Nor do I! In some cases, yes, it is needed. However, lots of cases don't require that. I feel today that pills are given for just about anything.
"Oh, your dog died? Here, take this!" or "Gee, not feeling so good? Take this!"
Hence the problem with antibiotics!
That irks me. However, there are legimate situations....
Well let's see. Pill/bullet, pill/bullet.......................
I think I'd choose the pill..If I could get them.........
I think I'd choose the pill..If I could get them.........
My suicide plan was as follows:
Drive in my car with no seatbelt, drive really really fast on the highway and slam into a bridge. It would look like an accident. Leave no note no nothing. I would leave all the despair behind and my parents and family would only live with the greif of tragedy, not wondering "what went wrong?" for the rest of their lives. I didn't want to leave anyone with guilt and questions.
I'm almost 24 now and I feel differently.
Since I was 16 I've been torturing myself with questions (as many people do, I'm not saying I'm special) and I still do. The roots of my depression stem from living in an oppressive society, a culture that doesn't care, a culture that is disrespectful of life and a society where the human spirit is non-existent. I realized this and I fight culture everyday. Maintaining my own sense of self outside of the culture that I despise is what keeps me sane. Every day is a battle, the time is NOW. I can't comprehend a life of bliss, nor do I care for such a thing.
I'm sure that if I went to a doctor they would prescribe something for me. I think I have seasonal depression or whatever because in the winter it gets pretty ridiculous. Every year it seems harder. I'm not looking forward to the winter but I think I'm tough enough to deal with it. My despair is what makes me what I am. I almost cherish it. Sometimes I think I've overcome (and I've learned a lot this summer and been really happy the whole time) but it's a part of me.
Keirkegaard talks about despair, as does Tolstoy and a bunch of other intellects throughout history. Despair, according to the existentialists, is a part of being human, the human condition. Keirkegaard (sp? always fvck that one up) talks about a leap of faith, in where one reaches a wall. So much despair, so much thinking and beating one's head against a wall until finally, you either torture yourself to madness, or you make some sort of leap of faith. Keirkegaard was christian, for him the leap of faith was God, but he shunned the church and said that the modern catholics (the ones in his day) were terrible catholics and that if they wanted to be true christians, they too would shun the church. I might be fvcking things up, it's been a while.
Anyways, my point is this.
Without a flame on your ass, you're sitting in limbo. Life is for living, doing, experiencing. A content man, is a sloth. I do not care to be a sloth and I think that anti-depressents take the onus off of the individual to make change in their lives, to fight and flight. What is life without battles?
We are taught from day one that we can not make a difference!
We can, and it's up to the individual to analyze their culture, their environment and anything else that pertains to their happiness and put forth an affort to 'positive' change.
There have been a few moments (especially last winter) where I was going to cave and go see a shrink and sucumb to the promise of an easier life. I thought it was either that, or suicide. Look I'm still around and I did neither. I'm tougher for it and happier. Every hurdle that I defeat alone, makes me stronger and better equipped for others. A crutch is just a crutch.
Depression is nothing more than a self-inflicted state of mind, it can be changed by setting small goals and achieving them, working your way up.
Geekbabe
Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Jesus,I'm glad my brother and my doctor didn't think like you do, I'd have died of dehydration because by the time I was treated I was so depressed that even eating or drinking had become impossible for me. What should have been one of the happiest times of my life had become a nightmare,due to a simple,treatable condition.
I urge everyone who's feeling low and wondering if they could benefit from treatment to consult their doctor, depression is the most common form of mental illness and chances are good that even if you do not become depressed in your lifetime that a family member or friend will,knowing the sigs,symptoms could be life saving for you or for someone you love!
Could it be that as a culture we're just downright spoiled, lazy and impulsive?
That we're used to having other people deal with our problems for us. That we're used to not having any problems?
That we're WEAK?
How come depression isn't such a big deal in developing countries?
Being dependant on a drug is being dependant on a drug.
How's it different from being an alcoholic (apart from alcoholism being detrimental to your health and the happiness of those around you)?
How come we can't be happy naturally?
We're so used to solutions we forget to consider the problems. What could prevent people from depression? Discipline? I don't know, maybe.
Geekbabe
Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
II see, so I was,lazy and weak, should I then in your esteemed opinion been simply allowed to die ?
You aren't getting the point of this, at the time I became depressed (following child birth) was a time in my life that I'd eagerly looked forward to and was very happy about, there was no sane reason in the world to feel as I did, I suffered needlessly due to pull yourself up by your bootstraps,types like yourself. Trust me if there was anyway I could have willed myself to be happy I sure as shiat would have done so.
