antidepressants

[Guest disparaissant]

yeah mood stabilisers and anti-psychotics are a bitch and a half, i haven't been able to get back to the weight i was at before i got all crazy-like.

 

i used to live with a dude who had been put on anti-psychotics when he was 8, and it caused him to grow tits. that never went away.

[oyster]

I am going to a doctor tomorrow morning , or I suppose technically this morning . A man from China , or a Chinese man . He stuck needles in my father's back.

[luke viia]

they prefer to be called chinamen. remember that when you get to the needle room.

[sup]

dont do drugs is my saying

[Guest disparaissant]

are you a scientologist, sup?

 

supontologist?

supcancer.

[sup]

no just dont go to a doctor and dont do drugs until theres a universal health care in USA, fight the medicine industrial complex

[chassis]

Jesus, I didnt think you could get depression in your teens. Not unless you had some really bad messed up shit in your life. Your brain should still be pretty ok by now.

[Guest disparaissant]

Many of the older typical antipsychotics and several of the newer atypicals elevate prolactin levels and, as the name suggests, moobs are an unfortunate consquence

and, fuck, if he was on them at 8, that developed breast tissue really would be for good since it happened at such a formative period. That's fucked up. The only job I was ever fired from was a local child/adolescent psychiatric hospital. It was horrific what had been done to these kids and what continued to be done to them in the form of toxic psychiatry. I gave my 2 weeks but then found I that I couldn't even drive there the next day. Fuck them.

yeah the worst part of it is. well there's a couple bad parts. he's actually one of the sanest people i know, but when he was a kid he lived with his mom and his uncle. his mom was bipolar and a couple other things, and his uncle was an alcoholic schizo who thought he was jesus and drank mouthwash a lot. also they had like 60 cats and everything was covered in cat pee so he was basically the smelly, unsocialized weirdo growing up. so he acted out a lot, for good fucking reason, and some asshole doctor stuck him on those to calm him down, and now he's got boobs.

 

but yeah i mean him and his brother turned out really surprisingly well, considering.

[Guest fiznuthian]

wouldn't growing moobs make you even more depressed? count me out..

[oyster]

Today I went to the doctor and told him about my depression.

[lumpenprol]

i hope your Chinese doctor isn't like most doctors here in China, ie., has zero understanding and sympathy for mental issues, and very little understanding of proper pharmacology (see: misuse and overuse of antibiotics) either...

[Guest disparaissant]

wouldn't growing moobs make you even more depressed? count me out..

no way boobs are the best

 

actually no i guess hairy boobs are probably pretty gross.

disregard.

[Zephyr_Nova]

anybody here ever prescribed Lithium?

 

I was on it briefly (maybe a couple months), but I stopped because it left me emotionally numbed and lethargic. So apparently it's quite effective in treating mania, but after feeling so many emotional highs it's kind of hard to accept a life where you just feel dull and indifferent all the time. I haven't touched medication of any sort since and I've been pretty even keel. I have moments where my mind does a "switch", where it disconnects from reality and the world around me starts synchronizing in an unsettling way, but any time it happens I just try to avoid too much stimulation and wait it out. I recognize it as a part of a mental disorder when it's happening and I think because of that I can prevent it from getting out of hand (I can usually get myself back in touch with reality within half an hour, but it's still scary as hell when it happens). I think staying focused on creative endeavors keeps my mind in check. It's good to have a place to channel that energy.

[awepittance]

anybody here ever prescribed Lithium?

 

I was on it briefly (maybe a couple months), but I stopped because it left me emotionally numbed and lethargic. So apparently it's quite effective in treating mania, but after feeling so many emotional highs it's kind of hard to accept a life where you just feel dull and indifferent all the time. I haven't touched medication of any sort since and I've been pretty even keel. I have moments where my mind does a "switch", where it disconnects from reality and the world around me starts synchronizing in an unsettling way, but any time it happens I just try to avoid too much stimulation and wait it out. I recognize it as a part of a mental disorder when it's happening and I think because of that I can prevent it from getting out of hand (I can usually get myself back in touch with reality within half an hour, but it's still scary as hell when it happens). I think staying focused on creative endeavors keeps my mind in check. It's good to have a place to channel that energy.

