Coping with Depression - How I Won the Battle

In the summer of 1987 I was diagnosed with having a clinical depression, a chemical imbalance in the brain where neurotransmitters don't have the proper "fuel" to carry electrical impulses from one cell to the next. In later years an anxiety disorder was added to the diagnosis making for one hell of a mental problem.

It took me a long time to accept that I had anything wrong with me. Twenty years in fact. It wasn't until an attempted suicide attempt this past November that I finally hit my proverbial rock bottom, landing myself in county jail. I spent most of my life running from my illness, with a cycle of going on again off again my prescribed medications, despite the realization that I felt better, acted better and thought better when I remained on my meds.

I don't really know the reason I kept having periods of my life where I went off of them. There were plenty of excuses, but no real reason. Perhaps I wanted to feel normal. I didn't want to be a slave to a little pill or I didn't want that little pill to control me. I sure as hell didn't want the "down" feelings that I was putting myself through and I knew that that little pill would help me avoid those low periods, I just didn't accept it fully.

It's not a type of "regular" depression that you could just snap out of, it was something far worse than that. This depression lasted for days, weeks, months until I finally was hospitalized and stabilized once again on an anti-depressant. This has been my cycle for the last twenty years and I have been hospitalized with this more time than I care to think about. What I finally realized was that I was not the only person feeling and acting this way.