When I did 2 hits of acid, I had the exact opposite experience of seeing God. The fact that such a tiny amount of a mere chemical could effect my "soul" so profoundly was proof positive that the soul is completely material.
I already believed this intellectually, but this experience solidified this knowledge into my very being. So personally, I would recommended experimenting with a psychedelic or two for those who wish to study Philosophy.
In my experience, LSD dosing is exponential, so I can't fathom what taking a dose thousands of times a typically heavy dose would do to you. People I know who occasionally did like 10 hit doses, never fully returned to reality, if you ask me. I might have an inkling of what it would be like from a few experiences with nitrous, but this lasts for a couple of minutes, not for hours and hours, which would end up making a huge qualitative difference.
"When I did 2 hits of acid, I had the exact opposite experience of seeing God. The fact that such a tiny amount of a mere chemical could effect my "soul" so profoundly was proof positive that the soul is completely material."
Your so-called "soul" may in fact be "completely material", but I don't think what you describe above proves it.
There was a famous mystic who once said something like, "when you put a lit match to cotton, it is not the fire that burns the cotton, but God."
Relating it back to your account, how can you know if it was in fact the chemical that changed your consciousness and not the grace of God (or gods, or the devil, some alient, or the program/programmer running your virtual reality, etc).
There could be some cause that caused you to both take the chemical and to have the experience. Or they could be caused by two independent things, with the experiences just happening to succeed one another in time (see Hume's critique of causality).
Finally, I'm not a physicist, but from what I've read, even physicists now have a lot of trouble defining "matter" as such. I don't think they even use the term much at all anymore. And, whatever reality happens to be, it might be infinitely divisible, and ultimately not completely understandable or knowable as far as science is concerned. At the very least, science now does not have a full understanding of it, and to say that science will one day have such a full understanding is merely an expression of faith.
> Finally, I'm not a physicist, but from what I've read, even physicists now have a lot of trouble defining "matter" as such.
As someone with physics training I do not see physicists having this trouble.
> I don't think they even use the term much at all anymore.
Most the physicists I know use it often.
Please be a little more careful when spreading information you are not sure about. The best way in my opinion is to be specific, give concrete examples, and/or give specific resources that you drew your conclusion from; preferably resources with concise explanations, more people will look into them that way and get back to you with their analysis of the source, it's like getting a free tutor.
You say this and you don't give him a serious response.
>As someone with physics training I do not see physicists having this trouble
What is definitively known about mass besides E = mc^2 and the limited information we now about the Higgs Boson?
>Most the physicists I know use it often
I'm glad the physicists you know use it often. Why is it used so often? If it was known what matter and mass was there would be no need to discuss it.
We know quite a lot about matter, actually. We can describe huge swaths of its properties: we can categorize it into different particles, we know how it acts in various fields, we can tear it apart and build it back up. All in all, quite a lot of knowledge.
Also, the Higgs boson is more interesting for its evidence in spontaneous electroweak symmetry breaking than for its ramifications on matter. Despite what popular science tells you, it actually doesn't give most of what you think of as "matter" its mass, that's quantum chromodynamic interactions.
> Your so-called "soul" may in fact be "completely material", but I don't think what you describe above proves it.
Re Hume, not to mention Leibnitz, I didn't mean proof to a logical certainty. I meant proof beyond all reasonable doubt. But if you want to believe that God hides super-soul-cleanser inside simple chemicals, then more power to ya!
To tell you the truth, I actually believe in epiphenomenalism, which is a kind of materialist dualism, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.
I have many bad things to say about many antidepressant. E.g., they all have very annoying side effects, at least for me, and some of the side-effects (e.g., vivid dreams) require benzos to counter. And then benzo addiction is really no fun at all.
Other side effects I experienced were clearly under-reported by the pharmaceutical companies. E.g., negative sexual side effects for Prozac that my doctor wouldn't even believe were real and not psychosomatic, until it later turned out that 25%-50% of all patients suffered these side effects, and the pharmaceutical company had neglected to inform anyone.
On other other hand, Remeron surely saved my life. I have no doubt about this. I had been in the most miserable state you could ever possibly imagine and then some, and had been this way for months, and then within a day or two of starting Remeron, I was utterly fine. (Though ironically, it may have been another antidepressant that put me in this terrible state to begin with, as I had to go off it cold turkey due to it causing a different dangerous side effect.)
As for diagnosing depression, it may certainly be the case that many cases are difficult to diagnose correctly. And there may be cases where there is no fact of the matter as to whether the particular symptoms count as depression. On the other hand, there are certainly cases where there is no question at all as to whether it's depression. I have been there quite a few times, and it's been as cut and dried as anything can be in this world.
> On the other hand, there are certainly cases where there is no question at all as to whether it's depression.
Yes, absolutely, but saying "it was depression" is not the same as saying "depression is a disease with a proximate cause that can be identified, diagnosed and treated."
The present debate surrounding depression is global in scope. No one knows whether depression is a disease in the way that a cold is a disease, or is an extreme case of normal emotion, not amenable to any kind of diagnosis or treatment.
None of this is meant to argue that depression isn't a disease in the way that a cold is a disease -- only to say there's no reliable science behind the claims.
But we do know this -- in controlled scientific studies, antidepression drugs don't actually work for the majority of patients:
Title: "Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration"
Quote: "Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance." [Emphasis added]
Comment: Drug companies have been only publishing studies that supported their drugs, and discarding those that didn't. This study compares the outcomes for all the studies, published and unpublished, and the result is that antidepression drugs do not work for the majority of patients.
