More Anxiety Reports
Carissima
background: more or less clinically depressed since childhood. anxiety
very bad over the last six months or so. yoyo say 'go to doctor' so I
did (finally, many months later).
formal diagnosis: clinical depression currently manifesting as anxiety and
panic disorder (panic is mild, anxiety is very strong). secondary
diagnoses of agoraphobia and compulsive tendencies though OCD is ruled
out. [I didn't think I was agoraphobic since I have no problems being out
and about; I thought I was claustrophobic because I hate parties and
social situations.]
treatment: up-tapering dosages of Serzone, an SSRI which actually works on
particular receptors rather than all of them. I started with 100 mg at
bedtime and will taper up to 300-350 mg daily after about a month.
so far: even on the wussy low dosages, I am seeing a significant change
in both sleep patterns and "ruminative thinking patterns" (obsessive
anxious dwelling on things). I'm sleeping through the night with no
abrupt wake-ups or difficulty falling asleep, and I feel rested in the
morning for the first time in ages. The anxiety-trigger thoughts are
still showing up but are not sticking around, and I'm just in a better
mood.
Serzone is reputed not to have sexual dysfunction side effects, which is
important since DepoProvera fscked my libido and a further medication
muck-up there would Not Be Good. The only side effects I've noticed so
far are periodic ravenous hunger (declining from the first couple of days)
and that the pills are murderous on the tummy for 30-45 minutes after
taking them.
--
ca...@tezcat.com ----> You must have this many clues
| to ride Usenet-II.
Carissima
In article <6i824q$h...@huitzilo.tezcat.com>,
Carissima <ca...@huitzilo.tezcat.com> wrote:
>so far: even on the wussy low dosages, I am seeing a significant change
>in both sleep patterns and "ruminative thinking patterns" (obsessive
>anxious dwelling on things). I'm sleeping through the night with no
>abrupt wake-ups or difficulty falling asleep, and I feel rested in the
>morning for the first time in ages. The anxiety-trigger thoughts are
>still showing up but are not sticking around, and I'm just in a better
>mood.
Update: well, the depression is gone. Unfortunately, that is having the
effect of sharpening the anxiety, which actually feels worse now. I've
got an appointment to talk to the meds doctor tomorrow morning. Panic
attack last Friday, three days of extreme anxiety to recover from it.
Ruminative thinking back in force. Sleep and no depression are the good
things, but I'm not sure that's enough to outweigh the utter suckiness of
the anxiety. *shrug* Back on the merry-meds-go-round, I guess.
Happy National Anxiety Disorders Screening Day, everyone.
Carissima
In article <6ipr4v$8...@huitzilo.tezcat.com>,
Carissima <ca...@huitzilo.tezcat.com> wrote:
>
>Update: well, the depression is gone. Unfortunately, that is having the
>effect of sharpening the anxiety, which actually feels worse now. I've
>got an appointment to talk to the meds doctor tomorrow morning. Panic
>attack last Friday, three days of extreme anxiety to recover from it.
Further update. Serzone has finally kicked in. There is an unfortunate
side effect for many folks of having heightened anxiety/panic for about
ten days after starting it, which I textbookily had. Anxiety pretty much
gone (waves, but mild ones), panic attacks gone, depression gone, sleeping
well and feeling pretty darned good.
I think we can count this one in the success bracket.
Bill Stewart-Cole
In article <6keta0$q...@xochi.tezcat.com>, ca...@xochi.tezcat.com
(Carissima) wrote:
Congratulations.
Knowing how that particular mix of problems feels, I can sympathize. It's
good to hear that someone is getting out. I'm not sure how I'd do if I
actually had to take something known to sharpen anxiety (EEK!) even in the
short run. It is generally considered a bad thing to bolt out of the
infernal cubicle and go outside to scream, and I can't afford to do any
more of that...
So far I have no idea if these famous little pills (Prozac: it's for
everything now...) are doing much of anything. If I don't think about the
past or the future or the present outside of what is immediately in front
of me, I can avoid off the crying jags, the anxiety, and the panic.
