Resolve
The time has come to make a 2016 New Year’s Resolution. In 2014 I
resolved that I would beat my depression. I talked to my doctor, I had therapy,
I took supplements, I went to the gym, I took up a sport, I talked to my
friends, I tried to change my schedule, and I tried to change the way I
thought. I did a lot of things. I’d love to say that they worked or that I
succeeded, but it didn’t go like that, I doubt it ever does. Things changed,
for sure. And I continued, and continue, to try and find ways in which things
aren’t working, and try to fix them. I explored part of that in ‘I’m Not
Saying Sorry Anymore.’ This is a
continuation of that story.
In the last few months of last year, while running through my head was the idea that my relationship with Dorian might be making my depression worse, I had proposed the idea of a whole pre-arranged week where I wouldn’t see him. In that week I would see if my depression was better or worse, and what needed to change. The first week where we had no commitments and this could be accomplished was the second week of January. Before that time arrived however, I came to a lot of different realisations. The first was that I had given up.
My depression has hit (and stayed at) a point where not much is
changing. I am, in no noticeable way, getting any better. I am still at every
quiet moment dogged by a sense of utter purposelessness and uselessness. In my
worst moments I feel there is no difference between my continued existence and
my lack of existence. That is not to say that I am contemplating suicide, to do
so would rather miss the point. I am saying that life and death are both
equally meaningless states for me to be in. It is the morbidity of nihilism. I
appreciate that, for a time, my death would have unpleasant emotional side
effects for those who care about me, and I do not wish for them to suffer this.
But if had I never been born at all, or my family had passed away and I
had continued to have no friends as I did when I was 17, the world would have
gotten along fine. I have contributed no great art or thought or medicine or
invention that the world needed, and day by day I feel it is increasingly
unlikely I will ever do so. I have not reproduced, nor will I ever reproduce,
and I do not bring many people, if anyone, immense, consistent and otherwise
unattainable happiness. And save for the emotional toll my death would take on
just a few people, there is no reason for me to continue to exist. More to the
point, I have no reason of my own to
continue. If I think hard enough, then the thought of not existing makes me
regret never having lived in my dream house or singing my songs on stage to
moderate acclaim. But do you see it? I’m not filled with longing for those
things, or anything else that might suggest I was moving towards anything, but
rather I am only motivated by avoiding regrets.
So I’d probably forego accomplishing my goals just to occupy a space without
sadness or torment. Which is what made me realise I should probably start
taking medication.
Medication for depression has always been something I staunchly wanted
to avoid. Many factors have contributed to that opinion. The first of which is
my general avoidance of any kind of prescription medication, founded in my
mother’s aversion to all things non-‘natural remedy’ and reinforced by adverse
reactions I have had to quite a few different medications. The second of which
is the belief that this is a psychological problem, a problem of the mind and
its thought processes, not of physiology. My depression is something that I
believe I thought myself into, so it should be something I can think my way out
of. I did not suffer any injury, deficiency or trauma related to the brain, and
I continue to be in perfect physical health. I have also not been depressed for
my whole life, and I have suffered no traumatic catalyst event. I am also not
cataclysmically, paralytically depressed, nor am I a suicide risk – which I
feel makes me somewhat ‘low priority’ for serious intervention. The third
reason is that I feel like it renders my life even more meaningless than it
already is. In order to delve into this you have to understand how I see the
world, and what I feel is the meaning of life.
The meaning of life came to me one night in conversation with Dorian. It
hit me like the proverbial apple on the head, as in Newton’s Universal Law of
Gravitation, it also rankled my stomach and cast me out of life as I knew it
like the forbidden apple, as in the Garden of Eden. For this reason, I have
always referred to the theory as ‘The Apple.’ For me it was like eating of the
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It explained so much of everything. It was
however a devastating blow to my hopes, and my happiness, and to Dorian’s. It
gives such blatant answers to “what is the purpose of human beings?” that all
romantic notions of purpose are left in the dust. You can choose to ignore it,
and it might not really work with your spirituality; but if you are an atheist,
or agnostic, and incredibly cynical and possibly of a Darwinian bent – then
this may blow your mind or else confirm and forever solidify much of what you
had already suspected. And luckily it can all be conveyed by one small pyramid
chart.