>the result is that antidepression drugs do not work for the majority of patients.
I suspect that this is because most patients don't have the patience or wherewithal to try enough different kinds, or a doctor who is willing to combine them with benzos. The patient's patience is especially relevant since when you are depressed, the last thing in the world that you need is to add extra suffering from side-effects to your list of woes. Or at least that has been my personal experience. After a few bad experiences, I was very reluctant to try additional antidepressants, and after having become dependent on Ativan once, I vowed to never allow that to happen again either.
Ultimately though, I tried just about every modern antidepressant before finding one that worked, and I know people who had to go to tricyclics, which has caused them to become fat, but happy. Each of the antidepressants I tried affected me differently. But at this point, I am very relieved to know that if I become depressed again, there is a drug that I know for sure works for me. Knowing that is a huge weight off of my shoulders. Though having to look forward to weaning off of benzos again puts some of that weight back.
More recently I tried ketamine when I was worried that I was going to become depressed due to an unfortunate life circumstance. I'm here to say that it apparently worked as well as hyped since I never became at all depressed during a situation that would typically have sent me into a downward spiral. And with no ill side effects too boot. Too bad it's not legal....
Of course, trying many different antidepressants is not without its risks, as I alluded to previously.
> I suspect that this is because most patients don't have the patience or wherewithal to try enough different kinds, or a doctor who is willing to combine them with benzos.
No, no, we're talking about controlled studies overseen by scientists, not psychologists or psychiatrists in ordinary clinical practice. Typically, such a study has an experimental and control group. The experimental group gets the drug under test and the control group gets a placebo. To minimize the possibility of bias, during the study neither the experimenters nor the subjects know which subjects are controls.
After the study, the histories of the subjects are compared, and the groups to which they belong are finally revealed. Every precaution is taken to limit bias and emotional attachments to any outcome.
As it turns out, when such studies are conducted and compared to other similarly disciplined studies, the efficacy of antidepressants evaporates. In plain English, they do not work.
That's the scientific finding. It's not an opinion, like much of psychology, it is a scientific result.
> But at this point, I am very relieved to know that if I become depressed again, there is a drug that I know for sure works for me.
Yes -- and so does astrology, but only if you sincerely believe it does.
The fact that Remeron worked for me has absolutely nothing to do with belief or placebo affect. In fact, I was absolutely certain at the time that Remeron would not work, due to my previous bad experiences with antidepressants and my terribly negative state of mind. Also, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that the placebo affect can have such a drastic and lasting effect. I was not just a little blue; I was out of my mind @#%$ing batshit crazy. For months and months, and then a few days later, completely cured. A cure that has lasted for years.
As to your claim that "they do not work", the scientific evidence that they work may be questionable, but lack of scientific proof is not the same thing as scientific disproof. You have no proof that they do not work for many people, despite your claim, as the way the drugs are used in double-blind studies do not perfectly mirror their use in the actual world. E.g., combination with other drugs, such a benzos, and/or other antidpressants, and trials of a number of different drugs to find which one is best of that particular person's brain chemistry.
Furthermore, one doesn't need scientific evidence to know certain things. I don't need published double-blind scientific evidence to know that if I hit my toe with a hammer that it will hurt. I don't need scientific evidence to know that my wife loves me.
Another point of evidence: Paxil also cured my depression within a day or two, on a different occasion, but it also had many other effects on me that were highly undesirable. It removed all pleasurable sexual sensations. It made me hypomanic and not care about how I treated other people. I felt as if everyone else in the world was an asshole who didn't give a shit about me, and so I was free not to give a shit about them. I felt absolutely no affinity any more for the people that I loved. I only found them annoying. I.e., my normal personality was turned completely upside down.
I don't need scientific evidence to know that this is how Paxil effected me, any more than I need scientific evidence to tell me how alcohol or marijuana make me feel. These are not subtle things, and the effect of Paxil on me, and the affect of Remeron on me were anything but subtle. They were as psychoactive as any substance can be.
Now since my evidence is not scientific, I am not stating that you should be convinced. On the other hand, you have no grounds to assert that I was cured by the placebo effect. You don't know me and you don't have access to the personal experiential information I have. I, personally, have plenty of information to make an accurate and rational conclusion here. And I have.
> The fact that Remeron worked for me has absolutely nothing to do with belief or placebo affect.
With all respect, you cannot make this claim. The only way this claim could become scientific would be with a double-blind scientific study. Such a study would compare the drug with ... a placebo.
And, as I have pointed out, the studies that have been conducted do not support the claim that antidepressants work for the majority of people -- indeed, studies demonstrate the opposite conclusion, that they do not work.
> On the other hand, you have no grounds to assert that I was cured by the placebo effect.
Yes, which means it's a good thing that I never said that anywhere. And why would I? The claim makes no sense -- no one is ever "cured" by the placebo effect.
> I don't need scientific evidence to know that this is how Paxil effected me ...
Wow. The drug companies must love clients like you.
> I, personally, have plenty of information to make an accurate and rational conclusion here.
You are ignoring the readily available scientific findings, so no, your conclusion is neither accurate nor rational.
This is an excellent capsule summary of modern psychological research -- no electron micrographs, no useful in vitro results, no objective evidence. No known causes for diagnosed conditions, and subjective diagnostic criteria. Instead, a nearly complete reliance on the self-reporting of clients, who insist that the drugs do or do not work, or the therapy works or doesn't work.
