Posted by kid47 on October 19, 2001, at 11:34:07
In reply to Should i take AD's?, posted by Edward on October 17, 2001, at 16:50:20
Hi. Sorry you're feeling lousy. From what I have learned through my own experience & the experiences of others, what you are desrcibing is textbook clinical depression. Finding the right meds & a good doc can be a real challenge. But when you do, you will be amazed. We feel a certain way for so long it becomes our normal state. Not until we get proper treatment, and remission, do we realize how badly we have felt. Do what you can when you can to continue seeking a remedy. It will be worth it. Good luck. Take care.
kid
> I've just been diagnosed with depression again, in a vague manner: "I can't see any obvious reason why you should have been depressed for so long [about 6 years], so I'm inclined to think that the problem must be a biochemical one, etc." However, I don't consider myself depressed. I do very little: I'm in education for about 4 hours a week, and do nothing else. I have no real hobbies or deep interests either, so I tend to end up sitting around at home a lot. I also have a slight problem with nervousness, which makes going to my lessons quite difficult because I panic sometimes and start having problems breathing. These are probably the reasons why I'm unhappy (if I need any reason to be- normal people ARE unhappy as far as I can tell); I'm not pathologically depressed. I've met a few genuinely depressed people, who don't initiate conversation, very rarely smile and never laugh. They are not like me or the many other misdiagnosed "depressives" that I have met. I laugh, I joke, I go out sometimes to see my friends. Until recently, I have had little or no problem with insomnia or anorexia, two important symptoms of depression. I was quiet and nervous in my appointment today and I believe that the pdoc mistook shyness for misery.
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> Anyway, my pdoc suggested anti-depressants. I was all for ADs last time I was told I had depression, naively thinking that in 3+ weeks I would feel glad to be alive, but experience has put me off. First was fluvoxamine, which had no noticable effect except for terrible depression after it was withdrawn. Then came mirtazapine, which got me out of said depression, but never made me feel better than I was before fluvoxamine. Since withdrawing the mirtazapine (2-3 weeks ago), I have been eating, on average, half a plate of dinner each day and staying awake until 3am without the aid of non-prescription drugs. My personality seems to have been changed since these two drugs. I am cold; rarely sad, never joyful. I don't fall in love anymore, and my appreciation of the small things in life seems to have gone even more than it had previously. If I could have known a year ago how I'd feel now, I'd never have taken the ADs.
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> However, my main problem with ADs is that they can't help people like me who aren't depressed. What is the point in taking a drug that permanently alters your brain chemistry and has unpleasant side-effects and withdrawal symptoms if it isn't going to do anything?
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> I've been through psychotherapy twice. My first therapist did nothing for me, my second helped me to acknowledge that I might have some kind of anxiety problem. She suggested a few other things too, for example that I am not a lazy, selfish and disgusting human being, but that my motivation has been sapped by a mental illness. It was very hurtful because I knew she was wrong from her argument, but I was too scared to admit to her what an awful person I am. No solutions to any of the problems that were discussed ever came up, except to face my fears. I already faced most of my fears regularly, and I still do, except for the ones that seem likely to leave me lying on the ground hyperventilating.
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> The point of this long whiney post is that I don't know what to do. I can't seem to cope with my life. I don't like being alive at least 90% of the time and haven't since age 11, without really knowing why. I can't see any way out from what psychiatry has offered me over the past two years, and at the moment the best solution seems to be to get a job and self-medicate with cannabis, which taken daily in divided doses usually gives me enough opportunity to feel real emotions and get some pleasure out of life, people and music (the love of my life until a year or two ago) to put up with the misery. Obviously, it's not a good solution, and I will find it hard to keep going until I find a job easy enough for an idiot like me. What should I do? Do you guys think that I might be depressed? I don't really think I meet the diagnosis, but sometimes it seems that it might just explain why my life seems so unbearable. Could there be some other problem (not counting a bad personality!)? Should I take ADs? Does anyone have any advice to do with anything I've mentioned? This post has taken me over an hour and a half to write (surely proof that I have more motivation that a real depressive?), and I apologise profusely for its long, self-pitying and slightly aimless/uncertain/self-contradictory nature.
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> Thank you for reading it all,
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> Ed
poster:kid47
thread:81515
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20011015/msgs/81664.html