Depression

Another great story about fighting depression with fitness:

A man has committed to making 425km journey down the mighty Waikato River – on a lilo.

After suffering from depression for over two years, Jimi Hunt decided he needed to get fit, but he wasn’t really one for gyms and marathons.

“Stuff like that’s just too boring so I sat down and came up with the idea of liloing from Taupo to Port Waikato and I ran with it. Now, six months, later it’s turned into a juggernaut like you wouldn’t believe.”

The Auckland-based designer decided to use his trip to raise awareness about depression and now has more than 7000 supporters on Facebookand is being sponsored by the Mental Health Foundation and Movember.

He’s even upgraded from a $4.99 to a $7.99 Warehouse lilo.

He used to be so depressed that he’d spend his weekends crying in bed, and even small things like deciding what he should have for lunch would seem overwhelming.

But he put on a “mask” whenever he was around other people, pretending everything was fine.

I know all about that mask…I lived with one in place for over 6 years. People mistake depression for “feeling a little bit sad”. It isn’t.

Good on Jimi Hunt for fighting his demons and getting out and getting fit in his battle with the black dog.

Regular readers know that I have had and continue to battle depression. I have also found that talking about ti honestly helps leave a breadcrumb trail for others to to follow so that they can seek help for their own battles.

I know that the trail works because I regularly get emails from people thanking me for sharing my stories about depression and sharing about how I came off anti-depressants. Each of us who has spoken publicly, people like John Kirwan and Mike King all help in their own way to assisting people with depression understand and overcome and mitigate the debilitating effects of depression.

I have been thinking over the holiday period about writing some more about the issues but i hadn’t quite worked out the shape of what i would write. As is often the way when I am researching about something a blog post elsewhere pops up and says what i want to say for me.

And so it was that I saw on Andrew Sullivan’s blog his snip from Jenny Lawson’s blog post about her battles:

I wrote this post a month ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to post it then.  I was too weak from fighting to shout, and so instead I whispered this into the night and left it unpublished until I felt like I could speak to it with the battle-cry it deserves.  Years ago, coming out about depression and anxiety disorder was something frightening, but now people are more honest and open and so much of the shame has dissipated.  We may not have pink ribbons or telethons but we know that someone out there understands.  That is, until we’re honest about how it affects us.  I’ve never written about this because I can’t talk about it without it being a trigger but I think it’s important to be honest even when it’s scary.  Especially when it’s scary.

But Jenny said so much more and it resonates with me, and so I will share it too:

When cancer sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we laud their bravery.  We call them survivors.  Because they are.

When depression sufferers fight, recover and go into remission we seldom even know, simply because so many suffer in the dark…ashamed to admit something they see as a personal weakness…afraid that people will worry, and more afraid that they won’t.  We find ourselves unable to do anything but cling to the couch and force ourselves to breathe.

When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate.  Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive.  We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker…but as survivors.  Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it.  Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand.

Regardless, today I feel proud.  I survived.  And I celebrate every one of you reading this.  I celebrate the fact that you’ve fought your battle and continue to win.  I celebrate the fact that you may not understand the battle, but you pick up the baton dropped by someone you love until they can carry it again.  I celebrate the fact that each time we go through this, we get a little stronger.  We learn new tricks on the battlefield.  We learn them in terrible ways, but we use them.  We don’t struggle in vain.

We win.

We are alive.

It is now just over a year since I came through the roughest time of my life. The toughest time wasn’t being depressed, it was coming off the medication and all the side effects both physical and mentally that are associated with that. I have done a lot of rough and tumble things in my life. I have jumped from airplanes, out the back of Hercules, from helicopters, I have tramped, hunted, fallen off cliffs into rivers, white water rafted, kayaked, waveskiid and surfed, i nearly drowned once swimming across an estuary but none of those things were as tough coming off anti-depressants.

But as Jenny says above, I won and I am alive.

The single biggest thing that helped me deal with depression wasn’t drugs, wasn’t psychologists, wasn’t anything other than getting fit. Most of what I did was simple, I walked. Every time I feel depression stalking me I go for a walk and I don’t mean a sooky walk around the block I mean a good brisk 8-10km.

Dr Mike says so too:

Continuing on from my post of yesterday. During the worst time, de-toxing from anti-depressants I experienced the lowest and  nastiest time of the whole experience. I also suffered depersonalisation at the time…it is too hard to describe. I hated myself, I hated everyone else around me and I did and said and did hateful things, and I can barely remember them because of the depersonalisation. I am so grateful that I have good friends, understanding friends, I nearly lost them all.

This paragraph and this image helps a little to understand it:

I’ve always wanted to not give a fuck. While crying helplessly into my pillow for no good reason, I would often fantasize that maybe someday I could be one of those stoic badasses whose emotions are mostly comprised of rock music and not being afraid of things. And finally - finally - after a lifetime of feelings and anxiety and more feelings, I didn’t have any feelings left. I had spent my last feeling being disappointed that I couldn’t rent Jumanji.

I felt invincible.

This is the best short form version I’ve seen for understanding depression.

But trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back.  A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn’t going to work.

