TradeOff

As I have stated before, I have little to no faith in your common practice doctor.

Every single time I have gone to the doctor they have failed to come up with anything I have not already figured out myself.

So, with that in mind, I have a theory and solution on depression that helped me. Oh and by no means am I a physician or anything so if you heed my advice do come trying to litigate on me. I have nothing so you'd get a big heaping helping of that.  

Now as I was saying,

With depression your mind wanders and dwells upon the worst of the worst.

In my case my mind was like an enclosed room with all the walls covered in 5x7 TV screens and each screen was tuned to a different channel

No matter which way you turned there was always something blaring out at you that just kicked you in the gut. You can set your mind to just spin and spin, never focusing on any one thing for long but that takes a lot of effort and self discipline. It is also quite tiring and actually being able to focus is a joke.

The depression medicine is fair.

I found that it basically turns you into a Vulcan (which would be cool if your ears got pointy)

It is just a leg up on the emotions that are rocking your foundations.

It is like climbing a mountain under a waterfall and the medication diverts the flood waters a bit.

All the medication does is give you that chance to get a firm handhold on the slippery wall.

I’m not knocking it as when the pit of despair has a hold of you anything is better then nothing.

You still have to make the climb back up out of the pit.

The one thing I found was that I was spending 1 day of the weekend asleep.

One whole day just shot to hell.

One whole day that I should have spent with my kids and family spent just wiped out.

Then one day something happened that changed everything.

You see, My son has ADHD. We were still playing with his medication levels trying to find the right dosage.

I wanted to see what his medication was doing to him so I tried one.

(Not the best thing to do I know but I figured our genetic makeup was close enough I could get an idea on what the medicine was doing to my son.)

OMG!

I felt a huge weight just melt away. I had “a good day”.

Not to be one who jumps to too many conclusions I anayalized everything that happened that day and repeated everything exactly over the next week or so. Nothing happened. Bleak, dull, depression still loomed above my head like the proverbial rain cloud.

I analyzed his behavior and compared it to mine.

I tried his medication again and achieved once again “a good day”. I did some research into the ADHD behaviors and knew that the condition was genetic and so forth.

I looked deep into my past and talked about my actions as a kid with my mother.

I ended up coming to only 1 conclusion.

I have ADD.

Of course while I was younger this term did not exist.

It was always just “control yourself” and “pay attention” etc.

(I think when I was younger it would have been classified at ADHD but smoking curbed the Hyper part.)

So armed with this knowledge I went to my doctor.

He concurred with my analysis and prescribed for me an ADD medication.

I have been on the road to recovery ever since!

The best way to describe it is the medication shuts down the wall of video.

I have gone from thousands and thousands of high definition LCD monitors screaming at me all at once to just 1 small 19” TV.

I have more energy and I am able to function again in the real world.

I am happier.

I am back to being a daddy again and I am trying ever so hard to make up for the time I lost.

Now, The downside.

I had to sacrifice a large portion of my intelligence.

You see I had gone so long with my ADD mind that I had adapted my thinking patterns around it and had trained it to serve me. I could easily have 6 to 10 widely different trains of thought going at once. I could read 4 different books at one time. I could carry on multiple conversations on varied topics at one time. My imagination was a wild untamed beast that would give me no end of entertainment. Bathed in the knowledge that I was a bright guy I was always interested in taking IQ tests and Mensa tests, blah, blah, blah

I was always running at an easy 145 IQ points.

Now it’s basically 1 thing at a time. I have to mull things over more carefully. I lose my train of thought rather easily. I bemoaned it at first as I was quite proud (arrogant even) of being smart and creative. It came so easily to me to be both.

Then I figured I would rather be here, in the now. Maybe not euphorically happy but happier.

I laugh more.

I love more.

I live more.

It was indeed a good trade.