will have on my back to my grave or until they find a cure for severe depression.

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