Wellbutrin (bupropion) is one that’s been around for quite a while. There are several others. However, get thee to your psychiatrist and have him/her work with you on the medication issue, because everybody reacts differently.
torie, I don’t have a whole lot to add that hasn’t already been said (and said better) by others, so I’ll just offer my support. I, too, suffer from chronic depression.
I second Markxxx’s advice about researching side effects on the Internet. The people who have good experiences with a particular medication are generally NOT the ones who post in forums about side effects.
This one
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38. We must learn the power of living with our helplessness. **
really resonates with me right now - I SO don’t want to visit my flaws on my children, yet constantly trying to police myself is exhausting and ultimately self-defeating. It just puts me in a state of doubt and anxiety. I was just thinking that I need to accept that I really can’t protect them from my imperfect self - and they’ll survive me.
Since I am in the midst of a dark period in my life all I can really do is echo that meds have, literally, saved my life. They don’t make everything fabulous, but they keep me off the emotional roller coaster.
Feel free to pm or email me anytime, I’ll be in the basement digging holes.
I second this. The medication gets me to a place where I can actually use the tools I’ve learned in CBT sessions. Without the meds, I look at my exercises and decide they’re retarded and will never help me. I keep trying to get off the meds but I can’t seem to go more than a few months without slipping back into the dark places. I’ve come to the conclusion that my problem is likely chemical and I’ll need these pills for a very long time. But (and this is big) the pills don’t do enough on their own. Getting past the depression and breaking down the bad patterns of thinking is hard work. But it can be done.
Good luck, and please come back to talk to us about it.
Go for the medication. I’ve been on prescription since I was ten or so, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that Zoloft saved my sanity. I haven’t noticed any real side effects (although it’s hard to say what’s a side effect, given that I’ve been taking it for a stright decade). You’ll be amazed at how much difference even a partial cure makes.
I have to nitpick here. You don’t know whether the she will need meds for the rest of her life or not. Counseling may (or may not) be helpful, along with all of the other fine suggestions. But it’s entirely possible that there may be a chemical imbalance that will need correction through medication. I know I tried EVERYTHING that was previously mentioned. Nothing helped me until I was on Paxil for a few weeks. Nothing. And I tried them all with the serious belief that each one would be the answer. Please note I’m not saying my answer is everyone’s answer, but nobody’s answer is everyone’s answer.
All these responses are thoughtful and rational, which is exactly what I need right now. Thank you.
Olives, I’m glad you responded. Your response to the life you’ve lived is inspiring to me. CBT is something I’ll ask my doctor about (maybe he can give me a referral.) and I’ve put those books on my wishlist on Amazon, since I always end up with Visa Giftcards for Christmas. I’m going to do a workbook in absence of anything else, since you said those are effective.
Cat Whisperer, you aren’t out to lunch at all. I don’t have a car, so I really don’t get to indulge interests unless other people are willing to accompany me. So I sit in the house all day long (Someone mentioned triggers. That’s a huge one.) unless I’m in school or I end up doing what other people like. I don’t know anyone around here that doesn’t find museums, plays, operas, comic books, gaming and history tedious. That was fine when I could carry myself to the things that inspired me and made me happy, but now it’s tiresome. I do feel like I’m constantly fitting myself in the wrong peg as a result. Cosmetology is great and I love it, but I hate the people I go to school with. This can be a very incestuous, catty, mean industry. I’ve been trying to work on my self-esteem to be able to do what I love and deal, but it’s hard to get picked on for being different all the time. I’m 27 years old, there’s no reason I should feel like I went back to high school.
Fessie, the hormonal angle is interesting. The depression seems to have started at about the same time as my migraines, interestingly enough. Another question for my doctor.
I’m feeling a little better today. I got out finally last night and took my sons to the holiday lights and to see Santa, got into the Christmas spirit a little. Plus, this thread is enabling me to step back from the blackness and think about it logically, which from my reading on CBT, is sort of the point, right? Similar approach anyway? I definitely need more logic in my life when I’m in these slumps, but it’s hard to think that way.
For me, I can use the CBT tools unmedicated. And they seem to keep things from getting WORSE, but they don’t help - because I CANNOT stop the thoughts. I’m not rational. I know I’m not rational, but that doesn’t keep me from thinking.
Medicated, I don’t need them. When I use them, my results don’t show my thinking is screwed up and so they are pretty useless.
I didn’t realize you were so young! Yeah, being in your 20’s is rough. I remember age 27 as especially lousy for some reason.