That is patently untrue. Depression can be physiological, psychological, or a combination of the two. If there weren't a physiological component at work sometimes, it wouldn't tend to run in families as it does (ever looked at Ernest Hemingway's family tree? Lots of self-inflicted deaths.)
That said, I have suffered from varying degrees of depression for pretty much as long as I can remember. As I am one who hates to be on medication of any kind, I have figured out what I can do to keep it in check for the most part. The biggest thing with me is to get some exercise at least 5 times a week (not a problem since I do a lot of cycling as most of you know). Something about having that nice shot of endorphins once a day really keeps me on an even keel. I've also found that limiting alcohol consumption helps quite a bit as well. It's weird, I don't get all weepy and suicidal when I'm drunk, but I am typically at my lowest emotionally the day after for some reason. I don't know exactly why it's this way, but I finally noticed the pattern and keep the benders to a minimum.
I don't know what your situation was. Yes, I'll admit, some people need help. I've never met one though.
I have. He put a bullet through the back of his head five days before we graduated high school.
Sometimes people literally can't help themselves. Often it's not any kind of "happy pill" (mood elevator) that's prescribed...it's typically something to restore normal brain chemistry and put the person on the same playing field as the rest of us. My friend Matt was never diagnosed (because his parents and friends didn't talk to him about seeing someone despite all the obvious warning signs) and did himself in despite a lot of good things in his life. He was in a great band, had been accepted to college, had a girlfriend, friends.....everything that should make someone happy. It's kinda like the depression taints everything and takes the joy out of life.....you only see the final exit as a way out. It sucks, believe me.
Yep. Been battling depression for almost three years now. It's completely altered the person I am. I now only listen to dark music, hate people and am anti-social. Everyone says, "You're just weak" or something stupid like that. Depression isn't all bad though. I found out that I enjoy about fifty percent of my depression because of the depth it brings and peacefulness. Just depends on who you are. I had nothing better to do so I kind of "accepted" the problem. Other people just panic because they aren't fitting in anymore and it just worsens the problem. Those are my opinions.
This is a subject perhaps best addressed without too many sweeping generalities or absolutes. But to generalize my own ignorance for a minute, a phenomenon I see played out on ATOT all to frequently, I'm going to make the ridiculously uninformed guess that the final word on the nature and source of depression is not clinically established or scientifically consensulaized. We see two camps developing, those see a malaise based on chemical imbalance best dispensed with via pills, and those who see a psychological condition with treatable via techniques, exestencial, or metaphysical. I tried to suggest a possible blending and overlap, the suicide portion of which needs careful attention, drugs if necessary, to combat regardless of origin. There can be, I think, no doubt that chemistry has a role to play in depression and somebody already made clear the absurdly obvious preference for pill over bullet. That there seems to be a genetic component just adds weight to the fire, although the parent component of depression is, I think powerful not only from a genetic point of view, but nurture wise, as in child rearing techniques run in families and therefore so should outcome.
Anyway, among those who see or focus on the psychological component of depression the question becomes is it good or bad. Clearly it's obvious that it's bad if it ruins your life or leads to self destruction and good if it leads to character building, the capacity to empathize etc. Suffering deepens the soul. Trust me. No pain, no gain, How high you go depends on how low ya been and so on.
But the fact that depression may have a chemical signature does not mean that it has a parallel attitudinal component. My personal opinion is that we live in a depressed society because we live in an unreal world. We watch actors on TV instead of being actors ourselves. But mostly we live in a judgmental, competitive, me first society that cuts your throat first and asks questions later. We live in a society that is anti life, anti person. We have artificial standards of excellence that do not correspond to the range of human types. We are required to conform to a life in a straight jacket. The most insane can do it, the least insane can't fit in. The odd, the freaked, the depressed are just a bit more sane, a bit less able to play dead than the fully adjusted. That doesn't make them better. It is often the fully adjusted, the successful, the socially strong who, out of their strength and self confidence have the courage to not just question, but to revolutionize.
What you see common in this thread is the notion of the tie between lack of self confidence, self respect, and self esteem as diagnostic of a depressed state. Clearly this would imply an obvious source and direction out and or up from depression. Why do people feel bad about themselves? Really why? Can you give one good reason why anybody should not like themselves. Not liking yourself is just not intellectually supportable. There is no reason for it. It isn't the intellect that condemns us it's our emotions. The reason you cannot find the reason you don't like yourself is because it is buried in the unconscious. The reason that novon's suggestion that you set small goals and achieve them both works and doesn't work is that any achievement contradicts the negative feeling, takes you into the land of the achievers, the successful, the ones with the strength to take revolutionary steps like loving yourself, but the reason it doesn't work is because the cause remains out of consciousness and perniciously invisible. It keeps rearing it's ugly but invisible head. Another success, another temporary victory. But enough victories can put you over a threshold into a better place.