No matter how sincerely psychologists and psychiatrists want to help people, this charade will continue until real science begins to be done, and for that, we'll probably have to completely switch away from psychology to neuroscience. As it happens, Thomas R. Insel, the sitting director of the NIMH, agrees with this view:
Quote: "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient's illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely "mental," and psychological therapies followed suit. Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses."
> And, as I have pointed out, the studies that have been conducted do not support the claim that antidepressants work for the majority of people -- indeed, studies demonstrate the opposite conclusion, that they do not work.
Furthermore, you are misrepresenting the strength of the scientific data that supports your claims: (1) The meta-analysis did show clinical significance in severely depressed patients. (2) The meta-analysis only looked at SSRI's. Remeron is not an SSRI. And most of the people that I know who are satisfied with their antidepressants are not taking SSRI's. (3) This is a single study. Individual studies are often contradicted by further studies.
From my experience with side-effects, I would not recommend anti-depressants for anyone who was not suffering from a major depression anyway. The risk is not worth the reward for just being down in the dumps. For mild cases of depression, it's not even clear to me that accurate diagnosis is possible. How can doctors accurately differentiate between mild depression and just being sad due to unfortunate life circumstances? Until we can do brain scans or blood tests to identify depression, I don't see how they could. And without the ability to make accurate diagnoses for mild cases, it's not clear to me that the data on drug effectiveness for mild cases can mean much anyway.
With all respect, I most certainly can. I know myself well enough to know how I respond to drugs. I'm sorry if that is not the case for you. I also know that I don't suddenly pop from the depths of the worst despair imaginable to being completely normal in a day or two on a hope and a dream. If that were the case, many other things would have cured me. Such as the dozen or two medications I tried before Remeron, for instance.
> The only way this claim could become scientific would be with a double-blind scientific study. Such a study would compare the drug with ... a placebo
I specifically stated that my claim was not scientific. All knowledge does not come via science. As I already mentioned, I cannot prove scientifically that my wife loves me, and yet I know this to be true. You may have no good reason to believe me about that, but that has no bearing on what I know to be true.
> Yes, which means it's a good thing that I never said that anywhere. And why would I? The claim makes no sense -- no one is ever "cured" by the placebo effect.
The placebo affect is real, so it can certainly act as a cure for minor ailments of certain sorts. I have no desire to argue semantics with you. On the other hand, it was Remeron that cured me, and I'm as sure of that as I am that I am not conversing right now with an AI program, though I can't prove that scientifically, either.
As I also mentioned, you do have not have any particularly good reason to believe me, but for reasons I have stated, you also have no good reason not to believe me. If you were not an ideologue, you would remain agnostic.
> Wow. The drug companies must love clients like you.
Your assertion is that a drug company would love me because I am willing to testify to the fact that Paxil made me hypomanic and I would assert to anyone that it is a dangerous drug and I would advise them to stay away from it if my experience is at all representative? You have a strange notion of what drug companies might love.
I've been told by doctors that I had a phobia of antidepressants because I was so utterly resistant to trying anymore after my terrible experiences with them. You sound like them: The hypomania was all in my head. The sexual dysfunction from Prozac was all in my head! Welcome to the club of quack shrinks!
> You are ignoring the readily available scientific findings, so no, your conclusion is neither accurate nor rational.
I am ignoring nothing. If you actually read what I wrote, you would know that.
As to your claims that neuroscience research will likely be hugely beneficial to our understanding. Well, of course. That verges on tautology.
Speaking as someone who has been suicidal, I think that that article is a lot of hot air.
This is what it felt like to be suicidal: Imagine the worst heartbreak you have ever felt, and multiply this by ten. Imagine the worst anxiety you have ever suffered and multiply this by ten. Imagine that every second feels like a minute, in each of those minute-long-seconds, you feel like a lion is just about to jump out from around the corner and rip you apart slowly. Imagine that everything you used to enjoy is meaningless and nothing at all is fun or enjoyable. Imagine that both your parents just died in a horrible car crash right after disinheriting you because they felt you were a terrible disgrace. Imagine that you constantly obsess on what it was you did so wrong, and what you might have done differently. Imagine repeatedly reliving every word you can remember saying to them with a terrible and critical eye, and repeating to yourself every harsh word they ever said to you. Imagine that you can't think of anything else at all no matter how hard you try, and these obsessive thoughts just spin in your head over and over and over and over and over and over again with no relief. Imagine that all these feelings just go on and on and on and on and on and on, for hours, days, weeks, months, with no relief. Unrelenting torment and misery with no escape, no out, no one who can understand you, no one who can calm you, no one who can make anything the slightest bit better.
Imagine that the only reason that you didn't kill yourself in order to end this interminable torment is because you figured you'd fuck even that up and just end up a quadriplegic, and then be truly screwed, since you'd never be able to end your eternal misery then.
Speaking as someone who has been suicidal and very nearly succeeded had someone not pulled me down, this article pretty much nails it.
The strange part is, I can kind of get into my past self's head and replay all of my reasons, but from my current perspective they seem corrupted and perverse. I know that I was trying to escape from my own twisted feelings of guilt, but the whole episode seems almost surreal now; me yet not me.