 

that's a really interesting breakdown of your experience, thanks for sharing! When you say your mind does a 'switch' can you go into a little more detail? So far it sounds extremely similar to what my own break from realyity twas like.

[Zephyr_Nova]

that's a really interesting breakdown of your experience, thanks for sharing! When you say your mind does a 'switch' can you go into a little more detail? So far it sounds extremely similar to what my own break from realyity twas like.

 

I'll try! It's always a bit difficult to describe and I hardly ever get asked to explain it since almost no one who knows me "irl" even knows I experience it. But, hm... I'll be going about my business, maybe I'm outside on a walk, and there will suddenly be a trigger that instigates this shift in reality perspective. It's often attached to some synchronicity that I notice and then continue to notice throughout the day... or I'll be listening to a song and get the sense that the lyrics are symbolic of something occurring in my own life, beyond just being relatable, more like they're sending a message to me personally. Or it will be exemplifying some truth about reality that goes beyond the obvious translation of the song, but it's usually some disturbing insight. Heheh, and now I sound crazy, but when this switch occurs I know it is crazy. And it's not something that happens very often. The problem is that when my mind makes this shift, it is temporarily impossible for me to rationalize myself out of it. It can be funny and scary at the same time, because I may think "wow, my mind is clearly schizzing out right now, but no matter what I tell myself my mind will still attach concrete reality to these delusions." That almost sounds paradoxical maybe... but it's like I'm witnessing that break with reality objectively while also experiencing it subjectively, and the "observer" me has to wait patiently and nervously for the subjective me to switch back to normalcy. When I'm in this mode anything I do will feed into it. So if, for instance, I visit watmm.com gen ban, I will immediately notice several threads and posts within those threads which relate to whatever is disturbing me as though they were somehow linked directly with whatever delusion I was having. It'll be like reinforcement that "yes, the madness you are experiencing now is in fact inextricably locked with what should be unrelated external events that your mind should have no influence over." I mean, it's easy to see parallels in unrelated things at any given time, but when this "switch" occurs the parallels will be so glaringly obvious that they are inescapable even if i do not want to see them. It's like I don't even understand how my mind can be reading so much into so many things instantaneously without there being some kind of... conscious analysis of it. So regardless of any rationalization I give myself, it still seems like these messages and symbols are caused by an external source rather than an internal one. I know that if my mind stays in a loop like that it will be unbearable, impossible to cope with. So in order to avoid it I remove myself from any potential triggers as much as possible, ie. get off the internet, listen to instrumental music, pet my cat, whatever... just avoid anything that might encourage the delusion and wait it out until it passes. And I think because I do this my mind is usually able to return to its usual state of soundness within half an hour. And oh how that half hour drags into what feels like an eternity. If my mind did this sort of shit while I was manic it would be great fun because it would be like I was a part of some great and majestic cosmic game. But otherwise it's just madness, in light of how shitty the world generally is. If the truth were as horrible as my mind might make it out to be during one of these states, I would rather be ignorant of it. I've got a "fuck off, Cthulhu" attitude when it comes to personal knowledge, ie if the knowing the horrible truth won't help anything I'd rather not know it. Yep. Sorry, that was a pretty vague analysis of what I experience, not sure how adequately it conveys it to anyone else who isn't experiencing it directly. There are a lot of other details I could get into, but it's a lot to unravel without turning this into a personal journal. I'd be interested in hearing about your own experiences.

Man, i hope this isn't totally embarrassing in the morning. But damned if I'm not going to post it after all that writing.

[avinit]

Last summer I went to the doctor because I was feeling so shitty I couldn't do anything, I really thought/hoped I was going to die. She diagnosed me with servere depression and referred me to a psychiatrist. She also recommended hard physical exercise, which I took up 5 days a week, and gave me two weekly appointments (just talking about how I felt) until the psyciatrist had time for me. Those weekly talks with her, combined with the daily exercise really helped a lot, I was very surprised. The psyciatrist, who I saw once a month, told me that I had to take antidepressants (Citalopram) and also made me follow group therapy for about 3 months. The group therapy was shit imo but combined with depresseants, exercise and weekly talks and all it helped, and 10 months later I stopped taking the pills because I was feeling much better.

