madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- face the music - or lack therof September 22, 2003 As I was telling my mother today, I guess I have to face that I am clinically depressed. It is hard, especially when I have good days. I tell myself that I'm headed out of the woods, that everything will be fine. But then the darkness falls again and I feel like shit. I remember when I first started losing weight, I was so happy all the time. I felt like I wasn�t going to have to deal with depression ever again in my life. It is hard to face that having 5 �goodl� days and 25 �sad� days a month isn�t really normal. And it�s not like I haven�t tried to help myself. My tolerance for depression meds is zero so far. I�ve taken 4 different medications for depression - all in different "classes" of meds, and I had a terrible reaction to each one of them. This last medication - Zoloft - was by far the worst side effects I've ever had. I felt like I was taking LSD and I started getting really paranoid - like something "bad� was going to happen. Then I started having chills & had to leave work. I couldn't even function or put words together to form a sentence. When I tried Paxil, I blacked out in the bathroom at work and then threw up. I took it the next day and blacked out when getting out of the shower.... my doc said "GET off that medicine!". I guess that's not a good side-effect. And prozac is something I tried a long time ago, but had the side-effect of becoming completely dead inside. I felt no happiness, no sadness, nothing. And then I tried Effexor. The side effect of that was a headache so severe I felt like going to the emergency room. This happened after just one dose. I was afraid to take subsequent doses. On top of this, I've tried acupuncture briefly (granted only 2 treatments targeted at weight loss and depression) and herbs (St. Johns' Wort which made me so tired I couldn�t get through the day without two naps) and self-help books (both diet and psychological-based) and counseling. I really have tried what was within my means to resolve this and I feel like I'm failing miserably. I am, and have been, the most depressed I�ve been in years and I'm starting to wonder if I will ever feel relief. This is probably why food works so good for me. Sugar and carbs are one of the only temporary fixes for my depression. Granted, it backfires later and I'm sure makes the problem worse in the long run. But it is no wonder I have such a hard time controlling my sadness. I can literally have a throbbing headache and eat something sugary and instantly feel better�for about 10 minutes. I don�t know how many of you subscribe to the �Skinny Daily Post�, if so this will be a double take for you. I�m not saying this applies to me personally, but it is an interesting article that�s worth reading. In a nutshell it says they are comparing current adult health status to childhood experiences decades earlier and finding a correlation between poor health and poor childhood experiences. �The ACE Study reveals a powerful relation between our emotional experiences as children and our adult emotional health, physical health, and major causes of mortality in the United States. Moreover, the time factors in the study make it clear that time does not heal some of the adverse experiences we found so common in the childhoods of a large population of middle-aged, middle-class Americans. One doesn't "just get over" some things.� To read the whole article go to: 12:03 p.m. - September 22, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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