Words of wisdom from heyoka.

If you think that depression looks glamorous in others, then you may be making the worst kind of invidious comparison: comparing your insides to other people's outsides.

This is a subject I tackled under the node Beauty and Misery: a sick trend.

Why the hell does society bask in the misery of others? Sylvia Plath, who was a miserable, suicidal soul is worshipped for her sadness. Kurt Cobain blew his fucking brains out, and people bask in that. These people created some cool things, appreciate that.. but to strive to be like them turns their pain into a mockery.

If you feel that depression is glamourous, maybe you are lacking real pain, or depth in your own life. I understand suffering is a part of experiencing life, but find your own passions instead of trivializing the pain of others.

Damn this pisses me off!

This has got to be a joke, right? Y'mean people actually do this? There are people out there who are using depression because it's trendy? I'd like to find women who find depression sexy and fun. I could use some fun sex. And though us manic depressive types do often move to the beat of a different drummer, this ain't rock n roll. There's no such thing as good depression. It's not sexy. It's not fun. It's not the new rock n roll. I'm shocked to discover there are people out there who believe this. More than just shocked. I'm outraged.

I was diagnosed as suffering from classic depresson by a shrink about two years ago, after my father passed away, but to be honest I've been depressed all my life. I have mood swings, insomnia, memory loss and problems with concentration and focus, difficulty conveying to others what I mean to say because something gets lost in the translation, increasing difficulty getting and keeping friends and those I have I sometimes go months or years before talking to them again, periods of social withdrawal, a tendency to keep people at arm's length,

I'm delusional. Though I'm not quite as mad as a hatter, it wouldn't take more than a fall down a nearby rabbit hole to get me there. I used to swing between a manic state of unbridled energy and creativity and depression in my youth. As I have gotten older, I've cut a lot of sugar from my diet, and have dramatically changed what and when I eat. So the moodswings aren't as strong as they used to be. I've gone months in a perpetual state of sadness. They say it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. I think my face it built backwards. It sometimes hurts to smile. I suffer from intense apathy. What interests me and what I have to accomplish in order to remain in the rat race are rarely ever synonymous. I often wish I could just give up fighting and turn myself into a psych ward, but I can't afford it. I lose and gain weight at the drop of a hat. I'm contemplating researching bulemia. Sounds like fun. Fatigue? Sleeplessness? Sleepiness perpetually hitting me when I don't want it and not hitting me when I do want it? Happens all the time. Erratic behavior? Those closest to me able to tell when I've had a candy bar? "Your leg's shaking again." At least I haven't developed a nervous eye twitch yet. Give me time. My sex drive has all but deteriorated. I'm indecisive, and the only reason why I'm still here is because years ago a good friend convinced me that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. This temporary problem just seems to be existing all my life so far. I'm getting tired of waiting for it to go away.

So you'll forgive me please if I find it offensive that trendy bastards pretend to be depressed because they think it's cool. Forgive me if I take that just a little personally. Forgive me if I get just a little upset about that. It's not trendy. It's not good. It's not sexy. It don't get me the chicks. Damn I wish it did get me the chicks, maybe then I wouldn't be so depressed. It's miserable pretty much all the time. I mean that's why they call it depression, right? If it was fun being depressed they wouldn't fucking call it depression. It's not a fashion trend. People using it as such are deluding themselves and belittling people like me.

This isn't cool. It's annoying. It's like being an alcoholic but not being able to blame it on the booze, or anything other than the fact it's just who I am. And I've had to learn the hard way if someone can't accept me for who I am, I just gotta write them off, even if I'd like to be with that person more than I'd like to be stuck with me. This is the first I've heard of this loony concept! People talking the talk and pretending to walk the walk? Pretending to be miserable? For what? Attention? You don't get attention with this. Truly depressed people are slack vampires who take the fun out of life for everybody around them.

