why

Most likely because you’re depressed. That means that the things that would normally make you happy (e.g., having the love of a lot of people) don’t because (and here’s the important part)…THERE’S SOMETHING PHYSICALLY WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN THAT PREVENTS YOU FROM FEELING GOOD.

That is to say, it isn’t because someone broke up with you, and it isn’t because you did this or that. It isn’t because of ANY external factor. It’s literally all inside your head (not that that makes it any less unbearable and utterly fucked up).

If you woke up on morning and your left arm wouldn’t move, would you:
a) take it as evidence that you’ve a horrible person,
b) sit there and do nothing except feel miserable, or
c) go find a doctor who specialized in healing broken limbs?

It’s no differerent with you brain. If something has gone boink in your frontal lobe, that tells you only one thing: your frontal lobe needs a tune up!

Unfortunately, medicine of the brain just isn’t nearly as mature a science as medicine of broken limbs, and doctors specializing in frontal lobe tune ups are a mixed bag to say the least. Worse still, a doctor of this type can prescribe something that fixes up person A like you wouldn’t believe but which also fucks up person B. One of my best friends got her life back with the drug Geodon, but when I took it, it gave me akisthesia (the inability to sit still…you literally HAVE to get up and walk around, and if you don’t think that that sucked like nothing has ever sucked before, you obviously can’t picture it right).

So, while I’m not going to say that shrinks and their pills have no place in your treatment, I’d say that you start with the natural shit and go from there. And, as a dyed in the wool, nuke the Russians till they glow in the dark, today Iraq, tomorrow Iran neocon, I can honestly say that I’ve never had much interest in hippy shit things like green leafy vegetables…until I had to. Today I’m making my peace with my inner hippy, eating salads with nuts, seeds, mushrooms (NO! Not the fun kind!), spinach, beans, etc. And I’m (trying to) get at least some exercise (walking two miles three times a week), and I’m taking fish oil to try to push my consumption of omega 3 fatty acides closer to being equal to my omega 6 fatty acids. Yeah, the inner hippy is kind of taking over.

I’ll try to keep everyone here posted on how this goes. I’ve already tried therapy and about 1/2 of the pills on God’s green earth, so I figure I should just cut out the middle man and go straight to God’s green Earth itself for what I need.

This has been a long trip for me…almost ten years long. If I had it to do over again, I’d start by getting the book The Depression Cure. It’s going to tell you a lot of what I just did, but in more detail, plus other important things like learning not to dwell on things and to make time for being involved with other people. If that doesn’t work, the doctors and their pills will still be there for later.

Dallas