Depression (not mine, thank God)

Dervala writes intelligently and movingly about depression, medication and social consequences:

[Peter] Kramer's follow-up polemic, "Against Depression", is his answer to a question that he came to see as callous. In the decade since his first book ["Listening to Prozac"], medical researchers have found evidence to move depression from mood disorder squarely into the category of disease. It causes visible, irreversible damage to the brain cells. It eats at the blood vessels and attacks the heart. It causes bone loss. It's cyclical, and if left untreated, it gets much worse over time. Depression costs more days off work than backache. In its most obvious health consequence—suicide—depression kills more people annually than war and murder combined. And we now know that, like diabetes, it's probably behind many of the coronary and other deaths that are recorded as something else. [...]

Like rheumatoid arthritis, depression turns your own body against itself. It chews not on your cartilage, but on your brain cells and your sense of reality. It's as seductive as a wife-beater, shutting out other voices to turn itself into your only friend. The only one who tells the truth about the bleakness of the world. All your energy goes towards getting through whatever stands in your way—struggling, slogging, pushing, through work and small talk and getting food—whatever it is you have to get through until you can be alone again with the voice who can be trusted. [...]

I'm back, I wanted to shout last spring, that hunched crone was a changeling, not me! I wanted to learn how to get better without running from the site of misery; how to return to people who hadn't realized I'd been away. I would have liked some scars to point to, to explain my absence. It was shocking, in a way, this drug-borne proof that I'm an animal, washed with chemical tides, turning seasons, light, and food into moods. When you reduce my suffering to a curable disease; to symptoms, postures, and intonations, I'm no longer especially special. All those causes for my sadness fluttered down like snotty Kleenex.

Go read.

In other news this is my five hundredth post. (Not counting a round dozen saved drafts, things that I lost interest in or after mature reflection decided not to publish.) I've been counting for quite a while, as you can imagine, and hoped that the magic five hundredth would fall on a day when I would have time and subject matter to do it justice. Ah well. It's just another number.