Sleeping is a different problem: laying down in bed starts a process that
inevitably leads to sleep, but gets there in a really bad way. I know now
that if I ever am father to an infant again, he or she will never be left
to cry to sleep. Been there, done that, going again in a couple minutes,
and making a child do it has to be abuse.
Yeah, I'm venting. Brain-dysentery. It's either type it or walk around
talking to someone who isn't here.
--
Bill Stewart-Cole bi...@scconsult.com
If you really want a response, e-mail me.
If you DEMAND a response, you had better be paying me.
Life is too real right now for me to read news religiously.
YoYo
Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>So far I have no idea if these famous little pills (Prozac: it's for
>everything now...) are doing much of anything.
How long have you been taking it? Prozac, IIRC, can take up to six weeks
to kick in.
>If I don't think about the
>past or the future or the present outside of what is immediately in front
>of me, I can avoid off the crying jags, the anxiety, and the panic.
>Sleeping is a different problem: laying down in bed starts a process that
>inevitably leads to sleep, but gets there in a really bad way. I know now
>that if I ever am father to an infant again, he or she will never be left
>to cry to sleep. Been there, done that, going again in a couple minutes,
>and making a child do it has to be abuse.
Geez, Bill, I hope things look up for you soon. Have you tried meds
besides Prozac? Sometimes you have to fiddle around with a number of
different ones before you find the one that works for you. Paxil has
worked for most of the people I know who have tried it (Except, notably,
for Bev), though it did have some unfortunate side-effects for me.
Serzone, even though it may have short-term anxiety as a side effect,
might be good for you. Cari takes it at bedtime because it really wipes
her out. Sounds like that might help you some.
Zoloft is helping me quite a bit. I had to adjust the dosage, but now that
I've got that properly tweaked, I'm feeling pretty good.
Almost every antidepressant medication has some short term anxiety or
anger effect. What I've read suggests that this is probably a function of
revealing emotions that had been masked by the depression. Sometimes it
helps just to be aware of the cause of these things.
(I realize this post is kind of scattershot. I'm just trying to mention
some things that helped me get through the adjustment period. It's too
early in the morning to be organized about it.)
Be aware, though, that no medication is going to make your problems go
away. The best they can do is to give you a little emotional distance from
them, and restore your energy so that you can deal with them more
effectively. The actual nuts-and-bolts of doing that is still up to you.
Good luck.
--
----YoYo------...@tezcat.com------------and stuff------
"I'm not getting any saner, here..."
Hillary Gorman
In <6kgvrq$e...@xochi.tezcat.com>,
YoYo <yo...@xochi.tezcat.com> wrote:
*Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
*
*>So far I have no idea if these famous little pills (Prozac: it's for
*>everything now...) are doing much of anything.
*>If I don't think about the
*>past or the future or the present outside of what is immediately in front
*>of me, I can avoid off the crying jags, the anxiety, and the panic.
*>Sleeping is a different problem: laying down in bed starts a process that
*>inevitably leads to sleep, but gets there in a really bad way. I know now
*>that if I ever am father to an infant again, he or she will never be left
*>to cry to sleep. Been there, done that, going again in a couple minutes,
*>and making a child do it has to be abuse.
*
*Geez, Bill, I hope things look up for you soon. Have you tried meds
*besides Prozac? Sometimes you have to fiddle around with a number of
*different ones before you find the one that works for you. Paxil has
*worked for most of the people I know who have tried it (Except, notably,
*for Bev), though it did have some unfortunate side-effects for me.
And later, YoYo remarked that meds are only a tool to distance you from
the real problem. Or something like that...
Anyway, I wanted to make a comment here. Back around 1992 or 1993 or so I
was involved in what seemed to me to be the most horrible breakup
possible, That Which Could Not Be Survived. I had been living with someone
for 3 years, pretending that we were happy (and sometimes, we really were.