There is a new Listener on the magazine racks this week, the cover story is about antidepressants. It has been with subscribers since last Friday. I picked up a copy at the supermarket tonight to see what was written.

I was interviewed for this article by Ruth Laugeson. I gave it to her straight about my six years of hell and why my life is so much better now without the chemicals.

Go buy the Listener and learn a bit about antidepressants and what they do to you.

This just popped up in my RSS feed from Judy Callingham.

It cheered me up no end, thanks Judy.

As long time readers will know I suffer from depression. Due to the length, severity and re-occurrence of my depression over the past few years I know now that it will be with me for life. I am not talking about “feeling a bit sad today” depression, I am talking about the black dog that is severe depression. If I am not vigilant then down into the darkness I will slip. No one chooses depression, it certainly isn’t the box of laughs that the left-wing likes to think it is for me in particular.

At present my depression is held at bay but not through anti-depressants, rather through hard physical exercise and some techniques I picked up along the way through 6 long years of hell. For the first time in a long, long time i am working again. That has challenges in itself that can affect my control over my depression but it is a start.

The best thing I ever did is ditch the medications that doctors and insurance companies forced down my throat in the interests of getting “better”. For me getting well involved ditching the drugs and I will never let them past my lips again.

There also appears to be growing evidence that the pills don’t work.

Anti-depressants can cause worse long-term health effects, and may have an adverse effect on suicide rates in youth, says an award-winning American medical journalist in Nelson this week.

Robert Whitaker, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of several books, will be speaking in Nelson tomorrow night on the effects of psychiatric drugs on the brain and how anti-depressant medications shape long-term health outcomes.

He will discuss his research in the United States which found the increased prescribing of psychiatric drugs to youth led to a sharp rise in the numbers diagnosed with bipolar disorder and the numbers on sickness benefits.

After examining data from several countries, Whitaker also found increased prescribing of anti-depressants to adults correlated with a sharp increase in disability rates due to depression and anxiety.

Clinical trials had shown anti-depressants may increase the suicide risk in youth, he said. He did not have data on whether increased rates of prescribing was linked to suicide rates at a national level.

Anti-depressants made my life worse not better. But a combination of medical experts and insurance company policies means that there are many people like me that would have got well sooner if alternate treatment policies were followed or even allowed. Even ACC and WINZ follow the same policies, and so it isn;t really any wonder that we have burgeoning mental health issues caused by strict adherence to shoving pills down our throats.

It is my belief that the drugs just paper over the cracks. They are not a solution, they are a temporary salve with long term serious side effects. Even then they aren’t all that effective.

Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, had been attacked by some health professionals, but many had responded in a thoughtful way.

I just bet he was attacked. The drug companies have got the insurance companies by the shorts. Meanwhile the sufferers suffer.

Trevor seems to be suffering since his senior moment on a cycle, apart from his deliusions which I will cover in a separate post, his hip and shoulder seem to be causing him a great deal of pain. I understand he is spending a huge amount in the wheelchair off camera and out of sight of the media.

Here are some handy links for him to assist with his recovery. Because I’ve been ill and I know how hard it is to get through recovery.

Safe Sexual Positions Post Hip Replacement Surgery

Approved Positions
Positions for Intercourse which Do Conform to Precautions of Total Hip Replacement

Trevor take note: Not these ones….and I guess the Swiss Ball at Annette’s is out. I wonder if the Police have returned it yet?

Avoid Positions
Positions for Intercourse To Be Avoided Following Total Hip Replacement

Michael Laws has attacked me via Facebook. not content with abusing people with Aspergers, rooting crack-whores or his inherent racism in order to drive ratings he has now taken to attacking people with depression.

Quite apart from the fact that I am not on any medication, am quite sane despite suffering from major depression Michael Laws still fails to address the fact that he lied and I proved he did.

I’m not sure Mike King will be too pleased his approach to attacking the messenger rather than the substance of the facts of my post. Having depression does not make my arguments any less cogent.

He goes on in the comments:

One thing is for sure, I am honest about suffering from depression. I have shared so that other may learn. Michael Laws clearly hasn’t learned and seeks instead to denigrate and abuse because i explained carefully the real facts behind his claims of record breaking success.

The facts show that he did not increase his rating by 15%. The facts show that he burned off 50% of his audience in Wellington, the facts show that his TSL dropped by 30% in Auckland, and the facts show that despite and increase in numbers the market share of his show actually dropped.

If he wants to claim that as a success and lie about it then that says more about him than it does about me. If he wants to increase his ratings by bashing beneficiaries, people with Aspergers and people with depression and rooting hookers on top of that then so be it. If he can’t debate the facts and instead have to resort to personal attakcs then, again, it says more about him than it does about me.

I for one am prepared to debate Michael laws, anywhere, anytime on any subject, especially about mental illness, but hell, he can choose the topic and i will slay him comprehensively. I doubt Michael would be prepared to do that though because he prefers one way traffic and self adulation to dealing with facts.

I am honest about my fight with depression, I wonder when Michael Laws will be honest about his afflictions. Attitudes such as Michael’s don’t help, and I doubt he would have the courage to say to my face what he has said on his Facebook page.