After I had my first baby, I was given Wellbutrin for slight depression. Like my doctor asked a leading question, and I admitted to feeling overwhelmed (what new mother doesn't?). Back then, they were new, and I think he was getting kickbacks for writing prescriptions of it.

I soon decided I didn't like feeling like a robot, and ditched them. I'd rather feel "crazy" than nothing at all.

Feeling down is a part of life, and serves a purpose similar to your nerve endings telling you to pull your hand from a fire. These drugs numb you to feelings that should be useful in serving to alert you that you need to address why you're feeling like crap (isolation, problems, grief, being overwhelmed, etc.).

If a person feels they have to medicate away their negative feelings, that's cool. They just shouldn't kid themselves that just because they've chemically turned off their emotions, that the underlying problem has miraculously resolved itself. I had to confront the same issue with doing blow, and it took a long time to figure this out objectively. I liked feeling "happy" (spun out) so much, I had decided to artificially induce it as much as I could, which nearly killed me. Prozac is just as dangerous, especially to suicidal people. Take away any emotions at all, and suddenly taking the Nestea plunge can become the best solution to the underlying problem.

In short -- sometimes you need to feel bad. Especially if shit is indeed hitting the fan.

*steps off soapbox*

Last edited by sofaking (2008-12-16 14:35:17)

While I agree with Carrey's basic argument, he is just such a flaming asshole.

And sofa articulated the argument better than he did.

I am currently fighting depression.  Have had many suicidal thoughts this past year.  4 weeks with a shrink didn't help, but I'm getting better with vitamins (fish oil and B complex), exercise, and something called "acceptance commitment therapy". I don't take prescription drugs, but agree that it would be better to take a pill than splatter my brains in the garden shed.
Depression is very dark and lonely.

Oh for chrissakes. Yes, depression has often root causes in the circumstances of ones life. Yes, pain and suffering cannot and should not be allieviated at the expense of an authentic life experience. But depression-true depression-is not pain and suffering, it's leaching all the color out of a color photo and going grey and cold, walking through life like a robot, unable to find joy in anything. For some people-me, for example-it is a clear and hereditary genetic line on my mother's side-you can spot it in old photos, like a shadow cast over some of my early ancestors.

Yes, counseling is frequently helpful. But meds-non addictive SSRIS, not valium or narcotics and shit-can be as much a necessity of a good life as heart medication is for the heart patient or insulin is for the diabetic. It's that simple. And overprescribed or underprescribed, the truth is, if you don't need them, they don't work. Period. Meaning if the imbalance isn't there-there's no correction to be made. They aren't artificial happy pills.

icangetyouatoe wrote:

Oh for chrissakes. Yes, depression has often root causes in the circumstances of ones life. Yes, pain and suffering cannot and should not be allieviated at the expense of an authentic life experience. But depression-true depression-is not pain and suffering, it's leaching all the color out of a color photo and going grey and cold, walking through life like a robot, unable to find joy in anything. For some people-me, for example-it is a clear and hereditary genetic line on my mother's side-you can spot it in old photos, like a shadow cast over some of my early ancestors.

Yes, counseling is frequently helpful. But meds-non addictive SSRIS, not valium or narcotics and shit-can be as much a necessity of a good life as heart medication is for the heart patient or insulin is for the diabetic. It's that simple. And overprescribed or underprescribed, the truth is, if you don't need them, they don't work. Period. Meaning if the imbalance isn't there-there's no correction to be made. They aren't artificial happy pills.

This.

I'm going out on a cruel Captain Obvious limb for a moment to suggest those here who haven't wrestled depression demons are in a distinct minority.

I second Toe - and Choad. The Lexapro - and the counseling, and many very supportive friends - are the reasons I'm here antagonizing Zookie and enjoying the kitty and piranha-victim pictures.

Depression is unlike any pain I've ever experienced, and god help me, I never want to experience that again. I went through three bouts of it in about as many years.

I'll take the meds if it keeps me from strolling out onto the Golden Gate Bridge again.

Thanks, Dusty. I've actually been doing pretty well for more than a year now, although I have to admit the view from the bridge at night is breathtaking.

You who counter my assertions are assuming I don't know "real" depression. Yeah, last year about this time, I was bumming like a motherfucker. As you might remember, I was dying with a tube coming out my back pissing into a disgusting bag of pee, in septic shock, jaundiced, and constantly in the hospital, drugged up on pure morphine. I couldn't even run my own business or cook or garden or do anything that wasn't from bed. It wasn't exactly ice cream and orgasms. I was in so much pain, I would half-jokingly beg to be put out of my misery, even though I didn't really want to die. If I was a horse, they would have shot me.