Sometimes, we had moments of indescribably sublime joy. But many times we
were Not Happy, and I ignored those times.) One day he woke up and said
"that's it, goodbye, get out." This was the fourth or fifth time this had
happened so I said "ha ha very funny, get over it." as per usual
procedure. But no, this really was it.
After moving all my stuff out from our beautiful sunny San Francisco
victorian house into a crappy little studio apartment that cost 2x the $$
for 1/100th the space, and after figuring out which, if any, of "our"
friends were "my" friends, I found myself in a Very Bad Place.
Get up. Go to work. Hide in closet, hide in remote wing of building, hide
under colleague's desk, just HIDE anywhere. Cry. Eventually go home. Walk
into apartment. Cry. Lie on floor. Bang head into floor, or wall. Crawl
into bed. Cry. Drink some alcohol. Cry more. Get greasy takeout chinese.
Not eat the food. Cry. Call my remaining friend, invite her over, cry with
her because she was in the same kind of place I was.
lather, rinse, repeat.
Add in self destructive behaviors like drunk driving, calling my ex,
almost getting unpleasantly involved with his brother, many other wierd
and awful things. Perhaps most unpleasant was the night i drank to excess,
with my ex's brother, got into a big nasty fight with HIM, went home, left
home leaving all doors unlocked (accounting for loss of my stereo...),
DROVE to my ex's house, jumped into bed with him, stayed for TWO DAYS!!,
then got kicked out again, and well - the rest I can't even talk about.
Let me tell you, I thought I was going to DIE of the pain and I *welcomed*
the thought. My psycho(logist) at the time kept saying how NORMAL all this
was. I was BEGGING for meds, constantly telling her how I wanted ANYTHING
to escape the pain. Nope, she didn't buy it. I was *normal*.
Well, I don't know who was right, but here I am today, and I'm ok. I mean,
sure, I have my own problems...but I got over it, without meds. I
currently have a panic disorder which sometimes needs to be medicated -
and I'm fine with that. I used paxil in the short term and then weaned
myself off of that and now can control it with xanax as needed - and it
isn't needed that much, only a couple of times a month.
but for the SEVERE depression, when triggered by a *REAL* problem...I
don't know. Looking back, I feel that the whole experience made me a lot
stronger. During that black time, I could never have imagined saying this,
but I think working through it was good for me.
--
hillary gorman http://www.hillary.net in...@hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
upenn school of vet med class of 2000
Kate Wrightson
In article <slrn6mo5hm....@manx.misty.com>,
Hillary Gorman <hil...@hillary.net> wrote:
>And later, YoYo remarked that meds are only a tool to distance you from
>the real problem. Or something like that...
*scratch head* Hm. for me, meds are a way to remove the loud radio
static that is keeping me from looking at the problem rationally. So,
yes they're a tool, but they're bringing me closer to the problem, not
distancing. Diff'rent strokes, I suppose. I do know a few people for
whom antidepressants provided a little too much detachment from reality,
but they had other major problems besides depression.
I think the meds question has a lot to do with whether or not someone is
experiencing depression-because-of-sucky-thing or depression-because-of
randome-brain-chemistry-misfire-which-leads-to-sucky-thing.
--
___________________________________________________________________________
ka...@eyrie.org Kate Wrightson www.eyrie.org/~kate
YoYo
Hillary Gorman <hil...@hillary.net> wrote:
>Let me tell you, I thought I was going to DIE of the pain and I *welcomed*
>the thought. My psycho(logist) at the time kept saying how NORMAL all this
>was. I was BEGGING for meds, constantly telling her how I wanted ANYTHING
>to escape the pain. Nope, she didn't buy it. I was *normal*.
Indeed. I assumed that since Bill was already on Prozac, his therapist or
docor had determinied there was a need for them.
One of the reasons my therapist recommended meds for me is that there
isn't any *reason* for my constant, nagging anxiety. It's just... there.
There's nothing going on in my life that would seem to indicate constant
near-panic as an appropriate response. She says this is a big indicator
that the problem is essentially biochemical and not "psychological" in
origin.