That’s the entirety of human existence in one diagram. One of the
obvious questions about this that I have come to expect is, “but what about
art?” And the answer you may have heard before is that we use it to attract
mates. This is often, but as I am further reminded, not always true. In this
case art falls into the ‘Prosper’ category. It is used to make the artist
and/or others around them happier or less burdened, something which leads to
further survival and reproduction. “Music saved my life” and “I lost my
virginity to this song” are good examples of this. There is also no such thing
as altruism according to this chart. Altruism either attracts mates or leads to
the prospering of the human race, which in turn helps the altruist. We hope
when we donate to charity that it will help people survive, reproduce and
prosper, feeding back into the cycle of ever increasing human prosperity. Helping
someone helps you by strengthening the support network that is the entire
species. Safety in numbers. Money, science, technology, medicine, beauty –
these are all tools to help us fulfil these directives of survival,
reproduction and prosperity. Even happiness, pleasure and love exist to
perpetuate this. Our brains are hard-wired to make us feel these things when we
feel like we’re surviving well, choosing a mate who will help us produce
successful offspring and doing things that will lead to the prosperity of the
human species. “But what about the gays?” I hear you ask. One
recent study has suggested that homosexual behaviours strengthen
social bonding, and are therefore more adaptive than first thought. And
exclusively homosexual people and other
people who will never reproduce for whatever reason still contribute to the
top tier of prosperity. They often adopt or become
the extended family of a child or otherwise do one of the million other things that
help other humans find mates and reproduce and be happy. They make friends,
they introduce people to people, they make art, they invent things and solve
problems. If you don’t hinder things by killing others, stopping
people reproducing or generally
contributing to the downfall of humanity – or you do literally anything other than merely take
up space and consume resources – then you are helping.
I pretty much just take up space and consume resources. I am supported
by the government in supporting someone who has passed reproductive age and
brings very, very little prosperity into this world, and I don’t pay taxes. I
have not and will not reproduce. I have also assisted another in this
objective. As I mentioned earlier I haven’t invented anything, cured anything,
created life-changing art, or even brought a great deal of happiness to bear.
In fact I tend to be a vacuum for happiness in the same way I am for resources.
I am pretty much the next worst thing after someone who is actively trying to
stymie human progress. This is a lot of
why I am depressed.
The only hope for me, since I insist on remaining alive and I am not
going to reproduce (also side note, how many people have a baby just to make
their meaningless lives seem more meaningful or ‘worth it’…? I’m not the only
one in this boat) and since I am not contributing to human prosperity… my only
resort is just to be happy, just to be selfish and enjoy myself. So my whole
purpose, my raison d’être, is happiness. The search for happiness. I just have
to find happiness. But I’m not happy. I can’t find my happiness. So one of my
last hopes is antidepressant medication. And what if it works? What if
happiness, or something that makes you feel like you’ve found it, or quells
your search for it, comes in a bottle, in the form of a pill. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE
THEN? THE MEANING OF LIFE IS JUST A PILL. NOTHING BUT SOMA. Why even strive
for anything? Why even bother with all the behaviours and routines and habits
and adventures that you contrived to bring you happiness when you can just swallow a pill and feel the same?
“…the return to soma, was the possibility of lying in bed and taking
holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit
of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt after peyote,
as though you’d done something so shamefully anti-social that you could never
hold up your head again. Soma played none of these unpleasant tricks. The
holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was
so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday. The
remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever
larger, ever more frequent doses. … Linda got her soma. Thenceforward she remained in her
little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernard’s apartment house, in bed,
with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping,
and the soma tablets within reach of her hand - there she remained; and yet
wasn’t there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on
holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of
sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what
beautifully inevitable windings) to a bright centre of absolute conviction;
where the dancing images of the television box were the performers in some
indescribably delicious all-singing feely; where the dripping patchouli was
more than scent - was the sun, was a million saxophones, was Popé making love,
only much more so, incomparably more, and without end.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave
New World.
I know that antidepressants are not soma. And they do not, except in
exceptionally rare cases and not by design, make you intrinsically happy. They
are ‘a leg up,’ something to take the edge off one’s (in my case) incessant
morbid nihilistic ponderings on the purpose of existence and lack of
accomplishments. And since (as we have already been at pains to establish) my
life is already essentially without consequence, what difference would it make
if I did somehow slip into a soma coma? I’d be just as much good as I am now.
At least I might think I was enjoying myself.
So all of this is to say that I am going to get medicated. Because it
doesn’t matter anymore. Because I had to realise I’d just as easily be dead as
alive, so I may as well be alive and medicated. My life is meaningless anyway.
I have failed in all aspects of the pyramid. I have no impetus for survival, no
desire to reproduce, I help no-one and through it all I am unhappy. Literally
anything is better than that. I might just about be one of the most depressed
people on the planet after that sentence.
But I’m not, in a way. Because I have that sentence. Because I have this
writing, and the self-awareness of which the writing is a product. I am seeking
answers. And I have some hope for it all. I have been recommended a therapist who seems like he’s
going to give me what I’m looking for, whether that’s hard truths, the
antidepressant I want, or something he’ll convince me is better. As far as the
actual drugs are concerned, I’ve done a lot of research into Moclobemide (which despite
the link and my (GP) doctor’s spurious
assumptions – did not start and end with the Wikipedia article) and concluded
that, as much as one can know from research, Moclobemide looks like the drug
for me. If anything is going to be a good fit, then all signs point to here. It
might be hard to convince a medical professional, because the current antidepressant
darling is the SSRI.