I was offered antidepressants then, too. I refused them. I'm too much of a bitch to die complacently, and as I said in my last post, I have already fucked with my  neurochemistry too much to willingly do it again.


Instead I decorated peebags with Swarovski crystals, and altered my clothes to hide the bag. I talked to my friends about the possibility of dying and finally getting to see hell, cried my ass off, built a fucking bridge and got over it. Then, as now, I smoked a lot of pot. My enduring and beneficial vice.


I'm also intimately acquainted with a lack of serotonin, having raped my own receptors for years with fuckloads of coke and amphetamines, then going cold turkey 4 years ago, never to touch the shit again. Caffeine (or even cocaine) can't touch it, once you've screwed that pooch. It takes years to reattain even low levels of the neurotransmitters you've manipulated your brain into squandering. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I struggled to enjoy my charmed life. Boo fucking hoo, is what I would tell myself. I forced myself to suck it up, hoping it would resolve itself. It did. It was an agony I wouldn't wish on anyone.

But it was my agony, and life's a fucking cunt. It's also a bitchin' miracle I get to share with some beautiful people. I'm happier than ever. I ain't gonna die, and I no longer desire to ingest alkaloid chemicals, regardless of how "happy" they once made me.

I'm not a martyr or a masochist. I'm the most fun person you could imagine. Even when I feel like shit.

I stated earlier that it's okay to take Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, if that's your bag. But l stand by my conviction that emotions need to be experienced, even if they hurt. Pain serves a function. If one is self-aware enough to acknowledge that their reasons for feeling sad are trivial enough to need to be eradicated, then perhaps everyone needs SSRIs. Painful feelings (for a specific reason, or even simply intrinsic genetically inherited sadness) perhaps should just be abolished outright, like the pain of childbirth has been medicated away, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine.

Some people have valid reasons to off themselves or others. SSRIs greatly exacerbate the problem in so many people, it's scary. I'm glad it works for the people who have endorsed their use, but we all have to experience the darker side of the human condition sometimes. For long and painful periods of time, even. It builds character. As far as I know, the only animals who kill themselves are humans and lemmings. I don't know why lemmings do it (peer pressure?), but I know that humans do it because they are self-aware, and look upon it as a way to permanently end the pain of life. All the other animals are too busy living in the now (regardless of their specific fortunate or unfortunate circumstances) to consider such a thing. Same thing goes for anorexia/bulemia and self mutilation (two other conditions that SSRIs are prescribed for).

Knowing our own mortality and the cruelty of life makes humans sad. And sad people take desperate measures to alleviate the pain that accompanies this awareness. Religion, psychoanalysis, drugs, and High Street have all been created to help us deal with it. Choose your opiate wisely.

Now....back to our regularly scheduled fucktardery. This topic sucks balls.

Last edited by sofaking (2008-12-17 02:27:26)

sofaking wrote:

You who counter my assertions are assuming I don't know "real" depression. Yeah, last year about this time, I was bumming like a motherfucker. As you might remember, I was dying with a tube coming out my back pissing into a disgusting bag of pee, in septic shock, jaundiced, and constantly in the hospital, drugged up on pure morphine. I couldn't even run my own business or cook or garden or do anything that wasn't from bed. It wasn't exactly ice cream and orgasms. I was in so much pain, I would half-jokingly beg to be put out of my misery, even though I didn't really want to die. If I was a horse, they would have shot me.

I was offered antidepressants then, too. I refused them. I'm too much of a bitch to die complacently, and as I said in my last post, I have already fucked with my  neurochemistry too much to willingly do it again.


Instead I decorated peebags with Swarovski crystals, and altered my clothes to hide the bag. I talked to my friends about the possibility of dying and finally getting to see hell, cried my ass off, built a fucking bridge and got over it. Then, as now, I smoked a lot of pot. My enduring and beneficial vice.


I'm also intimately acquainted with a lack of serotonin, having raped my own receptors for years with fuckloads of coke and amphetamines, then going cold turkey 4 years ago, never to touch the shit again. Caffeine (or even cocaine) can't touch it, once you've screwed that pooch. It takes years to reattain even low levels of the neurotransmitters you've manipulated your brain into squandering. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I struggled to enjoy my charmed life. Boo fucking hoo, is what I would tell myself. I forced myself to suck it up, hoping it would resolve itself. It did. It was an agony I wouldn't wish on anyone.