YoYo
>*scratch head* Hm. for me, meds are a way to remove the loud radio
>static that is keeping me from looking at the problem rationally. So,
>yes they're a tool, but they're bringing me closer to the problem, not
>distancing. Diff'rent strokes, I suppose.
You're talking about intellectual distance. I'm talking about emotional
distance. 's two different things. (Maybe I should have said "breathing
room" rather than "distance".)
Meds cut down the trees so you can see your way out of the forest.
Bill Stewart-Cole
In article <6kgvrq$e...@xochi.tezcat.com>, yo...@xochi.tezcat.com (YoYo) wrote:
> Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>
> >So far I have no idea if these famous little pills (Prozac: it's for
> >everything now...) are doing much of anything.
>
> How long have you been taking it? Prozac, IIRC, can take up to six weeks
> to kick in.
a little over 4 weeks. I know it can take time, and that's why I still
take it religiously, even though it forces me to eat breakfast when I'm in
too much of a hurry.
>
> >If I don't think about the
> >past or the future or the present outside of what is immediately in front
> >of me, I can avoid off the crying jags, the anxiety, and the panic.
> >Sleeping is a different problem: laying down in bed starts a process that
> >inevitably leads to sleep, but gets there in a really bad way. I know now
> >that if I ever am father to an infant again, he or she will never be left
> >to cry to sleep. Been there, done that, going again in a couple minutes,
> >and making a child do it has to be abuse.
>
> Geez, Bill, I hope things look up for you soon. Have you tried meds
> besides Prozac? Sometimes you have to fiddle around with a number of
> different ones before you find the one that works for you. Paxil has
> worked for most of the people I know who have tried it (Except, notably,
> for Bev), though it did have some unfortunate side-effects for me.
Originally (for 2 weeks or so) I was on doxepin (aka Sinequan) and
hydroxyzine. This was because my acute symptoms were extreme anxiety,
panic, and sleeplessness. The hydroxyzine (mainly an anti-anxiety
antihistamine, fast-acting) was dropped in favor of the wonder-drug, but
I'm still on the doxepin because it assures that I actually sleep
eventually. The Prozac seemed a better fit to my meds doctor because
apparently it is also now being used for ADD and that's where it seems the
deep diagnosis is headed (I have a stack of eval forms to fill out to make
it official...)
> Serzone, even though it may have short-term anxiety as a side effect,
> might be good for you. Cari takes it at bedtime because it really wipes
> her out. Sounds like that might help you some.
>
> Zoloft is helping me quite a bit. I had to adjust the dosage, but now that
> I've got that properly tweaked, I'm feeling pretty good.
>
> Almost every antidepressant medication has some short term anxiety or
> anger effect. What I've read suggests that this is probably a function of
> revealing emotions that had been masked by the depression. Sometimes it
> helps just to be aware of the cause of these things.
That's what I figure is going on. I can't run away any more. See the sig.
> (I realize this post is kind of scattershot. I'm just trying to mention
> some things that helped me get through the adjustment period. It's too
> early in the morning to be organized about it.)
>
> Be aware, though, that no medication is going to make your problems go
> away. The best they can do is to give you a little emotional distance from
> them, and restore your energy so that you can deal with them more
> effectively. The actual nuts-and-bolts of doing that is still up to you.
>
> Good luck.
Thank you.
As I told someone else who was sweet enough to e-mail me about this, I
know that there is no treatment for the real-world reason I am now quite
obviously worried and sad all the time. The drugs just keep the brain from
going over the cliff.
Bill Stewart-Cole
> Hillary Gorman <hil...@hillary.net> wrote:
>
> >Let me tell you, I thought I was going to DIE of the pain and I *welcomed*
> >the thought. My psycho(logist) at the time kept saying how NORMAL all this
> >was. I was BEGGING for meds, constantly telling her how I wanted ANYTHING
> >to escape the pain. Nope, she didn't buy it. I was *normal*.
>
> Indeed. I assumed that since Bill was already on Prozac, his therapist or
> docor had determinied there was a need for them.
>
> One of the reasons my therapist recommended meds for me is that there
> isn't any *reason* for my constant, nagging anxiety. It's just... there.
> There's nothing going on in my life that would seem to indicate constant
> near-panic as an appropriate response. She says this is a big indicator
> that the problem is essentially biochemical and not "psychological" in
> origin.
I think there are two good reasons for meds. One is to address irrational
responses as you describe, the other is to prevent the understandable
normal responses that can be very dangerous.
I hate doing the brain-dysentery to the world all the time (you know, "my
shit is nastier than your shit" ...) but for me the most reasonable and
normal responses would have been extremely bad. I spent a long time
(arguably at least all of my adult life) setting myself up for where I am
right now, and the natural predictable result isn't generally seen as a
good thing.
YoYo
Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>As I told someone else who was sweet enough to e-mail me about this, I
>know that there is no treatment for the real-world reason I am now quite
>obviously worried and sad all the time. The drugs just keep the brain from
>going over the cliff.
*nod*
"Worried and sad" is better, by at least an order of magnitude, than
anxiety-ridden and depressed. And the only drugs that can help you escape
being worried and sad right now are illegal. :) It's enough right now to
keep body and soul together. Obviously, your life is going to suck for a
while. You need to do what you can to get through it, and just try to
keep the faith that things are going to get better eventually.
Bill Stewart-Cole
In article <6khfvl$8...@huitzilo.tezcat.com>, yo...@huitzilo.tezcat.com
(YoYo) wrote:
> Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>
> >As I told someone else who was sweet enough to e-mail me about this, I
> >know that there is no treatment for the real-world reason I am now quite
> >obviously worried and sad all the time. The drugs just keep the brain from
> >going over the cliff.
>
> *nod*
>
> "Worried and sad" is better, by at least an order of magnitude, than
> anxiety-ridden and depressed.
Well, I've been known to use lightweight words sometimes.
Worried is feeling the adrenaline waves coming out of my kidneys and
shooting down my arms to where my hands swell, sometimes so bad that my
wedding ring starts cutting, and having to get up and GET OUT and SCREAM
or HIT SOMETHING.
Sad is spending most of Saturday curled up in my papasan chair sniffling
until I finally decided to do the stupid thing: get a little tipsy and
drive out to a party where the second-hand illegal smoke was thick enough
to get an elephant high. At least I had the good sense to NOT take the
motorcycle (I almost did... ) and to NOT drive home until late Sunday
morning.
>And the only drugs that can help you escape
> being worried and sad right now are illegal. :)
No, in fact alcohol and tobacco can do a fairly decent job for me.
Unfortunately the alcohol only makes it worse later and tobacco will kill
you. And in my case, both are tangled up in the history of this depression
and in the marital problems, so they both are Bad Things to do right now.
> It's enough right now to
> keep body and soul together. Obviously, your life is going to suck for a
> while. You need to do what you can to get through it, and just try to
> keep the faith that things are going to get better eventually.
I don't have that faith yet. What is getting me through it is the
knowledge that NOT getting through it would probably totally destroy my
wife with guilt (see my first post in this group about love... ) and would
be really rotten for my daughter. I'm getting by on a sense of obligation
and a sort of faith in my own bad luck.
(I've found that explaining that faith is just a good way to disturb
people, so if you don't get it, don't ask)
Kathy Pascoe
[I think I'm saying the same thing Yoyo did.]
On Wed, 27 May 1998 20:51:11 -0500, bi...@scconsult.com (Bill
Stewart-Cole) wrote:
> > It's enough right now to
> > keep body and soul together. Obviously, your life is going to suck for a
> > while. You need to do what you can to get through it, and just try to
> > keep the faith that things are going to get better eventually.
>
> I don't have that faith yet.
I didn't either, when I muddled through a crisis in 1994-1995. But ...
> What is getting me through it is the
> knowledge that NOT getting through it would probably totally destroy my
> wife with guilt (see my first post in this group about love... ) and would
> be really rotten for my daughter. I'm getting by on a sense of obligation
> and a sort of faith in my own bad luck.
... that's enough. If obligation keeps you going, that'll do, until
such time as things calm enough for you to figure out long-term
solutions. At least, that's how I stayed sane.
I hope it gets better for you soon. The feeling of flying apart from
the inside is terrifying, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Discord
A lot of people refer to meds as a "crutch." Very often, when they say
it, they're implying something negative.
I refer to them that way, but I don't mean it in the negative way.
Crutches are things you use to get around until your leg (or whatever)
heals, which it does much better without so much pressure on it. Meds are
the same way.
You can't ever heal just by taking meds and forgetting about the problem,
of course, which is I guess where the analogy breaks down, but meds can
give you a stability that makes it possible to be /able/ to look at the
underlying problems and try fixing them. As such, they are as much a good
tool as crutches are to someone who broke their leg.
Discord, speaking as someone who won't go on meds personally, but who has
been known to advocate them for others, so long as they don't think of
them as a 'cure'.
Kate Wrightson
In article <6kis27$r...@huitzilo.tezcat.com>,
Discord <ti...@huitzilo.tezcat.com> wrote:
>been known to advocate them for others, so long as they don't think of
>them as a 'cure'.
Disagree. My meds *are* a cure. They cure a biochemical imbalance in my
brain. I will be taking them for the rest of my life, except when I'm
pregnant, in order to correct the imbalance that gives me panic attacks
and unfounded anxiety that makes me almost utterly incapable of coping
with daily life.
The meds don't solve my daily life, but I'm not relying on them to do
that. They perform the same function for me as would insulin, blood
pressure regulators, or any other prescription designed to be taken to
regulate a body process gone awry.
YoYo
Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>>And the only drugs that can help you escape
>> being worried and sad right now are illegal. :)
>
>No, in fact alcohol and tobacco can do a fairly decent job for me.
>Unfortunately the alcohol only makes it worse later and tobacco will kill
>you. And in my case, both are tangled up in the history of this depression
>and in the marital problems, so they both are Bad Things to do right now.
I was thinking more along the lines of major narcotics. Which, in addition
to being illegal, are just plain stupid.
>> It's enough right now to
>> keep body and soul together. Obviously, your life is going to suck for a
>> while. You need to do what you can to get through it, and just try to
>> keep the faith that things are going to get better eventually.
>
>I don't have that faith yet.
It's enough to understand it intellectually, even if you don't feel it.
>What is getting me through it is the
>knowledge that NOT getting through it would probably totally destroy my
>wife with guilt (see my first post in this group about love... ) and would
>be really rotten for my daughter. I'm getting by on a sense of obligation
>and a sort of faith in my own bad luck.
That'll work, too. As long as there's *something* to keep you going, it
doesn't really matter what it is.
Bill Stewart-Cole
> Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>
> >>And the only drugs that can help you escape
> >> being worried and sad right now are illegal. :)
> >
> >No, in fact alcohol and tobacco can do a fairly decent job for me.
> >Unfortunately the alcohol only makes it worse later and tobacco will kill
> >you. And in my case, both are tangled up in the history of this depression
> >and in the marital problems, so they both are Bad Things to do right now.
>
> I was thinking more along the lines of major narcotics. Which, in addition
> to being illegal, are just plain stupid.
>
> >> It's enough right now to
> >> keep body and soul together. Obviously, your life is going to suck for a
> >> while. You need to do what you can to get through it, and just try to
> >> keep the faith that things are going to get better eventually.
> >
> >I don't have that faith yet.
>
> It's enough to understand it intellectually, even if you don't feel it.
I'm not sure I do yet.On the other hand, if you'd like a cogent logical
explanation of why thing are NOT going to get better, I'm perfectly
capable of providing it.
> >What is getting me through it is the
> >knowledge that NOT getting through it would probably totally destroy my
> >wife with guilt (see my first post in this group about love... ) and would
> >be really rotten for my daughter. I'm getting by on a sense of obligation
> >and a sort of faith in my own bad luck.