Moclobemide had been proved to be “as effective in the treatment of major
depression as the tricyclic/heterocyclic antidepressants and SSRIs with a better or equal tolerability”[source]
but because of its associations with MAOIs and the lack of awareness of the
drug mainly due to the fact that “moclobemide has not been introduced in the
US-market due to commercial considerations involving competition with widely
used selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)”[source],
is often used as a third or fourth-line drug choice, and hence subject to the
law of diminishing returns, i.e. the more antidepressants you try the less effective
each subsequent one will be. So this can skew the research. I’m not trying to
write a scholarly article here, but I want to let it be known that I know what
I’m talking about. I like the idea of Moclobemide’s reversibility, lack of severe
tyramine interaction, stimulant properties, effect on sexual function,
particular efficacy in treating endogenous depression[1][2] and very mild side
effects. It sounds like the one for me.
I am in the process of perhaps writing what I will call “The Depression
Primer” – a document to bring to a therapist which basically outlines ‘the journey
so far’ and gives all that background that you could spend hours (and hundreds
of dollars) explaining when you’re starting out with someone new. It’s
basically going to be a series of lists, I don’t want it to be anything too
intensive (like the blog!) but it will more or less be:
- When it started
- Reasons why I think I am depressed
- Short term goals and long term goals
- A basic summary of recent events in my life (think ‘Since The Last Episode’ but just the bold dot points)
- Things I want to change (in my life and about myself)
- Things that make my depression feel better
- Things that trouble me (give me anxiety and make my depression worse)
I had always held that if I had thought my way depressed (and I remain sure
that I have, at least in part) then I could think my way out of it. That somehow,
through enough inward exploration, I would eventually arrive at the reason i am depressed. And it would
be a great eureka moment (much like The
Apple) and I would revaluate my thoughts and work through it. But that
moment never came. I have scoured every tiny little corner of psyche and never
found anything. Suspicions, theories, factors – sure. But no “answer.” Sometimes
there just isn’t one, and it can be immeasurably frustrating for intellectual
types such as myself. The
Apple is part of why I am depressed, according to my own theory of the meaning
of life – I am not fulfilling my purpose. My singing is part of why I am
depressed, as is my family, and maybe what I inherited biologically (my mother
is also depressive), as well as being too contemplative, being bored, being
poor, being lazy, being a masochist and thinking I deserve it, too much
computer use, and not getting enough sunlight. Are they the answer? Not as far
as I can tell. Not singularly, and maybe not even together. Would I be happy if
I was a great singer, filthy rich and a bit more motivated? Possibly. I
certainly want that for myself, and not having those things does sadden me, but
I feel like the moments would still come where all I could feel was awfulness.
I thought if I really was everything that I hoped I
was inside; if I really was as intellectually herculean and had such potential
as a practitioner of will, then I should be
able to compel myself to not be depressed anymore. From there I could
accomplish anything. Water into wine, lead into gold – everything. So
insurmountable and consequential is the task of overcoming my depression, that
should I conquer it, I would prove to myself that I could accomplish the
impossible. Nothing would then be beyond my grasp; not singing or riches or the
harmony of all beasts and men; from this all things would follow.
But I haven’t turned water into wine and conquered my
depression. I don’t know if anyone has that much strength of mind. A friend of
mine tells me that his… grandfather? quit smoking one day to the next, before
there was ever any health reason to do so. He smoked a pack a day or something,
for years, and then one day literally turned around and said, “I don’t think
these are very good for me.” And then never picked up another cigarette for the
rest of his days. I have the utmost reverence for that. I don’t think I’ll ever
have that kind of resolve.
But I can tell you this: I haven’t had a bad day this
entire year, no pathos-laden apologies, no self-destructive outbursts, and no stupefying
melancholia. This year has been great though, I had eight days at the start of it
where I was just constantly palpably happy
– something that hasn’t happened for such a stretch since I can remember. Dorian
was on holidays. I made a new friend. I did creative things. I ate nice food. The
only thing that brought me down was my singing performance, which was quite
disappointing. I actually got up on the stage and gave it a go, and it was, I was…
heart-breakingly average. I’m sure I’ll write more on that later, particularly
because the fact that it punctured my happiness balloon worries me, and I’m
trying to steel myself and keep at it. But so far 2016 has been excellent.
***
This blog was supposed to be a “New Year’s Resolutions” blog, filled with hopeful objectives and tinted with the golden light of endless positivity. I had somehow hoped to make a miraculous transition into happiness from day one of 2016 with my fortitudinous resolve. The week without Dorian was meant to catalyse if not solidify that, but I didn’t take that week. I didn’t need to. It was never about him, only about the incontrovertible demands of modern life and the fact that depression makes everything harder. In much the same way, this blog turned into a labyrinthine journey through the meaning of life and my depression – and the realisations I’d had in the meantime. I guess it is true what they say, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Things happen slowly and by degrees. Which is why you’ll have to wait to read about my New Year’s resolutions in ‘My Year of Becoming the Men I Want To Be.’
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