But it was my agony, and life's a fucking cunt. It's also a bitchin' miracle I get to share with some beautiful people. I'm happier than ever. I ain't gonna die, and I no longer desire to ingest alkaloid chemicals, regardless of how "happy" they once made me.

I'm not a martyr or a masochist. I'm the most fun person you could imagine. Even when I feel like shit.

I stated earlier that it's okay to take Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, if that's your bag. But l stand by my conviction that emotions need to be experienced, even if they hurt. Pain serves a function. If one is self-aware enough to acknowledge that their reasons for feeling sad are trivial enough to need to be eradicated, then perhaps everyone needs SSRIs. Painful feelings (for a specific reason, or even simply intrinsic genetically inherited sadness) perhaps should just be abolished outright, like the pain of childbirth has been medicated away, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine.

Some people have valid reasons to off themselves or others. SSRIs greatly exacerbate the problem in so many people, it's scary. I'm glad it works for the people who have endorsed their use, but we all have to experience the darker side of the human condition sometimes. For long and painful periods of time, even. It builds character. As far as I know, the only animals who kill themselves are humans and lemmings. I don't know why lemmings do it (peer pressure?), but I know that humans do it because they are self-aware, and look upon it as a way to permanently end the pain of life. All the other animals are too busy living in the now (regardless of their specific fortunate or unfortunate circumstances) to consider such a thing. Same thing goes for anorexia/bulemia and self mutilation (two other conditions that SSRIs are prescribed for).

Knowing our own mortality and the cruelty of life makes humans sad. And sad people take desperate measures to alleviate the pain that accompanies this awareness. Religion, psychoanalysis, drugs, and High Street have all been created to help us deal with it. Choose your opiate wisely.

Now....back to our regularly scheduled fucktardery. This topic sucks balls.

Sofa, you know I love you to death, but...  If the side effects are bad enough that you are better off feeling depressed, then either you're on the wrong meds or you really aren't in a condition where meds are helpful.  It happens.

It's not a badge of honor to have your life helped by SSRIs.  I used to think of it as looking at the world through shit-colored glasses.  For those people that are helped by medication, it gives them enough of a relief from the light-bending effects of the condition that they can start making rational decisions about their lives.  Yes, medication can be mis-prescribed or over-prescribed.  Making blanket statements about how long people should take them for a benefit, or how people should deal with it is naive, but it's also insulting to those people whose lives have been changed for the positive.  Only you and your doctor can decide if and when medication might be right for you, and even for those people who have a genetic predisposition towards depression, medication isn't a crutch, and there is no prize for being the most depressed person out there.

BTW, on the subject of the studies into increased risk of suicide with SSRIs, there are conflicting studies, and the biggest problem is trying to isolate outside factors.  For example, medication is often first prescribed not on the onset of symptoms, but when those symptoms have become severe enough to manifest themselves to friends and family.  How do we know which was the biggest contributor?

Bottom line: consult a professional if you need to, and take any anecdotal evidence you receive with a huge grain of salt.

tojo2000 wrote:

sofaking wrote:

You who counter my assertions are assuming I don't know "real" depression. Yeah, last year about this time, I was bumming like a motherfucker. As you might remember, I was dying with a tube coming out my back pissing into a disgusting bag of pee, in septic shock, jaundiced, and constantly in the hospital, drugged up on pure morphine. I couldn't even run my own business or cook or garden or do anything that wasn't from bed. It wasn't exactly ice cream and orgasms. I was in so much pain, I would half-jokingly beg to be put out of my misery, even though I didn't really want to die. If I was a horse, they would have shot me.

I was offered antidepressants then, too. I refused them. I'm too much of a bitch to die complacently, and as I said in my last post, I have already fucked with my  neurochemistry too much to willingly do it again.


Instead I decorated peebags with Swarovski crystals, and altered my clothes to hide the bag. I talked to my friends about the possibility of dying and finally getting to see hell, cried my ass off, built a fucking bridge and got over it. Then, as now, I smoked a lot of pot. My enduring and beneficial vice.


I'm also intimately acquainted with a lack of serotonin, having raped my own receptors for years with fuckloads of coke and amphetamines, then going cold turkey 4 years ago, never to touch the shit again. Caffeine (or even cocaine) can't touch it, once you've screwed that pooch. It takes years to reattain even low levels of the neurotransmitters you've manipulated your brain into squandering. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I struggled to enjoy my charmed life. Boo fucking hoo, is what I would tell myself. I forced myself to suck it up, hoping it would resolve itself. It did. It was an agony I wouldn't wish on anyone.