Another interesting thing that I'd never considered before is that I have a very high pain tolerance and fearlessness. I've always suspected that my grandfather, whom I take after quite a bit in this respect, decided to stop taking his medication after my grandmother died.
> but from my current perspective they seem corrupted and perverse.
Thank you for sharing. I was wondering would it make a difference at all if someone else, (a friend, therapist, partner) would say how the current perspective is corrupted or warped. Would that make a difference? Would it help in that situation? If not, what does help, if anything to get out of that mode?
I've thought about this a lot, but I haven't found any sure-fire way to pierce through the depressed mentality.
In the depressed mentality, you are 100% sure of your convictions. That's why you know that life isn't worth living. Anyone telling you things counter to your ideas is either lying or deluded or just plain naive. SSRIs are nothing more than "happy pills" that cloud your judgment and turn you into a stranger to yourself; basically lies in pill form.
Depression in full flower is an air-tight system that allows nothing contrary in, roughly equivalent to being in a cult, so cracking through the armor is difficult, indeed! The only way I can think of that could work (other than the person figuring it out for themselves) is to (a) be known and respected by them, (b) have experience with severe depression yourself so that they know you've been there, and (c) keep gently pushing them forward after the initial bluntness. Just getting a depressed person to see a shrink would be a huge accomplishment. Getting them to stay on SSRIs is another huge accomplishment (I haven't helped anyone with the first, but I have kept a friend going with the second).
For me personally, I keep mental snapshots of my baseline emotional state so that I have something to compare against. It's a kind of early warning system for when I'm falling so I can catch myself. Just realizing that my current sadness is of a purely chemical cause helps me get out of it sooner (within hours rather than days or even weeks). There are, of course, times of honest, real sadness, like anyone else gets, but they have a different feel. I can't explain the difference, but I can recognize it.
> For me personally, I keep mental snapshots of my baseline emotional state so that I have something to compare against. It's a kind of early warning system for when I'm falling so I can catch myself.
I'm currently developing some software to assist in that, by tracking your mood, amount of sleep, and other factors. The idea is that when things start moving away from your "normal" state it can trigger some alerts - something like Pingdom for your loved ones.
It's not ready for public use yet, but if anyone would be interested in trying out an early version when it is ready feel free to drop me a message on the email address in my profile, and I'll let you know.
I never found comfort in "all this pain is an illusion" but Pearl Jam's "Present Tense" lyrics have something simplistic, true and healing about them that honestly make me wonder how they could have written it. Especially the part leading to "you're the only one who can't forgive yourself".
And Tool "Reflection", especially "And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt, Don't want to be down here feeding my narcissism, I must crucify the ego before it's far too late" which is of course a bit long to have it tattoo'ed but the idea, how narcissistic it actually is what you are doing... and how you must crucify this ego, this part of you, to find your true self and find peace.
Would that make a difference? Probably not, the depressed person isn't dumb they know they are depressed. Much like if you had hallucinations that the sky was red it wouldn't matter how scientifically certain you are the sky is blue you see red. Perhaps that is a good way to describe it to someone who hasn't felt it, having emotional hallucinations in which every thing brings about fear and loathing even things that should result in joy.
I've been in the position of being that someone else a few times, most recently last night, so please excuse any incoherence due to sleep deprivation.
My wife suffers from bipolar disorder, which is mostly characterised in her by periods of intense depression, which in her case can at times lead to making conclusions that externally make no sense at all. Things like "I'm going to kill myself because it will make life better for you. You can stop looking after me and go and find someone normal and have a happy life." She'll tell me these things completely seriously, as if its the only possible conclusion that could be come to given the available facts.
No amount of talking that over, and explaining how precisely the opposite would happen, will change her mind. The best I can do is to get her into hospital until the depression passes.
I imagine for straight depression, especially where it is more situational than chemical, and depending upon the person, it may be possible to look at things rationally and persuade them that there are other options. I would advise to be incredibly careful doing that though, since they may sit and agree with you just to reassure you and get you out of the way.
Thank you for sharing. I can't imagine having to go through that.
> I would advise to be incredibly careful doing that though, since they may sit and agree with you just to reassure you and get you out of the way.
That is an interesting perspective. I have seen that happen. They wouldn't want to upset me or make me feel like a burden or a failure for not successfully helping them, so I would gets agreements and assurances but I could tell there were not genuine.
Sometimes persuading them to do something else, sometime different, just being in a different place helps temporarily of course in that state people don't want to do anything or go anywhere, so that doesn't always work.
I think it would be more helpful to have the - relatively - insignificant problems remedied one-by-one, rather than just talking.
Being deeply depressed is like having a burden/cloud over your head, you can't think straight because all those issues are just sitting there in the background, blocking normal thoughts.
Once you come out of it, you don't really recognize the depressed individual that was running on auto pilot. That's my take on it anyway.
Let's assume you are a very avid programmer and love nothing more than coding and to you it is the most natural thing in the world, then let's assume someone comes along and tells you your view is just warped, corrupted and you have no idea what you are talking about. However clumsy that analogy is, how would you feel in that situation? Would your first, intuitive gut reaction be "You know, they might be right...I should have become a doctor or a lawyer and that's what I am going to do right now!"? Chances are you would feel affronted, offended and ultimately like the person does not understand you and has no idea what they are talking about. Completely regardless of whether they might be on to something and a different career choice might be "better", mind you. We only observe what your reaction would be to someone basically trampling on your view of the world.