I wouldn't recommend antidepressants on its own but combined with therapy/talks and exercise it's definately a way out of depression...

[chim]

that's a really interesting breakdown of your experience, thanks for sharing! When you say your mind does a 'switch' can you go into a little more detail? So far it sounds extremely similar to what my own break from realyity twas like.

 

I'll try! [snip]

 

Wow, that was an amazing read. I've got a kind of derealisation switch that is very similar to yours, and your post reminds me so much about it, especially in how you're dealing with it and that no one knows about it, I don't mean to hijack your conversation but I want to put down my thoughts on this and see if you or anyone else can connect, or at least maybe be fascinated by how fucked up people can get. I've never talked with anybody about it, the last time I spoke to a psychiatrist I didn't get to this part because I had no idea how to describe it, and the psychiatrist was more keen on talking about my anxiety. I've sort of spent the last year putting it into words so I can not only make more sense of it myself but also try to talk to someone about it. I didn't want to mention it earlier but as we're crossing into bipolar and schizotypal territory, I'm figuring why not let the crazy cat out of the bag.

 

I'm not sure how it started because in retrospect it's a sensation that has been there almost all the time without me being aware of it, but my awareness of what was going on began with me leaving the town I lived in for a very long time, and being sad to leave my best mates because I felt like I'd never get to experience the feeling I had with them again. Everybody else was a stranger and I was going to a new and uncertain place. Little did I know that eventually you find new friends who become your best mates, and you get that feeling all over again. And somehow, this both reassured and bothered me, because it was the same god damn feeling.

 

Someone else mentioned how panic and depression makes you aware of things you do not want to be aware of, and that's partly what created my problem with it. I somehow felt like I reached an end to the possibility of sensory experience in that direction, the feeling of hanging out, having beers, whatever, with good mates, regardless of how pleasant it is, will be the same no matter who you're hanging out with, that it actually doesn't depend so much on the people you're with as your impression about the people you're with. And I was reading so much into it that I couldn't read any more into it, and I couldn't stop myself from doing so. I still barely can.

 

Soon enough, I began making connections in other situations, doing the dishes, having a walk in the park, browsing the internet. And since then, this has spiraled into what I can't quite describe other than private conclusions about the totality of my sensory experience in any given situation. It becomes a switch wherein one moment I'm quite caught up with what I'm doing, the next I'm hyper-analytical, feeling vertigo over the reality of my experience, and it triggers itself out of the most mundane things simply because of the ridiculousness of the mundane. How can anything we ever do be mundane?

 

The strongest triggers come out of these mundane things like, whoa, why the fuck do we have basements, construction sites, seemingly ordered, straight lines and spaces out of dirt, rock and wood? I'll be at the shopping mall and I'll see the roof is this quite shanty thing out of naked tubes and metal, and I'll go nuts. Doing the dishes will feel like travelling through a recursive loop of infinite curved roads. It's like a constant backdrop of energy, but the vertigo isn't so much the sensation itself but what is inferred by the sensation, namely that there's this thing, this basic fact of reality, going on all the time that you're unaware of, and it's so beyond your comprehension that it is both scary that you can't understand it, but fucking insane that you can even be aware that you don't understand it. It's like making art out of everything, a design with no designer. But the only language we're capable of speaking is through messages of designs, so what does this message, of the aspect of our reality that isn't made with us in mind, mean to us? Is that what forces us to create societies and occupy ourselves with illusions?

 

I have quite pronounced synaesthesia which makes feelings, or sensations of atmospheres, more pronounced and connected with other senses like tastes and colours, but I am absolutely certain this is an aspect of every persons life, it's part of the mechanism that makes us attracted to bright colors, stylish designs, and so forth. There's a certain language in the universe that living creatures understand without being taught. The synaesthesia only makes it easier to define and categorize.