What are the potentials of therapy or religious faith. With the latter, with faith that God loves you, with a deep belief that you are loved by God there can come a similar transcending of negative feelings. I may be worthless tome but God loves me and He is bigger and better than me. Take his word for it if you can. Alternately you can dive down into depression, you can let it take over and posses you in therapy. You can go into the feelings of worthlessness and track them down. This is difficult. We evade it with all our might. We see a psychiatrist to become better at being ill, not to face ourselves. But in those rare places, I no longer know of any, where people struggle to go into their feelings, there are explosions of traumatic reliving of events unimaginable that occurred to us a children. It is possible to trace back, to feel how bad we feel so deeply as to completely relive the original event as if it were now, and secondarily, and later see that everything we were made to think about ourselves is a total lie. In this case the belief that we are worthless can be broken totally and permanently because we KNOW exactly why we felt bad and have left it behind.
Depression is an echo of our psychic death, the faint suppressed rumblings of discontent that we were psychically murdered as children, made to feel bad, compared to little Johnny next door, shown we didn't measure up. We are in a bind. To go up we have to go down. We are under a capsized boat. For those of you who are depressed and struggle so desperately to be free, all I can say is that there are those who have traveled to the core of their being and found there only love.
We are chimpanzees. The wild ones have a ball or a banana.
Anyway, among those who see or focus on the psychological component of depression the question becomes is it good or bad. Clearly it's obvious that it's bad if it ruins your life or leads to self destruction and good if it leads to character building, the capacity to empathize etc. Suffering deepens the soul. Trust me.
No pain, no gain, How high you go depends on how low ya been and so on. But the fact that depression may have a chemical signature does not mean that it has a parallel attitudinal component. My personal opinion is that we live in a depressed society because we live in an unreal world. We watch actors on TV instead of being actors ourselves. But mostly we live in a judgmental, competitive, me first society that cuts your throat first and asks questions later. We live in a society that is anti life, anti person. We have artificial standards of excellence that do not correspond to the range of human types. We are required to conform to a life in a straight jacket. The most insane can do it, the least insane can't fit in. The odd, the freaked, the depressed are just a bit more sane, a bit less able to play dead than the fully adjusted. That doesn't make them better. It is often the fully adjusted, the successful, the socially strong who, out of their strength and self confidence have the courage to not just question, but to revolutionize.
What you see common in this thread is the notion of the tie between lack of self confidence, self respect, and self esteem as diagnostic of a depressed state. Clearly this would imply an obvious source and direction out and or up from depression. Why do people feel bad about themselves? Really why? Can you give one good reason why anybody should not like themselves. Not liking yourself is just not intellectually supportable. There is no reason for it. It isn't the intellect that condemns us it's our emotions. The reason you cannot find the reason you don't like yourself is because it is buried in the unconscious. The reason that novon's suggestion that you set small goals and achieve them both works and doesn't work is that any achievement contradicts the negative feeling, takes you into the land of the achievers, the successful, the ones with the strength to take revolutionary steps like loving yourself, but the reason it doesn't work is because the cause remains out of consciousness and perniciously invisible. It keeps rearing it's ugly but invisible head. Another success, another temporary victory. But enough victories can put you over a threshold into a better place.
What are the potentials of therapy or religious faith. With the latter, with faith that God loves you, with a deep belief that you are loved by God there can come a similar transcending of negative feelings. I may be worthless tome but God loves me and He is bigger and better than me. Take his word for it if you can. Alternately you can dive down into depression, you can let it take over and posses you in therapy. You can go into the feelings of worthlessness and track them down. This is difficult. We evade it with all our might. We see a psychiatrist to become better at being ill, not to face ourselves. But in those rare places, I no longer know of any, where people struggle to go into their feelings, there are explosions of traumatic reliving of events unimaginable that occurred to us a children. It is possible to trace back, to feel how bad we feel so deeply as to completely relive the original event as if it were now, and secondarily, and later see that everything we were made to think about ourselves is a total lie. In this case the belief that we are worthless can be broken totally and permanently because we KNOW exactly why we felt bad and have left it behind.
Depression is an echo of our psychic death, the faint suppressed rumblings of discontent that we were psychically murdered as children, made to feel bad, compared to little Johnny next door, shown we didn't measure up. We are in a bind. To go up we have to go down. We are under a capsized boat. For those of you who are depressed and struggle so desperately to be free, all I can say is that there are those who have traveled to the core of their being and found there only love.