From my point of view and self-observations, when you are severely depressed or suicidal, that is your view of the world and suffering from it, you have a hundred million reasons and scenarios played out in your head just why you are absolutely right to feel the way you do, why you deserve to be miserable and why you have no business being here anymore or why your only escape is to leave. The very fact that it has become so ingrained in you and you cannot just "flip a switch" and think and feel differently, that is the very thing that makes it depression and suicidal thoughts, that you CANNOT just magically escape because you are a world champion in convincing yourself why you are right to feel the way you do. Now along comes someone and tells you "You are just imagining that, people react very positive towards you, you are such a nice person! Your view is just warped, you are making it harder on yourself...". Now, how would that make you feel?
For me, it feels like my issues were not appreciated and the other person just does not understand the extent of my torment, they cannot relate, they don't understand anyway... see, nobody understands. At the same time, I know how egotistical and self-centered and warped that view is; I have a strange analytical way of looking at myself, it surprises even counselors. Yet, I could not change a single thing. Either I am watching, armchair analyzing myself like a lab rat or I am "in character" and suffering. Anyone telling me my view is "warped" usually ends up causing a huge quarrel because no matter how much I try to make them understand, of course they counter every point I throw at them to "fix me" and that soon leads to anger and feeling even worse because CLEARLY nobody understands me! Of course this is just my point of view, mind you.
What CAN you do or say? I think stop trying to convince them they are wrong; stop trying to "flip a switch", no matter how much you try with the very best intentions and your deepest love, you won't find a switch or the right combination of logic reasoning to just "snap the person out of it". I know this must be terrible to hear if you watch someone you love suffer like that, I am sorry. I can honestly not think of a better thing to do... don't push them in any direction or look for switches to flip, also don't belittle it like "you'll get better!" or "nah it can't be that bad!". I think just give them emotional support, hug, hold, let them cry, share honest(!) compassion... above anything, don't try to fix but be there and show them support in that way. Don't give them up, keep inviting them out or offering to come over even after they have said "no" or made up some excuse the last 5 times. Also, don't take some offensive words they say or tantrums they throw too serious. Generally try to not judge a depressed person too quickly, even if they are acting like major assholes... it's just more a passive-aggressive desperate cry for help, feel mercy for them, like for a wounded animal snarling.
Last and most importantly, speaking out of my own experience and I know this will not sound like a popular suggestion but I think it is vital: be selfish enough to not give too much of yourself! You can only get very emotionally invested and involved in a depressed person for so long before it can strongly affect you and seriously spin you out of control when their emotional abyss starts to sound all too logical and convincing and all of a sudden you find yourself staring down the same hole. Be wary of that, you have every right to, don't feel bad about protecting yourself - much like fire fighters won't blindly risk their own life. Never think that it is your role to "fix them"! Your role, if anything, is to just support however much you see fit and are able to safely give - it is a professional's role to provide them with ways of healing and "fixing" and they have their own ways of coping with it. I know for myself, when I see it in a person, I intentionally wall-off and protect myself because I know, I am in no safe position to take on more emotional baggage. It took me a LONG time to realize this and do this to protect myself. I know this sounds incredibly selfish but I know why I am doing this and I think everyone involved with a suicidal person should think about this too. Get them professional help.
Small things that seem to do wonders for me: taking a walk, go have a few beers with good friends and cleaning up my place. You can help with that and I think it does wonders, considering how little it is that you are actually doing. I think it is the thought of making something better with your own hands that can create quite a positive pull. And there is no shortage of little exercises your counselor can suggest or asks you to do. Seemingly silly things like writing down a few good qualities about yourself, things you are good at.
It is interesting that it is possible to be so introspective and at the same time for it not to help. In a certain way that is one of the common approaches in therapy. Let patients confront their irrational persistent thoughts. Would you say that this ability confers an immunity to therapy?
> stop trying to "flip a switch", no matter how much you try with the very best intentions and your deepest love
Yeah that is really the first instinct. I've been on both sides of it, and still (wrongly) think that it would work, even though it didn't seem to work before.
I'll have to try the show of support. That makes sense, thank you for suggestion. Looking back, getting out and changing the physical surroundings sometimes make a difference in the mental state.
> I think it is the thought of making something better with your own hands that can create quite a positive pull.
That makes a lot of sense. Some people are better at providing that. It is the personality and demeanor too perhaps -- just being with them, creates a better state.
>Would you say that this ability confers an immunity to therapy?
I assume you are talking about me basically over-analyzing myself and it not helping me? The curious thing really is, I think ultimately I am just doing what most depressed people are doing, digging myself in further. When before trying therapy, I felt depressed and always sort-of out of place and "wrong", now I have no shortage of "proof" how broken I am, even by design/bringing up. When before, my issues were more in the here and now, it sort of spiraled into "everything has been wrong from the very start because those are the conditions I grew up under and missed out on this,this,this etc....". A more "sophisticated" kind of very toxic thinking and turning in circles,in cycles, if you will. If this ultimately works for or against therapy or bettering oneself, I cannot say. So far I think it has had some things easier, understanding connections or correlations; and some things harder, like this toxic thinking. But instead of that I might be circling over something else if I wasn't over-analyzing.
I think the confronting part does help because you become more aware of what's going on, otherwise you are almost at the mercy of whatever pattern you are following. The biggest "wow" or almost relief was reading about other people with similar thoughts and problems. Of course I wouldn't have doubted there are others out there before - but reading about it and in detail, how someone else says things you have felt or thought 100% the same, was an interesting and calming experience. Like FINALLY someone gets it.