The nice thing about the cosmetology angle is, over time you’ll develop a following among clients with whom you share those interests. 'Cause everybody gets their hair cut! It won’t happen overnight, and certainly not with every customer, but I’ll bet anything you’ll attract people like yourself. It just tends to happen - I do portraits at art fairs, and I love my customers, I pull in the neatest people & we have a great time chatting. Unless ~~~ I happen to be having a crappy day. If I’m in a foul mood (which is rare, but it has happened) strangers read it instantly and the cool ones steer clear.
I know how you feel. I get the same way, and as much as I love my daughter, it’s just too much to deal with her sometimes because I feel so irritable and don’t want to interact with anyone. But then it’s just a cycle because the more I keep to myself, the worse I feel.
I do take medication though. I take Wellbutrin, which is a different type of drug than other antidepressants (most of the others are in the same class, I believe). The other ones (I’ve tried several) killed my libido and they can make you gain weight, and those were the two side effects that concerned me the most. Wellbutrin doesn’t do either one of those things and I haven’ t had many side effects with it at all, except I had insomnia at first, but that went away within a couple/few weeks. So I would recommend you considering Wellbutrin.
Also, I recently started exercising daily. I had always heard that that can help with depression, but I guess I didn’t really believe that it would for me. Well, I’ve been very surprised how much it has helped me get out of my rut. And I just exercise at home, so it’s not even getting out of the house and being around people at a gym or anything.
Can be, not always. I was running about three miles three times a week before I went on medication this last time around.
I say this because a lot of these ‘cures’ come across to those struggling as “blame the victim” - if you’d only eat right and exercise and do these CBT exercises - you wouldn’t NEED medication.
I ate right, was running nine miles a week, got enough sleep - but not too much sleep, avoided alcohol, did my CBT exercises - and was still looking at the edge of a cliff feeling like taking a step off the edge would be a relief.
Oftentimes, CBT can help to overcome depression without the need for drugs, as it did for me. In some cases, CBT combined with meds is the better path for an individual. With or without meds, it gives you a toolset for coping with life in a rational way that is hugely helpful.
Whatever ends up working for you, I wish you all the best.
The problem is depression is a complex illness. There are dozens of biochemical anomalies that can cause depression. Problems with histamine, dopamine, adrenaline, testosterone, estrogen, thyroid, serotonin, various vitamins and minerals, medication side effects, etc. Thats on top of all the cognitive causes. There are easily dozens of different causes and factors.
It sucks. I saw a study once on men with treatment resistant depression who weren’t responding to SSRIs. The reason they weren’t is because their depression was due to low testosterone levels. When those were fixed, many got better.
I doubt any amount of talk therapy will fix a malfunctioning thyroid, as an example.
Hell, I KNOW there’s a chemical imbalance - she’d be feeling better if there wasn’t. What I’m trying to get across is that if all you do is see a doctor, you’ll probably just get a prescription for anti-depressants, see the doctor again in a month, he’ll ask how it’s working, he’ll adjust your meds or just give you another refill, and in my opinion, that’s just not good enough, when you also need to change habits of negative thinking and behaviour. The risk of taking medication alone without any longterm behavioural changes is that the medication probably will work - Torie will start feeling better, and will want to keep taking the medication and not doing any other work, because she doesn’t want to risk feeling bad again. I volunteer as a leader of an anxiety support group, and we see this all the time - people selling their recovery short by just staying on meds, and not working on their anxiety or depression any further.
“…the only thing more effective is regular exercise!”
-Pharm Rep, The Simpsons (explaining the benefits of ‘Focusyn’)
Excuse my ignorance on the subject, but how much of depression is caused by some sort of chemical imbalance where there is litterally something wrong with your brain and how much is caused by living a depressing life?
For example, just a couple of things the OP said, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that you might have legitimate reasons for being disappointed with your friends. Or maybe you find your family tedious because maybe you wanted to be something more or other than a housewife? And it’s pretty easy to see how these things might cause a great deal of inner termoil and guilt because you believe that feeling this way might make you a horrible person.
And actually, I hadn’t read this part yet:
Of course you feel depressed. You’re cooped inside all day. None of the people you associate with share your interests and most of them sound like jerks and ignorami. You are feeling disenchanted with your chosen profession. It seems to me that any of these things are reason enough to feel depressed.
I mean what is someone going to do? Give you a pill that makes your classmates less of a bunch of assholes or makes sitting around the house by yourself less boring (ok, they might actually have pills for that)?
It seems to me that a major cause of depression, assuming nothing is actually wrong with your brain, is being stuck in some particular life circumstance that is undesirable but comfortible enough to avoid risking change. Possibly because it is what is “expected” of you or is inherent to your nature. IMHO, most people try to “fix” their problems with drugs or bullshit talk in order to try to trick themselves into fitting their square peg of a self into their round hole of their life. It is much more difficult to make real change and find a life that is more fitting because it means giving up what is comfortible.
I’m confident you’d enjoy it!