Back in the late sixties, trendy types noticed people who were hippies and were turning on, tuning in and dropping out. Looked like a good idea from an outsider's perspective. They talked the talk and dressed like hippies but had no damn clue what it really meant to be one. That's why those who were real hippies had a funeral for it and put it to bed. See haight ashbury. Similar things have happened over the years with other 'movements'. Punk. New Wave. New Age. Goth. Hip Hop. Rap. SubGenius. There's two generations of people in these movements. The people who started it, and the people who killed it.

The ones who kill it are the hangers on. The trendy types. The sheep who follow. They have no imagination and are looking for something but they don't know what it is. And now these thrillseekers -- these rebels without a clue -- are taking a neurological disorder which has all but crippled me and they're using it to be trendy? Fuck them. I hope they all die of sexually transmitted diseases. I should hunt down every damn T-shirt of a smiley face with a gunshot through its head and shove them all down these bastards throats. I don't take Zoloft. I don't take Remeron any more. I can't afford to be a damn trendy depressed person. I just am depressed. There's no izods about this. Damn this pisses me off! Fuck you trendy sheep! If I could NOT be depressed I'd be.. well shit I'd be happy. I've noticed a remarkable improvement so long as I regularly take St. John's Wart. It does actually help to curb the edge, but to have to take something named after a sain't warts to feel better, that in itself is rather depressing. I can't afford to keep up with the shrinks and the medications they had me on, and their solutions weren't helping me anyway. They were just making me sleep all the time. I mean if you compare insomnia with being in a coma, I'll take insomnia. At least then I can get shit done.

I don't buy that depression is a disease that must be cured. That there's something wrong with my head. We don't all have to think and feel the same way. It's not something to be pitied. It's not something to praise. It's just life, and shit happens. I can't ever remember not being depressed. I was miserable when I was a kid and I'll be miserable when I grow old and die. It's something one either fights all their life or learns to accept about themselves. Please tell me this is a joke so I don't start hunting down fake depressed people with frowns painted on their faces. Damn this makes me wish I hadn't taken a vow of pacifism. It's not like wearing black clothes or drinking coffee or taking illegal drugs. It's not a choice. I don't fucking choose to be this way. You think I'd CHOOSE this? What idiot chooses this? To be fashionable? It's there on the foot of my bed waiting for me when I wake up in the morning and it follows me into my dreams at night, and the hell with any trendy sheep who belittles what I have quietly tolerated every day of my life.

I don't want you feeling my pain. It's not pain. It's just a cold numb throbbing of uselessness and complete total lack of control over my own life. This is not unnatural. We are all on a spinning blue dot in space. If I imagined for a nanosecond that my existence actually mattered in the big scheme of things then I REALLY would be delusional. Don't walk in my shoes. Don't feel my pain. Either buy me a damn beer or get outta my face.

Added August 25th, 2002:
Woah! I just freaked myself out. Coming in here over a year later and reading my own words above. ..woah. Really. I'm okay. I mean all the above is still TRUE of course but that must have been a particularly bad day for me. Whew! ...Depression is a condition that can be handled with medication and cleaner living, but it never really goes away. The physical trappings as well described by The Lady elsewhere in this node are fashionably linked to depression, but the actual state of depression is a largely misunderstood condition that some of us just live with. We deal. I guess sometimes we deal by being upset but it's better to get it out of your system pacifistically here with a keyboard than in more destructive ways.

As one who lost ten years of her life to depression, I can certainly sympathise with what Zach has to say. However, I think there's a degree of confusion here.

I don't think it's depression itself which has become fashionable, but the trappings of depression - the paleness, the sunken eyes, the mournful gaze, the lanky hair, the cadaverous thinness (although anyone who knows anything about depression will tell you that none of the above are necessary or even common symptoms).

It stared in the early '80's with Goth fashion, which still survives today, and was added onto in the '90's with what the fashion mags termed "heroin chic". A lot of clubland fashions also contribute, and of course the waif requirement is universal.