I've battled depression in the past, but I don't think I ever quite reached a suicidal state. The way I got out of my depression state, was to finally admit that I can't keep suffering in my current life situation anymore, and to get away from the things that were causing my anguish, anxiety, stress, and despair. I spent the next two months doing utterly nothing (well at least, nothing productive), slowly becoming healthy again.
You definitely had it much worse than me, and so I want to ask sincerely, what if anything, got you out of your depression/suicidal state of mind? Or alternately, what has helped you manage these urges and emotions?
>You definitely had it much worse than me, and so I want to ask sincerely, what if anything, got you out of your depression/suicidal state of mind?
Only one thing helped: Remeron. I was better in a day and only needed to be on it for a month.
I had previously tried many different anti-depressants, but I am very sensitive to such things and I could not tolerate any of them. The only one that I could tolerate was Trazedone, which didn't work all that well, and was giving me priapisms, so I had to stop.
As it was, I could not tolerate Remeron on its own; it would give me vivid dreams all night long, as do many antidepressants. This is the last thing you want when you are depressed as the dreams are usually vivid hells.
In order to sleep well while on Remeron, I had to take Klonopin, which is like Valium. As it turns out, I only had to take Remeron for a month, but by then I had a residual dependency on Klonpin. I didn't really need the Klonopin anymore as I was no longer anxious, but if I tried to taper off of it, I'd have terrible withdrawal symptoms.
I did eventually get off of the Klonopin, but it took my five years of slowly tapering. And trust me, even going that slowly, tapering off of a benzo is no fun at all!
I am not sure how to appropriately respond to your generous post, but at the very least I want to thank you for being willing to share such sensitive information with us.
I am not the person you replied to, just another sufferer.
So, for me, depression feels very similar to what both darius and the original article were saying. It's like an erupting storm. It starts with something small -- some tiny failure which a normal person might say "okay, no biggie, I can deal with that." My problem was the multiplication. We have associative memories, and I as a depressed person immediately associated this failure with other recent failures, which associated with others, and others, until there was a deluge of connections. It feels like a literal suffocation by failure -- I mean it becomes hard to breathe and there is often an ache across my chest.
There was often a growing sense of paranoia -- that they would all find out. What they would all find out was not terribly clear, but it was something as simple as "I am useless" or "I'll never live up to any of their expectations." (If you've never suffered from depression you might even wonder why this is a bad thing -- but that sort of metanarrative doesn't happen when you're depressed because it's just obviously bad, it's rejection, and rejection is painful emotionally, and there is no reflection.)
And so each thing triggers other things, until I am just left with this deep feeling that I have failed as a human, like everyone else has this thing going for them and I simply do not, and my only normalcy comes from the lucky fact that most of them are not paying any attention to me, which is also sad in its own way.
I live a much less stressful life now, and that helps. I try not to commit myself to any futures -- I tell people that I don't make plans per se but only resolves, so that I am sure of the direction that I'm sailing, but not what I will find. That helps with avoiding that seed of failure from which the storm starts.
As for the storm itself, I've found that deep breathing does more good than you'd expect, because if you're focused on your breathing then you're not associating those thoughts so much; the thoughts still swim around your head but they don't breed new ones so much, and you can kind of quietly nod at them without indulging them. This gives me a better sense of the objects around me, which actually seem to totally disappear as I disappear into myself.
But sometimes, I will confess, I feel duty-bound to be honest to my younger self. And so sometimes when those seeds start, even these days when I can cope, I do just let them expand and expand until I cry myself to sleep. I feel oddly at home there, as if this is some permanent part of myself which I'm oddly glad I haven't lost. But because this is now a choice, and it's voluntary, I no longer feel suicidal during these periods -- just awful.
>There was often a growing sense of paranoia -- that they would all find out. What they would all find out was not terribly clear, but it was something as simple as "I am useless" or "I'll never live up to any of their expectations." (If you've never suffered from depression you might even wonder why this is a bad thing -- but that sort of metanarrative doesn't happen when you're depressed because it's just obviously bad, it's rejection, and rejection is painful emotionally, and there is no reflection.)
This is ... strikingly and surprisingly similar to what I recall going through (so similar in fact that reading it made my chest feel hotter): a feeling of uselessness, of under-performing, of feeling "stuck" in a situation where I was doomed to continue to fail.
> I live a much less stressful life now, and that helps. I try not to commit myself to any futures -- I tell people that I don't make plans per se but only resolves, so that I am sure of the direction that I'm sailing, but not what I will find.
Even your current outlook reminds me of that of my own.
Though my time in this state was the most painful time in my life. These days I can look back at it as a blessing. I feel that my failures and struggles have instilled a stronger sense of 'balance' in my life and forward outlook. Most importantly, I feel that I can sense others having a difficult time much more acutely than before. It's really made helping myself and others avoid this kind of stress/suffering a priority and cause in my life -- in fact, the only cause I feel deeply passionate about.
Wow, these descriptions reflect my own experience exactly. The small failures that snowballed and became patterns.
I had been working at a large software company for several years. I was in kind of an oddball group, doing miscellaneous web development. For the most part, it was fun. The team became like a family for a time.
The constant re-orgs were stressful, though. That was like having to re-interview for my own job every ten months or so. I have done 3D graphics programming on my own time for about 20 years, and I always told myself that one day I would find a way to do that for a living. Setting up a very high expectation - kind of like wanting to be the lead guitarist in a band.
