I'm a venlafaxine addict and I don't care.

[baratron]

There was an article in the Evening Standard on Tuesday about antidepressants. Written by a professor of medical biology who also happens to have depression, it summed up my feelings entirely. He wrote: When one is seriously depressed - I do not mean feeling very low or sad - one enters a state that is indescribable. I entered a world that bore no relation to anything I know. *

About antidepressants, he said: There is almost a conspiracy to blame such drugs for causing terrible mental damage and to discourage their use. In fact, they are usually life-saving. Even psychiatrists who are depressed take them.

I'm not sure that antidepressants are for everyone. It really depends what the problem is. Even people with diagnosed clinical depression, who have brain chemical imbalances, may still benefit more from some kind of therapy. But I know in my case they have been life-savers.

At present, I am doing very well and am often asked if the Seroxat is working. I cannot tell, but I do not intend to try to find out by stopping taking it... I will continue to take Seroxat, probably until I die. I cannot face another attack of depression.

I feel that way with Efexor. 225mg of it keeps me stable. I'm wondering if this latest bout of depression was caused by me cutting down to 150mg. It was only a couple of months after I reduced the dosage that I got really ill again. Is this saying "Three Efexor good, two Efexor bad"? Irritatingly, Medscape recently reported that two-thirds of patients with a history of major depression that responds to treatment remain in remission when treated with venlafaxine (Effexor/Efexor) for up to 12 months, but didn't say what dosage they had people on, which is what I really want to know.

* He then went on to say I now maintain that if you can describe your depression, you have not had it. A couple of people objected to this part of the quote, saying that they definitely have or have had depression and that they are able to describe it. I believe that we're talking about different meanings of the word "describe" (see the comments for details), but I take their point that some people who do genuinely have depression might read that and decide not to seek help, and that this would be a bad thing. So I've taken it out of the main body of my article.

Comments

I know whet he means...

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

I now maintain that if you can describe your depression, you have not had it.

When I've had an episode of breaking stuff, people tend to ask me what was going through my mind. The answer was that nothing was, really. I wasn't doing thinking, I was doing flinging things, and although there's a thread of what passes for thought in there, it's almost impossible to descrbe. For me it's more like what you call muscle memory than like thinking. My brain knows that this cycle of hurt is what it's doing right now, and the route is so deeply engraved that it pretty much just happens :-(

Of course what I get is more of a depression/anxiety complex, which may be different to what he and you are talking about, but the lack of description power still bugs me hugely. Mind you, that's why I liked the cognitive therapy I was doing. It was about using thought to avoid the incidents, but didn't go down the dead end of description and post mortem analysis...

[ailbhe]

I can describe my worst depression quite easily. I wasn't there. I retreated completely from my mind and my body. Ailbhe was all gone away. I don't think I like him sayiing that if you can describe it, you haven't had it... though the stages leading up to that are quite hard to describe, yes.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I don't think invalidating people with milder depression or unusually good descriptive skills is a good way to get respect for depression. I understand that what you, and probably he, are saying is that you can't describe it, but it's offensive to me that someone says it that way. It's hard enough for depressed people to bring themselves to get treated, and enough people are telling them that there's nothing really wrong.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was speaking more generally. But I did not mean to make people with milder depression feel invalidated. I honestly don't believe it is possible to describe depression. My main reason for thinking this is that it's not possible to describe any other emotion, so why should depression be any different?

I think emotions are so fundamental that it isn't possible to describe them. If an alien visitor came and said "What does it mean for you to feel happy?", I don't think anyone would be able to give much of an answer for that either. You can use analogies - similes and metaphors to break it down, but the closest you get is hinting at what it's like. A description such as "Remember the worst thing that ever happened to you. Now take that and multiply it by 100. That's depression" is using analogy to hint at what the feeling is like, but it's not concrete - after reading that, you have a vague idea of what it's like, maybe an echo of the true emotion.

Also, the medical condition depression is not just one emotion - it's not just chronic sadness. There's so many parts to it: sadness, tearfulness, anxiety, anger, self-loathing, self-hatred, denial, apathy, exhaustion... so many parts, each of which are difficult to describe without resorting to analogy as above. And then, somehow, all these parts which are each terrible by themselves combine into a monster.

