theandresanchez

Andre, how're ya doin'?

--Brant

I want to know (fuck the world)

Thanks for asking but I'm not sure how to answer. Better.

What is NZT?

It's a fictional drug.

NZT here

After I posted that I was crashing, I cried a little, went for a walk in the sun to escape the cold, and then I started feeling calm. I have been feeling pretty calm ever since. I feel like I'm walking on a tight rope, but well, I'm not actually feeling bad right now. I watched the movie yesterday. I liked how it didn't end like it promised to.

Of course, if it was making you feel worse, he would tell you to stop. He knows you are feeling worse. What does he propose next?

It was not making me feel worse. He reviewed my blood and brain tests which showed no abnormalities. He then proposed medication for Schizoaffective Disorder based on 15 minutes of conversation and a couple of extremely vague subjective questions. At which point, I lost the little trust I had in him. I'm not letting people like this play around with my brain randomly hoping that some drug works.

What is NZT?

It's a fictional drug.

Kat advised you to give your meds at least a month to work. Have you done that? There are many meds which might work if your present ones don't.

The doctor explicitly told me to stop.

You need to find a good doctor to work with over time. Are there local support groups you can network with? They could be on the Internet locally.

--Brant

I really wish things were that simple, that I could just go to a doctor and get better. I don't believe they are. If I were having problems with psychosis of some kind, I imagine their meds would help. I am not. I am simply unhappy and hopeless. Pills just make me feel more hopeless. When I get a surge of energy and optimism, I hit a brick wall and crash. The problem is that I don't know how to turn my life around and I have lost my youth trying to. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to find out what to do. That is all there is to it. I don't have some brain defect.

Unless you can get me some NZT.

I'm crashing.

Maybe because you went off your meds?

I had the same thought, Brant.

No. I wasn't on the meds long enough to create a withdrawal crisis. I had a minor crisis before getting off the meds (which is something the doctor told me to do).

I don't have blind faith in anyone, not even doctors. They don't get a blank check.

I do not want to die. I am not in danger of suicide. That would require too much focused effort on my part.

I'm crashing.

I suggest reading the chapter on Death Anxiety in Nathaniel Branden’s book, Honoring the Self. You might find that helpful. He provides several sentence stems which might give you some valuable insight.

I found the book, but, and I don't mean to complain, I did not find the chapter at all insightful or helpful. It states the obvious without giving any helpful advice. Branden himself admits in the chapter his inability to deal with this, his automatic evasion. I like most of Branden's work, but I think this is a giant hole that everyone would just rather evade and build their theories around, and Branden seems to be no exception.

Psychiatry is nothing but a cult, as scientific and rational as scientology.

Because I didn't respond to the anti-depressives, the "doctor" decided to come up with a new diagnosis: "Schizoaffective disorder".

This is the World Health Organization summary description:

"Episodic disorders in which both affective and schizophrenic symptoms are prominent but which do not justify a diagnosis of either schizophrenia or depressive or manic episodes. Other conditions in which affective symptoms are superimposed on a pre-existing schizophrenic illness, or co-exist or alternate with persistent delusional disorders of other kinds, are classified under F20-F29. Mood-incongruent psychotic symptoms in affective disorders do not justify a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder."

Yea, okay, no. I'm now going to completely ignore anything anybody in the "mental health" industry ever tells me. I'll cure my depression myself.

This is for you, Andre.

http://youtu.be/Cj6ho1-G6tw

That''s really cool, thanks.

I can't say for sure that this is an effect of the meds, but it does seem to be. I've had some unusual nights. I find my mind very awake, sometimes in the middle of the night and sometimes simply in the morning before rising. Not awake to the point of having to get up, often I'm still drifting near a dream state, but without mental lethargy. To be clear, this is very unusual. This has allowed me to experience the buzzing sound that signals the beginning of entry into a vivid lucid dream state a couple mornings ago and has resulted in me managing to remember some pretty weird dreams (the key point here is being able to remember them, not their weirdness). Last night I dreamt that there was a book written by Chuck Noris involving advanced psychology, something about it being magical too. Won't bother anyone with the details of my dreams, just thought that was particularly funny. I had to look him up on google, as I didn't remember who he was, beyond the fact that he was an actor.

I assume by "Why" you mean why I have asked you this question.

Well, a precise diagnosis is of crucial importance. If, for example, you see a doctor because you feel pain in your leg, you want an exact diagnosis. The same goes for depression.

At the begining, I had the impression that you might be bipolar and currently in an 'activity' phase, but then I just don't know enough about bipolar disorders, so I kept my speculations to myself, only made some indirect hints to which you did not react.

But after you posted about having attended what you described as a "bipolar anonymous" meeting, I thought I'd ask you directly about it.

I was simply wondering if the distinction between a unipolar and a bipolar meant anything to you (if you had knowledge specific to bipolars).

Andre,

have you been diagnosed with bipolar disorder by the doctor who is currently treating you?

Why?

Why did you start this thread?

--Brant

I have not received the diagnosis, but the doctor spent less than an hour with me and the issue did not come up. This may have been a weakness on his part. The meeting I mentioned is for people suffering from any type of depression, it just so happens that the vast majority has been diagnosed as bipolar.

I want to make a simple, clear question to those of you who have suffered from depression and received treatment from a doctor. What were the results of this treatment?

Andre,

have you been diagnosed with bipolar disorder by the doctor who is currently treating you?

Why?

(My personal, long, but mild depression - and the severe one of my mother, and a girl-friend).

What was the result of your treatment (and theirs)?

I am no expert, right? But my thought is this is very dangerous.