We are chimpanzees. The wild ones have a ball or a banana.
Originally posted by: Fausto1
I have. He put a bullet through the back of his head five days before we graduated high school.
Read my earlier post RE friends commiting suicide.
Originally posted by: Moonbeam
This is a subject perhaps best addressed without too many sweeping generalities or absolutes. But to generalize my own ignorance for a minute, a phenomenon I see played out on ATOT all to frequently, I'm going to make the ridiculously uninformed guess that the final word on the nature and source of depression is not clinically established or scientifically consensulaized. We see two camps developing, those see a malaise based on chemical imbalance best dispensed with via pills, and those who see a psychological condition with treatable via techniques, exestencial, or metaphysical. I tried to suggest a possible blending and overlap, the suicide portion of which needs careful attention, drugs if necessary, to combat regardless of origin. There can be, I think, no doubt that chemistry has a role to play in depression and somebody already made clear the absurdly obvious preference for pill over bullet. That there seems to be a genetic component just adds weight to the fire, although the parent component of depression is, I think powerful not only from a genetic point of view, but nurture wise, as in child rearing techniques run in families and therefore so should outcome. Anyway, among those who see or focus on the psychological component of depression the question becomes is it good or bad. Clearly it's obvious that it's bad if it ruins your life or leads to self destruction and good if it leads to character building, the capacity to empathize etc. Suffering deepens the soul. Trust me.
I like it all. I especially like the part about the capsized boat.
.. .and I agree with your personal opinion.....
But the fact that depression may have a chemical signature does not mean that it has a parallel attitudinal component. My personal opinion is that we live in a depressed society because we live in an unreal world. We watch actors on TV instead of being actors ourselves. But mostly we live in a judgmental, competitive, me first society that cuts your throat first and asks questions later. We live in a society that is anti life, anti person. We have artificial standards of excellence that do not correspond to the range of human types. We are required to conform to a life in a straight jacket. The most insane can do it, the least insane can't fit in. The odd, the freaked, the depressed are just a bit more sane, a bit less able to play dead than the fully adjusted. That doesn't make them better. It is often the fully adjusted, the successful, the socially strong who, out of their strength and self confidence have the courage to not just question, but to revolutionize.
As a psychology student, I feel the need to speak up. Part of you is blaming yourself, while the other part of you is blaming culture, or basically, everyone else, for inflicting this upon you.
Depression isnt a big deal in developing countries, because they have more important things to worry about, like eating.
Being on a drug is NOT just being on a drug, and that is where you are wrong. Are you really equating aspirin with crack? One is medicine, the other is recreational, and destructive.
People are SO mixed up on how these mental diseases come about. Although many times the case, it is not always that one gets stuck with depression and it comes out of nowhere. Typically people have predispositions to it, and when something traumatic happens, they cant deal with it, and sink into depression. This is NOT always a character flaw, it is simply quite often a genetic predisposition.
You ask why can't we be happy? We can. I certainly can. I'm usually happy, even when things arent totally going my way. I can honestly say I've never been clincally depressed, and I doubt I ever will be. I've been through some tough sh*t, but throughout it I dealt pretty well. Could it have been my upbringing? Partially. Although I dont doubt for a second that if I had the predisposition to become depressed, I would have sunk into the hole like everyone else.
I'd like to that think if I was truly depressed, that I would be able to recognize it for what it is, and seek help and medication. Unfortunately, the nature of the disease prevents this from happening so easily. Likewise, when my GF had general anxiety, she refused to seek treatment, because she was anxious that the doctor would tell her she was crazy and that she needed medication. I tried to explain to her that it was nothing like that, but since I had no firsthand experience, she didnt listen, and just got mad at me for bringing it up. It took someone that could relate better to finally get her to crack, and after she started the medication, she realized what was really happening. The anxiety disorder made her anxious about taking the medication, basically a total deadlock. I'm just so happy to see that shes able to deal with it now. Theyre not "happy" pills, they dont make her into a flaky bundle of happiness 24/7.
So you ask, what will prevent depression? Recognizing what it truly is. To the person experiencing depression, they are most likely unable to do this for themselves. Personally I wouldnt know, since I've never been depressed, but I think those of you that are, should try and think WHY youre depressed. If it comes out of nowhere over the smallest things, or if you are truly unable to cope, you should see a doctor. You dont have to accept depression at face value, just like you dont have to accept a headache when youve got aspirin next to you.
