The Anti-Antidepressant

If you pay attention to television ads, you know that the drug companies have been hard at work developing medications to ease depression. “Mākuhapē will help you get out of bed every day and get back to your normal, cheerful self. Side effects include headache, dizziness, stomach upset, loss of libido, numbness and tingling in your extremities, disrupted sleep, increased or decreased appetite, and heart palpitations. In rare cases, Mākuhapē may cause your head to become misshapen, liver failure, and death. Consult with your doctor to see if Mākuhapē is right for you.” I don’t know about you, but I’d have to be in pretty bad shape to consider taking any make-you-happy pills. I think the happiness would be short-lived before the side effects kicked in.

Don’t get me wrong—depression and its cousins are very real, and people truly suffer from feelings of despair, worthlessness, and hopelessness. I spent years battling depression. I never took anti-depressants because I have a deep-seated aversion to both doctors and medication. I believe both are extremely over-valued in our society, but that’s a topic for another post, something I might call “Doctors Aren’t Gods.” Instead of turning to pills, I decided I would figure out why darkness so often overtook me, why life lost all meaning periodically, why I was unable to get out of bed some days. It was a long journey.

I began journaling and reading, meditating, and studying nutrition and herbs. Years passed, and although my depression changed, and in some ways eased, it didn’t leave. Too much stress, too much worry, and I would fall down a black hole that felt like it had no escape. After a while, I didn’t want to escape. I wanted to stay in that abyss so I wouldn’t have to fight it any longer.

In reading spiritual and self-help books, I had discovered that our live experiences are all about perception. Our focus is up to us—we can dwell on the dark side, or we can choose to find the good in life. We have far more control over our thoughts and feelings than most of us believe (or exercise); most people take life by default. If we feel a certain way, we just assume we must deal with it. If our personality tilts toward depression, we think that’s simply how it is. The problem, of course, is that this life-by-default thinking is wrong.

Deeply depressed one day, I retreated to my bedroom. The darkest thoughts clouded my mind, and as I laid in my bed, mired in thoughts of sorrow and despair, I had a stunning moment of clarity. I knew that if I did not stop allowing myself to spiral into deep depression, I wasn’t going to make it. Suicide would win one day. Was I falling into that black hole, or was I grabbing a hold of the well rope and sliding down into the darkness? I realized that I was allowing myself to wallow in regret, pity, and sadness, that I was permitting these thoughts to hijack my emotions, that I was obsessively re-playing my worst thoughts over and over again. Maybe I couldn’t completely control my depression, but I could stop myself from sinking to this point. I could stop focusing entirely on the darkness. I decided enough was enough.

Until that point, I’d always felt like spiritual books were an indulgence, a bit of wishful thinking with a cover. I almost felt embarrassed to be seen reading one. They were so relentlessly… cheerful. Upbeat. Positive. Even the more philosophical books espoused inner calm and peacefulness. Many spiritual teachers say that we don’t actually learn new things in the realm of spirit; we just have to remember what we already know. Every book I read and every audio recording I listened to reminded me that I didn’t have to be depressed. No internal coding mandated that I had to be miserable and unhappy; no exterior circumstances required my sadness. I decided to dedicate time every day to reading spiritual/self-help books. No doctor’s visit was required, no prescription was necessary, and I suffered no side effects. At first, I was concerned about the cost of my make-you-happy books, but then I realized that buying books was much less expensive than doctors and antidepressants. So far, my method works.

Did I “cure” my depression, or did I simply stop feeding it?
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Picture courtesy of Patrice Dufour at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1136463