 

The synchronicity that I feel is that what I'm watching is inexplicably related to everything else in existance in a sort of meltdown, collapse or infinite recursion. That says very little of what it's like, but it's like looking at the box from outside the box and being aware of every single detail and the statement it amounts to. It's like reading the mind of god in a broken-down old car, a streetlight or a basement. It's the call of the abyss saying, do you see how all these things fit together? Street lights can be quite romantic from a distance but look closely and the details of the metal and light are overwhelmingly crazy.. I could go on and on, but anyway, my ability to process stops, because I don't know what this means in my human language and limited human perception. It's something majorly indifferent towards me as a person but not as a part of existance. I can be adventurous and the feeling will be quite invigorating, as a kind of gotcha, or that I'm too occupied with being fascinated by how novel it is to sense something like this to try and make sense of it, or I'll be fully panicking and the feeling will destroy me and my sense of self, mostly because of how palpable, unavoidable and encompassing it is in the way it irrevocably distances me from what I thought I was. Being aware of it in a way that, if there was any mercy in this world, ought to be beyond my capacity, and especially beyond my emotional spectrum.

 

And like what you're describing, the vertigo is produced is by my recognition that it isn't a thought-process but a nearly primal awareness and that the source is external, not internal. The only times I have truly thought of suicide have been for the purpose to escape that awareness.

 

So there's a sense of chaos. It's quite amazing, in a way, that we are so quick to infer order in our lives simply because we're attracted to order. But I think of a quote by Einstein:

 

When the expected course of everyday life is interrupted, we are like shipwrecked people on a miserable plank in the open sea, having forgotten where they came from and not knowing whither they are drifting.

 

Is the real problem with depression and other mental conditions that the veil is lifted and this constant drifting is revealed, and it becomes difficult to put the blanket back on? Is it a natural reaction to nature's "true" nature? My questioning begins, is this madness or is this the unavoidable conclusion, that if you look far enough, this is what you're going to see, in your own way?

 

But paradoxically, there is a sense of order, of math. Some of the strongest triggers of my switch are visualized mathematical equations like fractals or the ulam spiral. I've hated math all my life and now I've developed an astounding interest and love with math because it feels like I am communicating directly with that abyss. And the sense of accomplishment when learning new things is quite distracting.

 

Regardless, the strangest thing about any conclusion you make is that it tells you more about yourself than what you're concluding.

 

Regarding some of the other posts in this thread, I absolutely do not recommend drugs because they don't work for me. There's nothing wrong with drugs per se, but when you're depressed you're not entirely rational in the classical sense, and I think the answer is to reinvolve yourself with purpose and a sense of strength in dealin with your problems - Just because it's an illusion doesn't mean the illusion doesn't work on you - which is something that drugs easily counteract.

 

So I try to do zen meditation so I don't have to drink myself into a stupor in order to stop feeling crazy. And I do everything to involve myself in the illusion, I get up in the morning, I do really mundane and boring stuff, as long as it keeps me active and occupied. Games and other distractions are great, as long as they require an active involvement with as little requirements of analytical skills as possible... No movies. I study math. And I try to relax with stuff like the computer only when I feel I can control it.

 

Part of me thinks this is just a part of life and everyone deals with it in their own private language, but it's something that's exceedingly difficult to communicate between human to human. Just that some people have a self-awareness, and aren't distracted enough, that it becomes quite intense and obvious... or that they're stupid and reckless enough to bring themselves into such precarious mental alleys.

[essines]

anybody here ever prescribed Lithium?

 

I was on it briefly (maybe a couple months), but I stopped because it left me emotionally numbed and lethargic. So apparently it's quite effective in treating mania, but after feeling so many emotional highs it's kind of hard to accept a life where you just feel dull and indifferent all the time.

[Zephyr_Nova]

that's a really interesting breakdown of your experience, thanks for sharing! When you say your mind does a 'switch' can you go into a little more detail? So far it sounds extremely similar to what my own break from realyity twas like.

 

I'll try! [snip]

 

*a ton of incredibly insightful and relatable things...

 

Well, I'm very happy that my post prompted you to write all that down because you've described a lot of my own neuroses far more cogently and thoroughly than I ever could. It was really quite beautiful to read, so thank you. Wow, yeah... I will definitely be coming back to reread a lot of what you wrote and hopefully have something more to contribute myself when I'm less tired. I figured I ought to reply now just to let you know that your words have left an impression on me. It definitely connected!

