Addicted to happiness

Despite my recent negative posts, I'm glad to have moved to Boston. Would I be any happier back in Sydney? Definitely not. Am I completely happy though? Not quite, but I'm grateful that I haven't encountered my old foe that is depression.

If you haven't been depressed it's hard to fathom how depression profoundly affects your existence. Since I am no longer depressed, it's hard even for me to remember what it was really like sometimes. Depression is constantly feeling miserably lost and full of self-loathing despair. A defining feature of depression is feeling crap for days on end. This exaggerated melancholy stretched from days to months and years in my case. Looking back, I realize that my depression lasted for 6 years or so.

Depression is all-consuming. It made me...
- tired all the time.
- cry as I lay in bed craving sleep.
- constantly plan/contemplate suicide. I've written suicide letters, one to my family, and one to my mates. They've since been thrown out. The drafts remain on my computer in Sydney.
- drink too much.

Sufferers of depression are commonly prescribed a class of anti-depressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as Zoloft and Effexor-XR. During my PhD I finally saw a doctor for my depression and was prescribed first Zoloft, then Effexor. The drugs initially helped my mood dramatically, it was like a negative filter had been removed from my thought processes. I rediscovered genuine laughter and happiness again, and was amazed to find that I no longer instinctively dwelt on destructive thoughts. Life was good again.

However, the karmic balance of no longer being depressed was having to endure the drugs awful side-effects of hazy thoughts, difficulties with concentration and becoming 'emotionally disconnected' (it's hard to describe but a lot of the time I felt unemotional/neutral, unless I was truly happy).

Worse still, I developed a dependence on my medication. I was a junkie and the pharmacist my dealer. Once I had an unplanned long night in the lab and was heading to a late dinner with Lulu and Bing in the city. It was around 10 pm and we were in the car looking for a parking spot, Lulu was driving. I had been taking my evening medication at around 8 pm for a while and the withdrawal from not taking my pills already was giving me unbearable nausea and headache. I hoped that it would pass but it was too much to bear. I gave some lame excuse of suddenly not feeling well, exited the car and into a taxi and went home. My stomach was heaving, and my mouth was salivating ruthlessly as I tried not to throw up during that excruciatingly long taxi-ride. I remember getting out of the taxi at long last and dry-retching into the garden outside my apartment block before stumbling upstairs to my pills of addiction. Lesson learned, from then on, I always carried my medication to work.

Even with the anti-depressants, I gradually slipped back into my negative moods. Almost a year on medication, I realized they weren't really helping anymore and decided to stop taking them. To minimize the expected withdrawal symptoms, I started by halving my dose per day for a week, and then took half a dose every second day. I weaned myself off the pills over a fortnight. In hindsight I should have given a longer time but I was desperate to stop taking the medication and opted for an 'express' method.

Going 'clean' ranks as one of the most awful experiences I've ever had in my life. The two week detox process is painfully imprinted in my mind. Coming off Effexor led to constant nausea, headaches, cold sweats, dizziness, and a perpetual dry mouth (I carried water with me everywhere). For the minimal hours per day I spent at work, I was uselessly zombified and accomplished little. There were constant cravings for food, I binged on all kinds of junk food which I proceeded to throw up due to the nausea.

The worst symptom were these weird, very difficult to describe, 'brain shocks', which were like electrical zaps in my head. They were associated with a popping/clicking noise that I kind of 'heard'. At their peak, these jolts were completely incapacitating and had me curled up in my apartment, alone on the floor wrapped in blankets, disorientated and shivering. I lay on the lounge room floor in my own personal hell for two days. Whereas most of the other withdrawal symptoms abated a week or so after my last pill, the brain shocks persisted occasionally for at least three weeks after I ceased taking the meds.

In the weeks after coming off anti-depressants, I felt changed. Unexpectedly I felt better. Things certainly weren't rosy in my life, but I no longer suffered from extensive depressive episodes. I have no explanation for my chemically-induced 'rebirth', but depression no longer has a strangle-hold on my existence.

Depression and anti-depressant drugs have left a legacy on my psyche. They have made me...
- more reserved.
- prone to be sad, but not depressed.
- less mentally acute, and more forgetful (could be beer-related though...).
- more resilient to physical pain.

Over the years the usefulness of SSRIs in treating depression has come under scrutiny amidst concerns that SSRIs may actually increase suicidal behaviour. A detailed analysis of this ongoing controversy was published in 2006 in British Medical Journal here.

It's ironic how SSRIs helped my life, but given their horrendous side-effects and safety concerns, if you're considering embarking on a life that's dependent on anti-depressant therapy, I would advocate first exploring other means of combatting depression, such as counselling, meditation and regular exercise. Anti-depressants may not be the miracle cure that you imagine.

When depressed, reaching out to friends and family is important. It's easy to get lost in your own world of self-torture without realising that there are people who can, and want to, help you out of the seemingly perpetual sink-hole of depression. Most of all, you have to want to help yourself.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde.