27 July 2008
Dysthymia and I
02/08/08 14:20 Filed in: Depression
Following is
something I gave to my current psychiatrist at our
last meeting.
What I would like to discuss with you would surely take more than my paltry 15 minutes will allow, and I couldn’t afford it anyway, so this is just a gift from me to you.
After some long discussions with my bother, it is clear to me that I have been steadfastly dysthymic since at least age 9, and this general condition has been occasionally punctuated by episodes of severe depression. Some drugs have worked amazingly well for a time and then quit working in an instant. Same with ECT. I have for years been confounded by this and have finally recognized a truth that I think you and I and the world at large has missed or ignored.
Some are born with perfect pitch. Some can add fantastic sums in their minds like magic. Some have eidetic memories. Some can hear colors or taste sounds. But our society does not view these conditions of being as necessarily diseasees and therefore needful of a cure.
I believe that my dysthymia is much the same. It is my normal, natural state, and much as the body seems to have a weight “set point” which it will guard ferociously, my own body seeks to return to this state whenever possible. The episodes of severe depression I experience have at some times been disabling and therefore in need of treatment and “cure,” but though stress is the usual trigger for these episodes, dramatic change of circumstance of any kind can trigger rapid responses in my brain.
Several months ago I was in a car wreck... a rollover down a 45-degree slope and instant deceleration by arrival at a vertical wall of dirt at 55 mph. I should not have survived, But I walked away with no more than two stable fractured vertebrae. A month later, I left Mary and Rebecca’s home to house- and dog-sit for an old friend in Pinetop. Within four days, the Effexor XR stopped working. This was not because of the stress of being in Pinetop, I now believe, but the sudden change from having my heart broken over and over daily.
This was not stress, but the release of stress. And how did my body and brain respond? They responded by returning to my natural, normal state of dysthymia. This revelation was not necessarily a welcome one, but a very important one for me. It alone explains all the various gymnastics my brain and body have endured for some 50 years now.
I do not have perfect pitch. I am not an idiot-savant capable of playing a complex work by Mozart after hearing it once. I do not have a preternaturally positive outlook. I am in my normal state, mildly depressed. That is me.
I believe that psychiatry has missed this point entirely, or, worse, has chosen to ignore it. But the observable fact is that my body and brain will fight to return to its natural state by any means available, whether by direct or indirect ”manipulation” of neuro-transmitters and receptors, by radical changes in the operations of the hypothalamus and hippocampus, by changes in cortisol levels or whatever is necessary.
Arthur Conan Doyle, in the persona of Sherlock Holmes is quoted thusly: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
I believe that I have now learned the truth.
Lawrence W. Lee
6/18/08
What I would like to discuss with you would surely take more than my paltry 15 minutes will allow, and I couldn’t afford it anyway, so this is just a gift from me to you.
After some long discussions with my bother, it is clear to me that I have been steadfastly dysthymic since at least age 9, and this general condition has been occasionally punctuated by episodes of severe depression. Some drugs have worked amazingly well for a time and then quit working in an instant. Same with ECT. I have for years been confounded by this and have finally recognized a truth that I think you and I and the world at large has missed or ignored.
Some are born with perfect pitch. Some can add fantastic sums in their minds like magic. Some have eidetic memories. Some can hear colors or taste sounds. But our society does not view these conditions of being as necessarily diseasees and therefore needful of a cure.
I believe that my dysthymia is much the same. It is my normal, natural state, and much as the body seems to have a weight “set point” which it will guard ferociously, my own body seeks to return to this state whenever possible. The episodes of severe depression I experience have at some times been disabling and therefore in need of treatment and “cure,” but though stress is the usual trigger for these episodes, dramatic change of circumstance of any kind can trigger rapid responses in my brain.
Several months ago I was in a car wreck... a rollover down a 45-degree slope and instant deceleration by arrival at a vertical wall of dirt at 55 mph. I should not have survived, But I walked away with no more than two stable fractured vertebrae. A month later, I left Mary and Rebecca’s home to house- and dog-sit for an old friend in Pinetop. Within four days, the Effexor XR stopped working. This was not because of the stress of being in Pinetop, I now believe, but the sudden change from having my heart broken over and over daily.
This was not stress, but the release of stress. And how did my body and brain respond? They responded by returning to my natural, normal state of dysthymia. This revelation was not necessarily a welcome one, but a very important one for me. It alone explains all the various gymnastics my brain and body have endured for some 50 years now.
I do not have perfect pitch. I am not an idiot-savant capable of playing a complex work by Mozart after hearing it once. I do not have a preternaturally positive outlook. I am in my normal state, mildly depressed. That is me.
I believe that psychiatry has missed this point entirely, or, worse, has chosen to ignore it. But the observable fact is that my body and brain will fight to return to its natural state by any means available, whether by direct or indirect ”manipulation” of neuro-transmitters and receptors, by radical changes in the operations of the hypothalamus and hippocampus, by changes in cortisol levels or whatever is necessary.
Arthur Conan Doyle, in the persona of Sherlock Holmes is quoted thusly: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
I believe that I have now learned the truth.
Lawrence W. Lee
6/18/08