Personally I think that if people want to look like they're sick, bully for them. I like to look and feel like I'm healthy - rosy cheeks an' all. But I can't say I'm somehow offended by these juvenile theatrics, could you?

There's a difference between having a depression and having the blues, and while it isn't exactly subtle, I suspect you must have experienced both, either firsthand or as a witness, to realize that.

I'm lying in my bed. The time is about 10 AM, and I should have been to school about two hours ago. I'm fully aware that neglecting school will only make things worse, but I don't care. It's not that I don't like being there, Hell, I consider myself privileged that I get to spend my whole day playing (and learning about) music. Computer skills and music are pretty much what I have going for me. It's not that. I don't know what it is.

Every reasonably sane person in the world (and, I guess, most of the insane ones as well) will go through sorrow, sadness and misery. It's a fact of life, a logical consequence of living in an imperfect world. Like most (if not all) human emotions, sadness can be channeled productively, and may even take a beautiful form in the process. The Goth kiddies of today don't have a monopoly on trying to put sadness into artistic form; this is what fueled blues music, great tragedy plays, and indeed quite a lot of human art throughout the ages. Assuming a healthy individual, sadness will eventually subside and give way to other emotions. While overplaying it like the Goth kiddies do seems lame, I live in a free country and as long as nobody gets hurt, they can do whatever they like for all that I care. If they're lame, it'd be even lamer to allow them to piss you off, wouldn't it? It does seem, however, that what they're portraying (or, I guess it could be argued, caricaturing) isn't depression. It's sadness, sorrow and misery.

Noon. I should get up. I realize that lying on my bed staring blankly into thin air for two hours isn't exactly healthy, but I can't think of anything else to do. Time has made the decision for me; I'm staying home today. I should go tinker with Linux or practice on my bass. I know I won't, though. I'm going to spend the day staring into thin air. I sit up and survey the cluttered wasteland my little studio apartment has become; my ability to make a horrible mess out of an absolute minimum of belongings is not to be trifled with.

Depression is an entirely different beast to grapple with. It saps the mind, destroys creativity and will make even the most routine of daily tasks an insurmountable challenge. You won't be wearing trendy black clothes and death rock makeup, you'll be wearing disgusting four-day-old unwashed stuff because that was what was closest. You won't be writing any Gothic poetry, you'll at best get two words out of your pen before your creativity quota for the day is spent. You won't be composing the next grunge masterpiece, you'll find that you can't even drag yourself over to pick up your guitar. Climbing out of bed becomes a task comparable to climbing Mount Everest equipped only with your underwear and a roll of dental floss. You watch as your home grows messier and messier until it eventually resembles some mutant installation artist's impression of Hiroshima by Night 1945, drowning under piles and piles of old pizza boxes, potato chip bags, laundry and dishes, but you're powerless to stop it. You realize that the messy state of your home seems mostly like a watered-down parallel to the state of disrepair your body is slipping into. You neglect to exercise, you treat your body like a trashcan into which you deposit an unhealthy mix of ice cream, potato chips and various microwaved crap that has the nutritional value of gardening soil. You stop going to whatever daytime activity you normally spend your days at, and you cease all contact with the people you normally care about. A rational part of you desperately tries to cling on to sanity as you tell yourself to drag yourself out of this swamp this instant, but that little voice of reason is drifting alone in an ocean of stupid, irrational thoughts and ideas, some of them seeming so absurd that you're sure they were put in your head by someone else. You're sure you'd remember if your brain spat out this nonsense.

I decide to not eat today. My kitchen looks like a war zone, if the Third World War was fought with a combination of utensils, plates, cups and chemical/biological weaponry, and getting it into a state where I could cook something would take more effort than I could possibly muster. I can't afford going out for pizza, so I'll ignore the stomach pains again. Who cares? I might as well die of starvation. I'm the loneliest man in the world, and I'll always stay that way. I have no friends. I haven't had, um, female attention for over two years by now, I'm shy and scrawny and ugly and short and balding and sickly. Yeah, that's the explanation. I'm genetically inferior, nature has wired women to steer clear of the likes of me. That's probably also why I'm so low on the social hierarchy. I'm a fucking omega wolf. No wonder I have no friends to speak of; everything people do they do for gain, and nobody can gain anything off of me. I'm worthless. In fact, I'm worse than worthless, I have negative value. I consume oxygen and produce nothing. I'd go kill myself, but I can't really be bothered. I don't wish for death as much as I wish for non-existence, I don't really want to die, but I wish that I'd never existed to begin with.