But it was my agony, and life's a fucking cunt. It's also a bitchin' miracle I get to share with some beautiful people. I'm happier than ever. I ain't gonna die, and I no longer desire to ingest alkaloid chemicals, regardless of how "happy" they once made me.

I'm not a martyr or a masochist. I'm the most fun person you could imagine. Even when I feel like shit.

I stated earlier that it's okay to take Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, if that's your bag. But l stand by my conviction that emotions need to be experienced, even if they hurt. Pain serves a function. If one is self-aware enough to acknowledge that their reasons for feeling sad are trivial enough to need to be eradicated, then perhaps everyone needs SSRIs. Painful feelings (for a specific reason, or even simply intrinsic genetically inherited sadness) perhaps should just be abolished outright, like the pain of childbirth has been medicated away, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine.

Some people have valid reasons to off themselves or others. SSRIs greatly exacerbate the problem in so many people, it's scary. I'm glad it works for the people who have endorsed their use, but we all have to experience the darker side of the human condition sometimes. For long and painful periods of time, even. It builds character. As far as I know, the only animals who kill themselves are humans and lemmings. I don't know why lemmings do it (peer pressure?), but I know that humans do it because they are self-aware, and look upon it as a way to permanently end the pain of life. All the other animals are too busy living in the now (regardless of their specific fortunate or unfortunate circumstances) to consider such a thing. Same thing goes for anorexia/bulemia and self mutilation (two other conditions that SSRIs are prescribed for).

Knowing our own mortality and the cruelty of life makes humans sad. And sad people take desperate measures to alleviate the pain that accompanies this awareness. Religion, psychoanalysis, drugs, and High Street have all been created to help us deal with it. Choose your opiate wisely.

Now....back to our regularly scheduled fucktardery. This topic sucks balls.

Sofa, you know I love you to death, but...  If the side effects are bad enough that you are better off feeling depressed, then either you're on the wrong meds or you really aren't in a condition where meds are helpful.  It happens.

It's not a badge of honor to have your life helped by SSRIs.  I used to think of it as looking at the world through shit-colored glasses.  For those people that are helped by medication, it gives them enough of a relief from the light-bending effects of the condition that they can start making rational decisions about their lives.  Yes, medication can be mis-prescribed or over-prescribed.  Making blanket statements about how long people should take them for a benefit, or how people should deal with it is naive, but it's also insulting to those people whose lives have been changed for the positive.  Only you and your doctor can decide if and when medication might be right for you, and even for those people who have a genetic predisposition towards depression, medication isn't a crutch, and there is no prize for being the most depressed person out there.

BTW, on the subject of the studies into increased risk of suicide with SSRIs, there are conflicting studies, and the biggest problem is trying to isolate outside factors.  For example, medication is often first prescribed not on the onset of symptoms, but when those symptoms have become severe enough to manifest themselves to friends and family.  How do we know which was the biggest contributor?

Bottom line: consult a professional if you need to, and take any anecdotal evidence you receive with a huge grain of salt.

Baby, I said twice that it's cool if someone feels they need to take them. I'm merely addressing that it's not possible to suppress the human condition  of sadness that makes we humans seek relief. You see hundreds of examples of reasons to crawl into a bag and suffocate ourselves on this very board every week. But for some odd reason, here we are comforted, even amused by it.

You must admit that this is a strange place for someone inclined to depression to come even once, let alone every damn day, like some dysfunctional cult of schadenfreude.

What is it about this place that is so attractive to some? Certainly not the subject matter, which ranges from the depraved and just plain wrong, to sad and unfixable topics of life? I have said before that someone could use this place  for their thesis.

It is what we attempt to do to the subject matter, which is to turn it around and render it humorous, that is the redeeming quality of High Street. This is my solution.

Life is so often sad, it's funny. Embrace the fuckedupness (not a word? is now.) of life. Kick its ass so it can't hurt you anymore. Do whatever it takes. Even if what it takes may convince you to kill yourself. Prozac milkshakes for everyone!!!

Last edited by sofaking (2008-12-17 03:16:08)

sofaking wrote:

Taint wrote:

Sofie wrote:

...ice cream and orgasms

You know, if you ever decide to write an autobiography, that should be the title.

Lucky for me, it has been far more ice cream and orgasms that reasons to commit seppuku.

You have to admit, though, if you've gotta go, what a way to go.

You know, Sofie, none of this seems odd to me at all. I was cracking jokes about the time I spent in observation at San Francisco General after the cops picked me up on the bridge shortly after I was released. Why? In a perverse way, it was funny. The people I saw there, the whole experience of finding myself in the cracker ward, it was all funny as hell.

