Could you survive the deepest depths of Hell? May 21, 2007

I’ll begin a bit light, mostly for those coping with loved ones or others dealing themselves with the age old disease of depression. I’ve been severely depressed for, what has been diagnosed, many years. I’ve only been treated for my illness since April 2006. Of course it takes many months, sometimes years to determine what modern medicine works best in countering this genetic illness that chemically alters the brain’s serotonin-norepinephrine levels. 

All the symptoms are very profound. If you’ve read this far you well know what they are. The television commercial that portrays a man or woman with troubles in completing or even starting what was once daily ritual is a fair estimation of a stepping off point. The recognition, then acceptance that there may be a problem. As an alcoholic might hide a fifth of Gin in his desk drawer in a failing effort to better tolerate what was supposed to be a good life. Depression is still thought by some to not be a real illness. I’ve also learned that mental illness and suicide runs through my mother’s side of my family, as far back as my family’s recorded history. Depression is real. Depression is devastating. Depression is much more than having a bad day or week or month or year. Depression destroys lives and relationships of any kind. It has been estimated that true clinical depression will be the cause of 40% of disability claims and workforce reduction by the year 2010. I think the recognition and acceptance of the disease coupled with modern treatment has brought forth the evil ugliness of how deep and wide spread it is rooted throughout our society. 

By default with all drugs, a regimen that might be found most effective for you, and that has taken months or years to harness, will decrease or end its effectiveness altogether – often within a few months of  beginning a workable drug cocktail. When I’m able to feel anything whatsoever, I escape by listening to music. I have my whole life. Perhaps testing my emotional ruin. Escaping in music in an attempt to find a benchmark of sorts, during the ingestion of mass poisons that are making me better? My own effort to sneak a peek at the possibility that I can still feel anything at all. 

Most notably I listen to molasses thick syrupy ballads – those such as Celine Dion’s Fly, a song dedicated to a personal friend of hers that passed of AIDS. Really any of her powerful songs. Other songs like Maria carry’s version of without you. Jennifer Holiday’s And I am telling you – Whitney Houston (pre crack) singing our National Anthem at the Super bowl game in 1991, during the first Bush’s Gulf War. In all seriousness, if Whitney’s rendition of our National Anthem showcased in one and a half (dozen) octaves – doesn’t move you to tears, you are way over medicated. Francis Scott Key had no idea his song could be sung so perfectly. Whitney, as most of us who are irreparably fractured… hopelessly human – wrestles with her share of demons… but the bitch can sing baby! Alright, I’m obviously having a good day… today. 

Let’s breach the subject of my life in the depths of my depression. I’ll proceed being brutally honest. For me my bottom was when I was driving to my office. On April 3, ’06, the first time I left my work place on “short term leave” – I was asked in a formal reprimand to go through our employee assistance program (EAP) and get help for the following reasons:  Excessive absenteeism, unacceptable work performance, insubordination, outbursts in meetings, anger management. That very day I received the biggest raise I’d ever seen. A twenty percent increase in salary. You have no idea of what a complete abortion my management was. The keystone Cops were mental giants in comparison. So disgusted of having to face my robotic mind numbing job for another oppressive second, I occasionally sat in the parking garage for two hours upon arriving to work. When 10am rolled around I went to Specs, our local liquor store and bought a fifth of courage. I drank some mixing it with a large coke I’d gotten from the Chevron. I liked rolling in at eleven or so ‘cause I knew everyone would be out to lunch and thus wouldn’t bother me. I have even taken my cocktail to my desk and felt better by the minute. This destructive routine was continued for a while to dull my innermost pain. It got to where I was doing this routinely, not every day but on real down days. So, on August 11, ’06 I dismissed myself once and for all from my employer, then beginning long term disability. 

My management was aware that I was going through some serious hardships. Note that I have 24 years in my line of work, 14 with this once respectable, turned a hideous cluster fuck company of three merged companies, then known only as Halliburton. So I did the little three month short term disability dance as was requested, through our employee assistance program. The first meeting within five minutes at my new psychiatrist he said that I needed to distance myself from my work environment until further notice. I estimated that while leaving the parking garage every day, I was planning my suicide; it was time for me to go. I contemplated killing myself in my office parking garage. I even mapped out a plan of the crashing of my car into a concrete girder. I contemplated going on a shooting spree at my office to take down a few people that I attribute to having aided in my spiral off into oblivion. I even stood on the 8^th floor of the parking garage looking over the edge thinking how easy it would be just to jump off and immediately check out. With no more than hopelessness on my side, I actually became scared of myself. 

I’ve lost most all of my life long friends. “Friends” that would not even attempt to understand what I was – and still am going through. Weak friends that I begged to educate themselves in understanding me better. I was further kicked in the groin while I was down, watching one by one the people I’d known and loved and respected all my life, disappear from my life during my very depths. “Just when I needed them most”, I was abandoned. All of these people I’m describing would once have given me their first born should I have ever needed it. 

I suppose I missed the small print clause on the back of the friendship form that read “we’ll always be there for you, unless it’s something that we can’t wrap our simpleton heads around”. Unless you are ever diagnosed with being deeply depressed you shall never know the irreparable damage depression will forever scar your psyche with – and likely forever will during your remaining time in this world. To speak of the ’D’ word in mixed company makes people feel uncomfortable. My past friends couldn’t comprehend my description of not wanting to go on living. And what it might be like to not leave my bedroom for ten days at a time, curled up in the fetal position in bed all the while. Not bathing. Not even brushing my teeth. Only getting out of my darkened room to find something for my body’s minimal nourishment. Then taking more sleeping pills to escape the misery of living yet another day, again returning to my bed for another fifteen or twenty hours. Having found a fairly decent new drug regimen – that has taken the better part of a year to discover, I am doing better. I’ve now become somewhat of an introvert though. I occasionally visit a couple friends left that have too been through their own variables of mental illness. And I’m comfortable with that. These few have, without doubt, kept me alive. 

I’m actually getting down just typing out this blog. So I’ll close by simply saying that even with modern cutting edge drugs by the bus load, one must take it upon themselves to find and embrace the power of the human spirit to carry on. As hard as it was at my very bottom, I found myself still longing to be happy again. To live my life anyway – slowly building my confidence that I will eventually be well again. Scraping together the remains of my own mind’s self destruction as a base to start over – I will emerge stronger than I’ve ever been. I will win this battle raging inside me and find complete recovery of my once stable mind. 

A mind is a terrible thing… 

to waste.