Geekbabe
Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
You know, the only reason I spoke of my experience with depression here and remembered a time in my life that I wish to forget is because every fall/winter around here at least one or two bright young people are found dead by their own hands. In many of these cases there might well have been many warning signs that nobody saw or even sadder that they saw but chose to ignore or even worse still chose to treat as a character flaw or moral shortcoming on the part of the depressed person.
Who knows why people become depressed? while the battle rages between chemical imbalance versus situational factors, people
are so despondent they're killing themselves. Instead of focusing on blame,why not focus on helping those who hurt to get some help?
I genuinely like young people, their energy level, their idealistic viewpoints, if my postings of my experience helps even one kid here decide to talk to somebody,anybody rather than suffer needlessly or take the permanent soltion for what is very often a temporarty very treatable feeling then it will have been well worth all that I experienced.
Who knows why people become depressed? while the battle rages between chemical imbalance versus situational factors, people
are so despondent they're killing themselves. Instead of focusing on blame,why not focus on helping those who hurt to get some help?
I genuinely like young people, their energy level, their idealistic viewpoints, if my postings of my experience helps even one kid here decide to talk to somebody,anybody rather than suffer needlessly or take the permanent soltion for what is very often a temporarty very treatable feeling then it will have been well worth all that I experienced.
You just don't know what your talking about. Prozac and Paxil are anti-depressants, there medication for an illness. If a person is clinical depressed they take the medication and they are able to function agian. Depression is caused by a chemical imbalance and the anti-despressant helps to balance the chemicals so that you feel normal and can function agian.
I've seen friends with it and after they started taking the medication they got better and we would start to hang out agian and do things. It gives people there drive back!
Your ignorant but there is hope for you to learn. Watch "A beautiful mind" and tell me schizophrenia is a self-inflicted state of mind!
Its as if people arent able to recognize the difference between sadness and clinical depression. If you are sad, if you feel down, you may have been grieving, your dog coudl just have been run over etc....all of these things cause sadness.
Depression is an entire different story. Sadness triggers depression. But they are not the same.
True depression isnt as common as most people make it out to be, because most people arent clinically depressed, they are just sad. If you cant get over your sadness, you dont need a pill, you need a hug.
If youre unable to do anything including getting out of bed for weeks, total lack of hunger, the complete inability to experience joy, you hear voices in your head telling you to kill yourself, etc, then you might be depressed.
Depression is an entire different story. Sadness triggers depression. But they are not the same.
True depression isnt as common as most people make it out to be, because most people arent clinically depressed, they are just sad. If you cant get over your sadness, you dont need a pill, you need a hug.
If youre unable to do anything including getting out of bed for weeks, total lack of hunger, the complete inability to experience joy, you hear voices in your head telling you to kill yourself, etc, then you might be depressed.
What the fvck is NORMAL?
Soon enough we'll be taking pills for being too horny, taking pills cause we're shy, taking pills cause we're overly energetic... taking pills to put us to sleep.
BD2003, your definition is sound, far as I'm concerned. There is a difference between depression and sadness, I can agree to that.
What if you're angry all the time? What is you hate the world? Should you take a pill for that? Or just learn to deal with it? Or ignore it? What do you do then? What if your reasons for hating the world are sound and just? Taking a pill then, what does that do?
Mrburns207: You're ignorant. Keep learning from television and movies. Have you ever known anyone with schizophrenia? It's not like the movies man, at all. There's still hope for you to learn though.
I once sat with a hollowpoint loaded .357 in my hand... thinking of ending it all... it was no rash decision either...
I ended up falling in love with the friend that saved me, although it took several months...
So the one that i am currently in love with (though my depression comes and goes anyways, without medication) actually saved my life that night...
Some people have to live with chronical depression, others, like spanky will never understand...
I ended up falling in love with the friend that saved me, although it took several months...
So the one that i am currently in love with (though my depression comes and goes anyways, without medication) actually saved my life that night...
Some people have to live with chronical depression, others, like spanky will never understand...
That is sooo damn... WRONG!!
You do not have to hear voices, you do NOT have to be out of your fsking mind to consider suicide... actually, MOST people do at one point or more during their lifetime..
Suicide and depression are two seperate things, suicidal ideation comes from the fact that you think that death would be easier than life...
I have known people who have taken their life because they were bored... i have known people who have taken their life because they could not stand the world they live in, or what they have gone through in life...
NONE of them heard any voices...
My stance? I believe that you have your life, if you seriously want to end it, that is YOUR choice... i will talk to you, i will try to help you, in any way that i can, if that way means knowing a reliable method... i will give it to you...
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