The humor helps us distance ourselves from the pain, I think. I don't know about you, but a certain amount of denial helps me maintain my sanity. Occasionally I meet people who define themselves by the tragedy in their lives - I think Lurker was one of those - and who embrace the pain they experience almost as if they were clinging to it for survival. I don't understand that.

This is the first time I've mentioned my suicide attempt on the Golden Gate here on High Street. I'm not ashamed of it, and I occasionally talk about it with people who are going through similar experiences just to let them know I have some idea of what they're experiencing, and if they need to talk, I'm available. I'm not embarrassed by it, either. It happened, it's a part of my life, and it changed me in a number of ways. Most important, I've moved on.

Before the attempt, I used to wonder why people cling to life. Having been through that, I still don't have an answer. I have a good life and much to be grateful for. I'm surrounded by people who love me and look out for me. My religion tells me it's all merely perception and delusion and that, like everything else, it will change and it will end. I think I'm OK with that.

And maybe it's that realization that makes stuff like John Walsh and piranha victims and the fact that the formerly fattest man in the world had to use a support bar to fuck his new bride all so damned funny. It is funny. And so are we.

Well, since we all have the depression, let's form a suicide pact.

I nominate Ptah to go first.

"The only other human being that panders to these whackjobs at a higher level is Oprah Winfrey....  Oprah provides a "soapbox" to people who believe in "natural" cures to cancer, UFOs, homeopathy and any other kind of intellectual diahhrea that is offered up.....  "

It's so good to see someone nail Oprah for the person she is.  I do believe she has done alot of good but I'm tired of her words being used as a Mantra.  I belong to a spiritual book club and now we are pouring over a book recommended by Oprah.  Argh!!!!

Regarding Jim Carey..... I'm willing to forgive him for a lot because I think he's been used by Hollywood.... but to hear him talk about depression with little mention of the mania he uses to cope leaves me somewhat befuddled.  And a person with Mania should not be given Prozac in any case.  What the !@#$%^

Jim Carey makes Robin Williams seem laid back

Question:

When I pop myself off would you guys prefer I leave my HS login/password in my note and have a friend/family member come here to tell you all the gory details ala 16tonnes?

Or would you prefer I come here and post it directly?

These are the things that I need to know.

Also, Carrey mentioned some good precursors to neurochemicals and they do what he says they are supposed to do(notably 5HTP which is a supplement I use with patients on a regular basis) but most people want the quick fix.  Folks don't want to take the time to heal themselves completely.  We are a nation of pill-poppers.

Taint wrote:

Oh, and Scotty, I think an engraved announcement on a nice stock would be a lovely way to make the announcement.

On a gun stock?  Not sure I'd go the long gun approach.  I'm more of a pistol man.

I am so sorry for your loss.

The only reason I didn't blow my brains out in the garden shed last month is because my dog followed me out there and sat at my feet while I fought back the demon.

I'm sorry BC.

This is thread is certainly full of holiday cheer!!!!

I've never been clinically depressed and I am neither a physician nor a Scientologist so I can't speak as an expert on this.  But it seems to me that depression is your body's way of telling you that you are a real drag for everyone else and should kill yourself as your part in improving the overall world. 

Come on people!  Stop being so damn selfish!

Bigcat wrote:

Yesterday my beautiful, wonderful dog for the last 12 years died. ...

My condolences.

jesusluvspegging wrote:

I first had suicidal thoughts in seventh grade.  It's been fifteen years, and they're still there.  My moment of crisis came about nine years ago, and I've stuck it out ever since.  I've certainly improved, but I still couldn't tell you what I'm living for.  Habit, I guess.

Suicide is the coward's way out, no question.  I'm also of the opinion that all suicide attempts are actually cries for help, regardless of how they feel at the time.  The people that succeed in killing themselves are actually the unsuccessful ones.  Just my opinion.

Fuck you depressing fags, I need another drink now.

Oh, come on, Jesus, don't front.  You know you committed suicide 2000 years ago already.  Don't tell me you didn't know what was going to happen.

jesusluvspegging wrote:

I first had suicidal thoughts in seventh grade.

I was having this discussion with my Mom, a social worker and therapist for the last 30 years. I posited that thoughts of suicide are normal and a regular part of our internal dialog. Who doesn't wonder what it would like to be dead, or what our friends would say or if it would hurt. It's like pedophilia. It's when you take action that you cross the line.