It's possible to say what depression is not. ailbhe did so above - "I was not there". It's possible to describe the physical toll that emotions take on your body - butterflies in your stomach, a lump in your throat - but you can't describe how you actually feel without resorting to analogy - "When I was depressed I felt as though I had died inside". I have a description of "trying to think through treacle" which works quite well for one aspect of my depression, but it doesn't describe the utter frustration and hopelessness I felt at having my brain seize up and intelligence leak out.

I am sorry that you felt offended. I am even more sorry if my description would stop people seeking help. I expected anyone who had had depression to just nod knowingly, or maybe jump up and down shouting "yes" and then burst into tears, which was my reaction on reading the original article. I think that when you speak of being able to describe depression, you mean that you can use things like analogies. I hope what I mean is now more clear. Do let me know what you think now that I've gone into more detail.

love,
helen-louise.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I do know what you meant. I didn't mean to say that I was angry with you, but I do still find the quotation offensive. It's the part about "you have not had it" that's the problem, because people need to know that they might have it. I think it sends entirely the wrong message. Saying that it is impossible to convey the full enormity [word used advisedly] of depression to someone who hasn't experienced it is an entirely different thing, to my mind.

Analogies are descriptive language. Common experience makes it possible for humans to describe emotions to each other fairly accurately, though I think some precision would be lost with an alien species.

Depression makes me not want to see people ever again. I start thinking there's no reason that I should exist. It makes me angry for no reason. I want to hurt myself. I want to hurt others. I stop liking to read, to touch people, to care for the cats or the plants. My head aches. My senses are filtered, as though the data has to come a long way for me to feel it. I cry about everything that's happened in the last fifteen years. I can't be bothered to get out of bed. I stop eating entirely or do nothing but eat. And all this is all right because I don't deserve anything better.

How is that not a description? Those who haven't felt as bad aren't going to have the gut feeling of having known the beast that's pinning me to the ground with its fat, musty ass on my head, but they can imagine. I can imagine what your thinking-through-treacle feeling is like because my migraines are often like thinking through cotton batting; it's not the same, and I don't fully understand it, but your description has been successful wthin the limits of the success of all communication. Saying I haven't any problems because I haven't had that one is incorrect.

"What an interesting question, Ms. Alien Ambassador. When I feel happy, it's a good feeling, a pleasure. I take deeper breaths and feel more present in my body. I want to do nice things for other people. I feel childlike and playful. Creativity wells up in me. Beautiful things I see make me more happy, and ugly things bother me less. I often smile, like this. Thank you for asking -- thinking about what it's like to be happy and remembering it makes me happy again."
So maybe there are things in there that aliens don't value, or don't have analogues to. There are different facets, so chances are they can grab onto one and get some idea, and I can always elaborate. It's not impossible to get one's point across.

I understand that you're saying that depression is not just one emotion, and I think it's a valid point, but I maintain that it is possible to describe it with some accuracy. You can't make people feel it, not that you'd want to, but you can't make people feel anything just the same way you do. And I think the hyperbole in that quotation is misplaced because it could make people feel worse. Milder depression can also be destructive to quality of life, and denigrating people who are less afflicted than himself does not make me think well of that professor.

[wandra.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying this.

I have been told I was suffering from depression by a psychiatrist when I was in a period of feeling really positive and good about myself and good about life. I have also been told by different medical people when I've been totally at the end of my tether, that I wasn't depressed at all, because if I was I would feel dreadful every day without fail (instead of for up to several weeks every month) and also that I wasn't depressed because I was feeling far too bad, and if I was really depressed I wouldn't be feeling anything.

Lots of us labour under the delusion that everyone else's problems are much worse than our own & find it hard to seek help. I've seen that quotation before & it got up my nose too. I'm sure there are people who get more depressed than I do. I'm equally sure that it takes different forms for different people, and that trying to define "One True Depression" doesn't really help anyone.

H-L: I know that's not what you were trying to say, and I'm glad you found something that made sense to you. {{{{{hugs}}}} if you'd like them.