>
> That'll work, too. As long as there's *something* to keep you going, it
> doesn't really matter what it is.
I guess.
I think what the meds have made possible is just enough emotional distance
(sometimes) that I can think rationally about the situation. The problem
with that is sometimes life really does suck, and the objective analysis
really isn't bright.
I haven't found a way to paint a hopeful and realistically probable
picture of the future yet. The pretty picture I want, the only remaining
dream I had, is looking less likely all the time. To overwork the
metaphor, I'm trying to put together something reasonably attractive from
about half the torn and muddied pieces of that picture, and it just isn't
working. At least I am sometimes capable of being intellectual about it
instead of wandering around the house aimlessly making sobbing speeches to
someone who isn't here.
--
YoYo
Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>> It's enough to understand it intellectually, even if you don't feel it.
>
>I'm not sure I do yet.On the other hand, if you'd like a cogent logical
>explanation of why thing are NOT going to get better, I'm perfectly
>capable of providing it.
I'm sure. I'm not going to argue the point with you. Things will get
better. You will adjust to your new circumstances. This is The Way Of
Things.
>> That'll work, too. As long as there's *something* to keep you going, it
>> doesn't really matter what it is.
>I guess.
>
>I think what the meds have made possible is just enough emotional distance
>(sometimes) that I can think rationally about the situation. The problem
>with that is sometimes life really does suck, and the objective analysis
>really isn't bright.
It's not "objective", either.
>I haven't found a way to paint a hopeful and realistically probable
>picture of the future yet.
This isn't the time for that. This is the time for survival. This is the
time you take life one day, one hour, one *second*, if necessary, at a
time.
Once, years ago, I was suicidal. I guess some part of me wanted to hang
on, so I told a friend what was going on. After much talking, I said,
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Brush your teeth," she said.
What she meant by that, is that for some people, getting up and doing
something as small as brushing their teeth is an accomplishment. And if
that's what you can handle, then that's what you do. When you can handle
more, you do more.
Don't worry about making a picture of the future. Brush your teeth today.
The other stuff will come in time. (It doesn't matter if you actually
believe that now or not.)
Discord
In article <6kjh2d$2...@eyrie.org>, Kate Wrightson <ka...@eyrie.org> wrote:
>Discord <ti...@huitzilo.tezcat.com> wrote:
>>been known to advocate them for others, so long as they don't think of
>>them as a 'cure'.
>
>Disagree. My meds *are* a cure. They cure a biochemical imbalance in my
>brain.
*shrugs* You can call it a cure if you want; I'm not going to, any more
than I think of albuterol as a 'cure' for asthma. Or, if we're going to
stick with my crutch analogy, a cane being a cure for a crippled leg.
But I think the real issue we're discussing is whether or not people
should /stay/ on meds.
Meds are /horribly/ overprescribed, IMO, and often the /only/ option
looked at. If you're depressed or having panic attacks, the doctor sticks
you on the meds, you stabilize, and then never even /consider/ anything
like therapy (formal or otherwise) or support -- either because no one
thought to tell you that was an option, which is often the case, or
because people /do/ look at the meds as a 'cure' -- well, that's the bit
I object to. Not the ultimate decision that the meds are the only thing
that's going to keep you stable, but the lack of consideration of other
options. Sometimes 'stable' isn't the last place you can get... and
sometimes people never get any further because they rely solely on
medication for their problems.
I also think some people are getting put on meds who don't have a
long-term imbalance problem; that is, something that would correct
itself anyhow in relatively short order... and that some are being put on
not because they are in no position to stabilize without the meds, but
because that's what doctors are doing when people report depression:
putting them on Zoloft or Prozac or whatever, just automatically.
