Zoloft and Prozac

It has been a long time hasn't it. I didn't write because I felt like I'd be sounding like too much of a broken record.

Depression reared it's ugly head and I have stories to tell.

But for this post let me talk about Zoloft and Prozac.

They don't work. At least not for me. They work fine for the side effects. Nervousness, apprehension, dizziness, jitters, lack of sex drive, slight nausea. I hear over and over again how treatable depression is. I find that hard to believe. I resisted taking medication because I didn't like the idea of having my happiness dependant upon a pill. Then one day my sadness took a turn for the worse. I started writing my suicide letter. Instead of finishing it I broke down and asked my counselor for drugs. I'm not sure if I made the right decision.

I'm willing to give drugs a fair shot. Lets see what other anti-depressant cocktail they might come up with. Cursed hope keeps me going.

Now maybe Zoloft or Prozac will work for others, I encourage people to get whatever treatment they need. Be aware that like me, your path to hopeful recovery may not be a short one.

Where does it come from?

This sadness.

I thought I had it worked out. I went to see a therapist. She gave me a rubber band to put on my wrist and told me to give myself a light snap whenever I think a depressing thought. This exercise is mostly about making one aware of how often they think negatively. Next once your aware I was told to identify the thought itself and evaluate it. The goal being to dismiss the thoughts that groundlessly depressing and self imposed.

So I did. I was skeptical but I tried it. It helped. Or at least it seemed to.

For no reason that I could identify my depression seethed back up. When I first started the rubber band therapy I noticed a decline in it. My brain was able to sort of heal itself with it's own thinking.
"Hey, your thinking sad thoughts," it'd say. "Lets' not do that anymore."

But then it just stopped working and I don't know why.

Happiness is not a choice.

So I was reading a blog of a friend of mine. At the bottom of it there was this quote.


"Happiness is a choice, not an event. Success is a goal, not a gift or a right. Victims have no power, people who act have plenty."


I want to focus on the first sentence. There rest of the quote seems true enough, although the victim part may raise my ire. While I also don't think happiness is an event, or at least I don't think that it is, I don't think it's a choice either. At least not for me.


If happiness is a choice why would anyone choose anything but happiness? The fact that there are people who are sad disproves the "choice" aspect of emotions. You feel what you feel. There are a variety of things that cause you to feel what you feel. To some degree you can decide what your response to stimuli is. But there is so much that is beyond a persons ability to do so.


Case in point, me. My brain, or emotions, or both make me feel sad. It's not a simple matter of saying to my self "My brain is inexplicably trying to make me depressed. But I will be happy instead." It doesn't work that way. At least not for me. Maybe "normal" people can out think their melancholy. In that case happiness really is a choice for them. And I can can kind of see how that can work. I've out thought myself away from happiness. I was taking Prozac and it seemed like they were taking the edge off the sadness. As soon as I realized this any good they did stopped working. So I don't know. Maybe that's not quite the same thing.


So then I thought if happiness is not a choice what is it? That's when it hit me.


Happiness is not a choice it's a medical condition.

I'm not choosing to be depressed it's a medical condition. Depression is recognized as such so wouldn't the inverse of it likewise be a medical condition. Makes sense to me. Although it is kind of sad once you think about it. Happy people are not really happy they're healthy. Depressed people are not really sad their sick.


Do I really think this?


I don't know.

But I will say this. Happiness is not a choice. At least not entirely

Long time no see.

I feel bad for not posting in such a long time. But there isn't too much happening to me that's worth mentioning. I'm feeling bad, but it's a dull kind of feeling. Like when the tv gets left on static and it just kind of drones into your skull. It's more annoying than painful but still I'm tired of feeling this way. Where is the off switch.

Heal?

It was some tv spot trying to raise awareness for Depression. The parting line stated that Depression is curable. They said I could be healed, so why do I not believe them. It is truly odd because I have often said that I believe that there is a way to be relieved of Depression. I don't know what it is or when it will come but somewhere, deep down I believe it. So when I saw this ad it puzzled me that my first instinctual reaction was to doubt it. It's like I have these two very conflicting internal responses. One full of hope, the other full of fear. It is not a pleasant mix.

So what do I make of this?

"Thanks for noticing me."

I was with some people the other day and someone called me Eeyore, you know the sad donkey from Winnie the Pooh. I guess I had just said something bemoaning myself. I attempt to avoid this and I try so very hard not to whine. Sometimes though, when all you have is a raincloud over your head you forget that other people have sunshine, and you forget that they can't see your own personal storm centered above you. The last thing I want to do is let my rain cloud overwhelm their bright day. But like I said I must have said something, I slipped up I guess. I made some offhand depressing comment about myself and was called Eeyore because of it.

Now I have been called Eeyore in the past and it never bothered me. This time it did. For awhile I couldn't figure out why. In the past it had been friends and family that called me that. I had always taken it as a term of endearment. It was their way of recognizing me as sad yet still lovable. This time, however, I was offended. And it wasn't just because I had been called a depressing stuffed ass. Although that was part of it. Even though this comment had been made in jest I couldn't help feeling that the person was also saying "Here comes this guy, a walking rain cloud." I also got the impression that the person was insinuating that I was trying to be an "Eeyore" on purpose. Now to be fair I must acknowledge that being depressed does not exactly give one a healthy mindset with which to process the interactions one has with the world. For the depressed person slights feel like insults, and insults can be devastating.

Bad or Broken?

I attended a wedding recently. One of my closest friends was getting hitched, I was a groomsman. Weddings are interesting things. There was for me, of course, the inescapable and rather cliche feeling of jealously. Seeing someone else so happy reminded me of how unhappy I was. Seeing two people so much in love that they brightened the room whenever they saw each other only made me feel darker. Oh I suppose I was happy enough for them the day of the actual wedding. In fact I remember enjoying myself more than I thought I would. It was the before and after periods that got me down.

It's not so much that I'm love sick. (Although I am and have been ever since I got dumped on the swing set by the girl I liked back in the first grade.) It was more the general fact that others were happy when I was not. I wonder if that makes me a bad person. Yet even now I'm not sure if I care whether I'm a bad person or not... Maybe that fact right there makes me a bad person. Or perhaps it just makes me a broken person... I don't know.