Some depressed states can be clearly and logically traced to some meaningful 'trigger' event that set off the depression. The girlfriend/boyfriend broke up, a loved one died, some major life-shattering event that set off the normal, healthy reaction of sadness and sorrow, which somehow spiralled out of control. Such a depression is called an exogenous depression. Others don't follow such logic at all, starting on what appears to be their own volition(these are called endogenous depressions). Or perhaps it's a minor and insignificant event that sets it off, the proverbial drop that finally makes the cup flow over.

I'm sitting in front of my computer. I had hoped to write some code; I remember a time in my life where I could tune completely into the logic of programming and drift away from the pains of real life. Instead I'm sitting reading random nodes on E2. I read some radical feminist ramblings and my old feelings of gender-based self-hatred resurface. Damn men, we're the cause of all the fucking misery in the world. Not only that, we're inferior to women in every single way. If we were subjected to mass gendercide and humanity got along by cloning female foetuses, the world would be a better place. I hate myself for being one of these monsters. Some strange voice in my head, which I eerily recognize as my own, is shouting to me to snap the fuck out of it, get real, there is no such thing as an inferior sex, and I'm no evil oppressor just because some gibbering lunatics claim I am. I'm a decent guy, I've never raped or hit or sexually harassed a woman in my life. I don't even use porn, for fuck's sake! Economic oppression? I'm unemployed, damnit, how can I be subjecting anyone to economic oppression? I tell that voice to shut up. I know that it's all my fault. Just like everything is. I'd readily take responsibility for September 11th, the Holocaust, the murder of Olof Palme and the extinction of the dinosaurs right now. Sapped of strength, I crawl through the mess into my bed. I lie awake in the dark, pondering my wretched existence for an undeterminable time before I drift off into a dreamless sleep.

Psychiatrists sometimes refer to depression as "the common cold of psychiatry". Just about everyone has one at some point. The reason why depression, the evil bastard cousin of sadness, is so popular as a theme for Gothic rockers, grunge musicians, tragedy playwrights and the like is that, like love and anger, it's something we can all relate to. Depression ranges from a debilitating, paralyzing variant of the blues to full-blown clinical depression which may lead to suicide. Like many other medical conditions, there are medications available to help people who suffer from major depression (although for some, the side effects are worse than the depression itself). It appears that the condition is caused by the brain's serotonin being re-absorbed too quickly. What nobody seems to ask is what causes this rapid re-absorption to begin with? Is it something genetic and purely physical, a condition which is just naturally present in some individuals, like, say, asthma? Or is it how the hardware behaves when the software is detecting that something is horribly wrong? Nobody really knows. The minor depressions usually end "naturally", coming to a conclusion at some point. The major ones need professional treatment, or the sufferer risks that the depression ends at the same time as his or her life.

7:45. I wake up, feeling rested for the first time in weeks. It's Saturday, and while there's one day's worth more of mess on top of my already trashed home, I figure that if I put an effort into it I should be able to put things back into order before afternoon. As I get up I become aware that my body is in a worse state than my apartment; the natural consequence of sitting on my ass and living off chips and juice for a week. I decide to go for a walk later on, and to treat myself to something decent to eat this evening. I'm thinking clearly, and I begin the process of putting my life back together again. I shudder at the hazy recollection of the stupid and horrible things that went through my head less than 24 hours before. But that's over for now, time to try and find yet another strategy to keep the next one from coming. I know I can do it....... sooner or later.