The idea - surely - is to emerge from this WHOLE, not disintegrated.

How do you do that without eliminating the contradictions in your psyche? "I want to live" versus "I'm not worthy of living". One has to go. When you sink further into the depression, the second becomes increasingly more dominant, until it eliminates the first entirely. The psyche is attempting to resolve the contradiction, with or without your conscious involvement.

I'm not even saying a chemical imbalance isn't the primary cause of a particular depression as opposed to the repression of anger, but such repression is grossly under-rated and not generally well understood.

I was at a "bipolar anonymous" (so to speak) meeting and this guy spoke about restraining himself when threatened to avoid a manic crisis, and then falling into depression. Thinking back, I have had similar experiences. This may have something to do with a subconscious belief that you are not worth defending, thus are worthless, and should step aside so others can live. The belief gets reinforced by congruent behavior on your part (repression of anger). Maybe, and this is just a random thought that came to me, the way out of depression is to focus on the hatred of, and de-identification from, the parts of you that keep you from moving forward. They are not you, they are just bugs in your head harming you. Squash the bugs. Thoughts?

I doubt it. Only children are too relatively recent a phenomenon in scientific terms to merit much study - but they are rapidly becoming the norm in much of the world, so the profs better leap from their towers and get their skates on!

Millions of chinese men who are only children and have no hope for a mate. The end of the chinese economic miracle and the beginning of the Great Depression of China?

Seeing oneself as a victim also means seeing oneself as helpless regarding what makes one a victim and that can spread out osmotically into other areas of one's life. This is one huge facet of negative thinking.

--Brant

Brant, I just noticed this post and since the thread is about Depression, I think it is misplaced...depression is "anger turned inwards", among other things, and in my experience depression strongly negates feelings of victimization. The depressed person feels entirely responsible for everything they are suffering, but incapable of taking action, and therefore ultimately unworthy to live, in the worst case.

My experience is that externalizing anger is sometimes used to cope with depression. "Why am I blaming myself? They are responsible!". Of course, that then turns into "Why am not worthy of their consideration/love/whatever?". It's a complex web, which is why it is so difficult to untangle it.

Who is close to you that you trust?

In what sense? My immediate family.

How old are you?

25.

What level of "education" have you reached?

I left school at the age of 13. The story is complicated and I don't see much point in sharing it on a public forum. I was not homeschooled either. In retrospect, a lot of my experiences beginning in that period seem to fit the description of bipolar depression.

Do you work part, or, full time, and, if you work. what do you do?

I do not have a job, I am, and have always been self employed. You can't keep a job if you don't show up for work, and I wasn't even able to force myself to show up for school on a consistent basis. I suffered very severe setbacks in this area, in great part because of this instability. I have had some successes but many of the projects that I start working on when the depression lifts I become unable to sustain for long and currently I'm without any reliable source of income as the ones I managed to build dried up, or a clear idea of how to apply my efforts effectively to correct that. I'm living with family. I'm currently working on a project that attempts to wire the brain of non-absolute hearers to perceive pitch on an absolute basis. The couple of people who have products in this area have a very vague sense of how this can be achieved and so sell products that are, if they work at all, very inefficient. This is part of a system that I'm developing to teach music, either in person or as a "teach yourself" product. I find myself having to struggle with the sense that my effort is futile and other elements of depression a lot of the time and so have been having difficulty making progress. In the meantime I have what little capital I have invested in a forex account that I trade on my own, using a mixture of long term fundamental analysis while taking advantage of short term volatility, which as long as don't allow my mood swings to drive me to do anything stupid, seems to do well. I do this to ensure that the depression does not keep me entirely stuck.

As for those who believe in physical immortality being achieved one day, the Second Law of Thermodynamics should dampen their enthusiasm considerably. For how can humans believe in their immortality in view of what awaits the whole cosmos?

Existence invalidates that possibility. If the second law of thermodynamics could "kill" the universe, it would have done so by now, seeing as the universe has always existed. Do you assume something external to the universe brought it into life? There is nothing external to the universe, by definition.

Where does it say that the universe has always existed? Do you still believe in the 'steady state' theory?

The universe exists. To believe that the universe at some point did not exist is to believe that something, outside the universe, brought it into existence. The only thing that can be outside the universe is non-existence, or "nothing". That is entirely irrational. Regardless, even if that were the case, it would still invalidate the second law of thermodynamics as an absolute.

But when he wants to blame all his problems on everybody he is talking to--and the rest of humanity for good measure--

Which happened at what point, exactly?

I didn't get the sense that Andre's depression was that severe. I got the impression that he was still reasonably functional despite his daily emotional struggles. In any case, yes--one step at a time. That's good advice for anyone trying to accomplish most anything.

The doctor classified his impression of the depression as severe. It's debilitating strength fluctuates.

Sometimes I think I'm fine, that this is all behind me. These are, in retrospect, the most dangerous times, because I suddenly crash hard and fast. These are the times when I become near suicidal (I say near because I never had an actual failed attempt).

It looks like he just started taking the medication yesterday because on July 21 he still replied to my question in the negative:

Yes. It sat in my bag for a few days after being bought as I have been feeling relatively well (I would never have asked for help here while in a deep state of depression). The doctor said they were a hyper-conservative medication/dose until he could figure out the proper treatment and that they wouldn't have a great, or immediate, impact. Considering their price tag and claimed effect, I wasn't anxious to start taking them. But I figured, "fuck it, just try it".

Andre, it would be of great interest to all reading this thread if you could report on whether your medication works (and if it works, in what way).

Sure. I just had some blood and brain tests done today and should be checking with the doctor again in a couple of weeks.