I tried to interview for any graphics job I could find, during my four years at the company. I never got an offer. Eventually, there were so many re-orgs, that most of my friend-co-workers had moved on to other teams. I decided to quit and work on a game, doing what I love. Technically, that went amazingly well. But from a design standpoint, it never quite gelled.
Then my relationship failed at the worst possible time. Then I exhausted my runway. I interviewed with goog and failed (more high expectations). I interviewed with a startup for a graphics position and it seemed to go very well!! But then baggage from that failed relationship, and doubt, stopped me from relocating during a critical window.
Then came crippling anxiety and horrible depression. My life seemed to go from amazing to over in only a few months. Friends grew distant and didn't know what to do for me. I couldn't face anybody. I stopped taking any calls. It felt like life was trying to tell me "Go home. You lost the privilege of playing with the grown-ups."
Sad to say, I am still "down in it". I had to move "back home," which is an isolated place. I haven't written much code in months. Despite having been a programmer for 20 years, I fear I won't be able to pass anymore technical interviews. Rationally, I know I am a very good and accomplished developer, and I know that everyone who has worked with me would say the same; but I'm extremely anxious about approaching the job search and the interviews anymore. One day I will find the motivation and the nerve to start over again.
The most important thing I learned about depression is that it snowballs in both directions. Big tasks and big goals loom even bigger in your head, especially when you spend all your time in your head, dwelling. Don't worry about those sorts of things right now. As long as the whole 'starting over' thing is a shadow in your head, it will stop you from taking the first step.
Focus on something small and achievable, and achieve it. Even if it's just goddamn FizzBuzz. Reverse a linked list, and messsage one old friend on facebook to have lunch. That's it. Just do something small. It cuts off the downward spiral, and establishes momentum in the right direction.
How about coding a very small mobile phone game? Do it for fun, not for profit but if you keep the content simple enough, you might just finish it. Even if you don't, it's a good way to fill in some of the time. It's just forcing yourself to do a little bit every week that's the hard part.
I worked hard in 2011 to pull my wife back from suicide while I tried to carry on running my business. She came close more than once. I've supported her closely through the patchy public mental health system, private therapy and so on. [And she's in a better place now, but I don't stop watching]
It's interesting that you and someone else here don't recognise those symptoms. But when I deconstruct my wife's experience of suicidal ideation, the article's summary match what I observed pretty closely, in terms of the escalation. She left her job due to latent anxiety, had mental health issues, blamed herself strongly, this turned out to stem from a teenage trauma I'd known nothing about. There more anxiety, drinking, an overdose and a very scary amount of "disinhibition". In the end a 3-day stay in a secure ward and lots of drugs was the start of a slow recovery.
It doesn't describe her mental state. I don't think I knew it well enough, and I'm not sure she'd be able to tell it to you, as your own pain is clearly hard enough to put into words.
But from the outside, I know what I saw, and that article covers. If you know or support someone with mental health problems, you'd do well to think about their behaviour in terms of those categories.
It sounds like you're dealing with severe depression. I hope you're seeing someone you can talk to about these feelings. My email is alanctgardner@gmail.com if you do need someone to talk to.
I think he touches on a lot of the points you mentioned:
> every second feels like a minute
> you constantly obsess on what it was you did so wrong
> they felt you were a terrible disgrace
That sounds like deconstruction, negative affect, self-blame and 'falling short of standards'. It can be hard to quantify what you just instinctively feel by yourself. A lot of my time with my therapist is basically me rambling about an abstract feeling, and her relating and summing it up in one or two words. I think it helps me better understand what's going on, which can take some of the power away from the raw emotion.
Talking to someone about it is the best way to start getting better.
P.S. What I didn't like about the original article is it made it sound as if the feelings that lead to suicide are some sort of effete existential angst, and therefore rather mysterious, while in reality -- at least for me -- the feelings were just HELL ON EARTH.
Anyone who has any inkling of how much real tangible pain your own brain can put you in, would never question why someone might commit suicide. There are times when not doing so requires incredible strength and perseverance. Either that, or not even having the wherewithal anymore to take your own life.
Exactly this. The mental pain and anguish from second to second can feel absolutely unbearable and hellish. When every synapse in your brain feels on fire, and overwhelmingly awful, being able to not exist anymore seems a very enticing proposition.
> Imagine that the only reason that you didn't kill yourself in order to end this interminable torment is because you figured you'd fuck even that up and just end up a quadriplegic, and then be truly screwed, since you'd never be able to end your eternal misery then.
Oh man. This struck way too close to home, as it is was the biggest reason I didn't actually go through with suicide when I was at the darkest point in life. That feeling that you can't do anything right, even ending your already frail and delicate life: I don't know of many things more disheartening than that.
Your description of how it feels to be suicidal is very well written and probably the most accurate summary I have read in this regards.
It's a relatively well-known fact that a very dangerous phase of depression is when you start to get better, because when you feel worst, you typically lack the energy to do anything, including suicide. When you start to pull out of it (such as when you begin taking effective medication) there can be a time when you aren't feeling paralyzed anymore, but still suicidal.
I actually wasn't aware of that, but it makes a lot of sense and aligns with my experiences with depression/suicide a lot. The times I've felt suicidal were all when I was picking myself up and put myself out there and it crashed and burned horribly (in my mind at least; in reality it was just a small setback). Now that you mention it, my worst was actually when I just didn't care about anything, and when I had suicidal tendencies I was trying to get better and had just hit some small speed bumps that I felt were insurmountable in the heat of the moment.