[oyster]

I've been feeling better since I last posted in this thread.

[Hoodie]

idk if i've already posted about this, but one of my friends is dealing with depression and it's really killing me because i literally cannot do anything to help. i mean, normally, if he is sad or whatever, i'd talk it out with him and everything (well, mostly everything) would be fine after that. but it doesn't work like that anymore, does it?

 

it's frustrating and it's tearing me apart to see someone i care about having to deal with these horrible feelings. it can turn a bright, wonderful person into a feeble ball of despair. i want so badly to help, but i don't know how. unless i learn how to secrete anti-depressants from my sweat glands, i am entirely useless and cannot help him cope with this mental illness.

 

shit sucks.

[Guest abusivegeorge]

Is this your blond haired best mate hoodie? (don't want to mention names). If so I am sorry to hear this, actually I'm sorry to hear that full stop as I'm aware that anyone you would be friends with is a pretty decent person. Call him everyday, tell him you love him and offer to do anything for him if you can. All you can do is offer your love and care, people are powerless over each other and there is only so much we can do. You're already doing that, so feel safe in the knowledge that this is the case and although he's going through a bad time, be sure to keep yourself in a safe emotional space.

 

Big love friend x

[chim]

idk if i've already posted about this, but one of my friends is dealing with depression and it's really killing me because i literally cannot do anything to help. i mean, normally, if he is sad or whatever, i'd talk it out with him and everything (well, mostly everything) would be fine after that. but it doesn't work like that anymore, does it?

 

it's frustrating and it's tearing me apart to see someone i care about having to deal with these horrible feelings. it can turn a bright, wonderful person into a feeble ball of despair. i want so badly to help, but i don't know how. unless i learn how to secrete anti-depressants from my sweat glands, i am entirely useless and cannot help him cope with this mental illness.

 

shit sucks.

 

Sadly, most of the time, no. Some people, some of my friends and my girlfriend for instance, absolutely have to talk their blues away before it eats them alive, but when I'm really down I can't talk to anyone. It's like you become allergic to the noise of the world and have to shut off as much as possible. Unfortunately, talking, and most other people, even people you like, become part of that noise. This is hardest part of depression to connect with, it sounds unflattering and dishonest for a friend to hear that. But in that situation there is no discerning and even ones self becomes part of the noisy world one cannot stand. The truth is there's usually not much to talk about, it's just a black hole inside with no answers.

 

I don't know which of the above camps your friend really is in. But my advice would be to not try to talk him out of it unless he asks you to, maybe be someone who listens, and most importantly accept that it's there. Whatever you do, refuse to buy into the idea of it as a dysfunction, that only aggravates things. Enough of those thoughts going on inside the head already. Hard to explain but it projects the wrong kind of responsibility on the person, i.e that they are having a problem, when they are experiencing that the problem is having them. It's a situation and a reality, not just something inside their head. It's not out of their control, but it feels that way because it's so valid and real when you're in the middle of it, part of why people seclude themselves is because of the dissonance between what they are feeling and what everybody else is feeling, doing and telling them. So a way to help is to approach that reality from their point of view, to crawl into that depression with them and not just be a bystander. But that can be a tricky and scary thing, even for the best of friends. Some also just don't want to be reached, let alone seen.

[murve33]

Yea, just hang out with them, but don't bring up depression. When I was depressed/suicidal in high school I hung out with another depressed/cough syrup abusing friend and just walked around and ate zebra cakes. It made life not suck.

[luke viia]

Some people, some of my friends and my girlfriend for instance, absolutely have to talk their blues away before it eats them alive, but when I'm really down I can't talk to anyone. It's like you become allergic to the noise of the world and have to shut off as much as possible. Unfortunately, talking, and most other people, even people you like, become part of that noise. This is hardest part of depression to connect with, it sounds unflattering and dishonest for a friend to hear that. But in that situation there is no discerning and even ones self becomes part of the noisy world one cannot stand. The truth is there's usually not much to talk about, it's just a black hole inside with no answers.

 

really well said, chim.