I've also experienced this. I'd curl up on the shower floor and sit until I couldn't stand the now-cold water coming out of the shower head. I spent consecutive days close to catatonia, dragging myself into work, shutting the door, coming out eight hours later.
I don't think this fact has a lot of bearing on this article, though. I feel like these criticisms are just an unfortunate manifestation of HN's tendancy to be contrarian. They're not effective rebuttals; they're just "Wait, I have feelings, too!"
Furthermore, being sad/depressed/suicidal really shouldn't be a contest, and the way I experience isn't necessarily going to be the same as the way you experience it. This article articulates a lot of my own experience. I'm sorry/glad that it doesn't match your experience.
> I feel like these criticisms are just an unfortunate manifestation of HN's tendancy to be contrarian. They're not effective rebuttals
Pretty much. I've learned to read HN comments largely as a source of data, rather than as a community of merit. This kind of pot-stirring has happened every time anyone of significance in the tech community has committed suicide. It's just self-aggrandizing.
I remember experiencing very similar emotions, everything I loved had become unenjoyable, feeling like a chore, I felt like there wasn't a single person on the planet who would even miss me when I was gone.
I took a different direction completely. I became enraged at all the people in my life who led me to thinking this way, who destroyed my passion for what I loved, for taking it away from me, and making me feel so obligated to them, while getting nothing in return. I rejected the thought of no future and mentally put myself in a new one.
I became a recluse and shut everyone out of my life, and then I moved to another state 600 miles away. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving, except my parents, I told them I was taking a vacation, just so they wouldn't file a missing persons report, but honestly, it would have taken them weeks to realize I was gone, that's how little we talked. I have a better relationship with my parents now, but that's probably because of the distance. We only talk every few months, and they know if they attempt to assert any control over my life I would have no problem cutting off contact with them. I don't talk to my siblings, and I haven't contacted anyone else from my past since.
Whether I'm missed by anyone aside from my immediate family. I doubt it, and I don't care either.
The experience was liberating to me. I live for myself and don't allow baseless obligations to dictate any decisions I make. I don't allow my decisions to be dictated by how others will judge me.
I can't decide if I think you are exaggerating. I can't help but wonder, had my lowest moments been ten times worse, whether my body would have ceased to function right on the spot. I was pumped with the most adrenaline I've ever had in my life, and I was simultaneously the most depressed I had ever been in my life. I was bouncing off the walls with nervous energy, but all I wanted was to crawl into a hole. My chest was literally in pain, and I can't help but think of people who die mixing "uppers" and "downers". 10x that? Would I have just had a heart attack right there?
The grandparent post is basing this off of what he imagines is a normal person's extremes. -- or perhaps the GP's own other experiences. I imagine your mileage will vary
> Not to be rude, but it's unclear whether the author has had an actual professional diagnosis.
I had a professional diagnosis, and the diagnosis was just done via the same sort of questionnaire that you'd find on the Internet. (Though perhaps the tester was also observing my behavior, and the like.)
> the same sort of questionnaire that you'd find on the Internet.
Unfortunately the methods vary, and not all professionals care to (or even are trained to) conduct the more elaborate diagnoses. However, for differential diagnoses (ie, the most difficult to make - 'is this really ADHD, or just the way that Joe's depression/OCD/etc. happens to manifest?), there are some more elaborate diagnostic methods. I can't comment firsthand, but I know these tests can span multiple media (in-person interviews, written self-evaluations, third-party reports, IQ tests, fine motor skills tests, achievement tests, etc.). I had a friend who went through a battery of these tests before her final diagnosis.
Very few people actually bother, because it's very expensive (and often not covered by insurance). The only reason you would go through this is if you want to be really sure that you have ADHD, or if you're trying to identify whether cognitive treatment (ie, therapy) is appropriate or whether a hidden neurological condition, etc. is actually the problem.
However, even for a professional, it's almost impossible to make an accurate self-diagnosis (or even a diagnosis of one's own children, for example). It's just too easy to fall into the trap of confirmation bias - or worse, ignore signs that may be visible to others, even if obscured.
I do agree that it's unfortunate that not all professionals are properly equipped to make these diagnoses - this is especially the case for children - because it leads to an overdiagnosis among healthy children, while those with less obvious (but still debilitating) symptoms slip through the cracks without ever realizing they have a problem, since they are able to 'make do'.
> (Though perhaps the tester was also observing my behavior, and the like.)
I am almost certain that this was the case as well (at least to an extent)!
How did the tests work? I've been professionally tested for ADD, and the "tests" were just the very same questionnaires for ADD that you can find on the Internet. And surprise! The diagnosis was the same one that I would have come up, or that anyone who knows me would have come up with. I.e., yes.
I already believed this intellectually, but this experience solidified this knowledge into my very being. So personally, I would recommended experimenting with a psychedelic or two for those who wish to study Philosophy.
In my experience, LSD dosing is exponential, so I can't fathom what taking a dose thousands of times a typically heavy dose would do to you. People I know who occasionally did like 10 hit doses, never fully returned to reality, if you ask me. I might have an inkling of what it would be like from a few experiences with nitrous, but this lasts for a couple of minutes, not for hours and hours, which would end up making a huge qualitative difference.