For the record, when I was 17, I was diagnosed as having a chemical
imbalance that caused my depression. I have never been on meds. I might
have been better off if I had been; I'll freely admit that I still get
some really nasty bouts of depression. But I personally prefer to avoid
them, and things are definitely better, and still improving -- and a lot
of the reason I still get depressed is /new/ stuff to get depressed
about; when those things aren't happening, I usually am fine (unless I
haven't been eating, but that's another topic altogether; I need to visit
a doctor and get tested for hypoglycemia, as blood sugar problems
run in my family, and there is definitely a correlation between my mood
swings and how often/recently I've eaten...)
I generally don't talk about it much because I know I'm in a minority,
and anyhow, it's not /my/ choice to make for other people. So don't think
of this as some big advocation for people to stay off meds; I understand
they are useful, sometimes are necessary (certainly for someone who is
unstable and can't focus well enough to get any more stable), and that
some people will never feel stable enough to do without them. I just
don't agree with certain ways of looking at the problems and solutions.
=*=*= ti...@tezcat.com =*= http://www.tezcat.com/~tina/ =*=*=
"Everyone dies instantly---you're alive, you're alive, you're alive,
you're dead." -- Steven Wright
YoYo
Discord <ti...@huitzilo.tezcat.com> wrote:
>For the record, when I was 17, I was diagnosed as having a chemical
>imbalance that caused my depression. I have never been on meds. I might
>have been better off if I had been; I'll freely admit that I still get
>some really nasty bouts of depression. But I personally prefer to avoid
>them, and things are definitely better, and still improving -- and a lot
This was my position, too, for a long time. Then I went on meds and was
simply *amazed* at how well they worked.
(Please understand - I'm not criticizing your decision. I agree that meds
are overprescribed (I think insurance has a lot to do with that). I'm just
pointing out that positions can often change in light of new information.
Also, my therapist and my doctor both told me that a lot of times, being
on meds for a few months can "train" your brain to be more in balance, and
that things will stay okay after you go off them. This is the strategy
we're persuing with me since my depression/anxiety is is episodic rather
than chronic in nature. I expect that somewhere down the road, things
might fall out of whack, and I'll have to go back on, but I can live with
that.)
Kate Wrightson
In article <6klo74$h...@huitzilo.tezcat.com>,
Discord <ti...@huitzilo.tezcat.com> wrote:
>*shrugs* You can call it a cure if you want; I'm not going to, any more
>than I think of albuterol as a 'cure' for asthma. Or, if we're going to
>stick with my crutch analogy, a cane being a cure for a crippled leg.
Fine. Agree to disagree, I suppose. If you're using "cure" in the sense
of "take this for a while and then you'll be fixed", then meds *are*
sometimes a cure. Short-term treatment does fix anxiety/panic in some
people.
>But I think the real issue we're discussing is whether or not people
>should /stay/ on meds.
Um, I wasn't discussing that issue at all.
>Meds are /horribly/ overprescribed, IMO, and often the /only/ option
>looked at. If you're depressed or having panic attacks, the doctor sticks
>you on the meds, you stabilize, and then never even /consider/ anything
>like therapy (formal or otherwise) or support -- either because no one
>thought to tell you that was an option, which is often the case, or
>because people /do/ look at the meds as a 'cure' -- well, that's the bit
I'm required to participate in cognitive/behavioral therapy as well as
receiving the medication. The C/B therapy is an eight-week course with
follow-up visits.
>because that's what doctors are doing when people report depression:
>putting them on Zoloft or Prozac or whatever, just automatically.
Y'know, I know doctors like this exist. But I've been clinically
depressed probably since I was ten, and definitely since I was thirteen,
and have seen at least ten different doctors in that time -- and not a
single one of them offered me either therapy or medication. Granted,
SSRIs weren't a possibility at that time, but still. Even the suggestion
of electroshock would have been a step in the right direction toward help.
>of the reason I still get depressed is /new/ stuff to get depressed
See, and when I get depressed or anxious or panicky, there *is* no stuff
to get depressed etc. about. No causation. It is clear to me what is a
depression and what is a caused-mood. They're distinctly different for
me.
Bill Stewart-Cole
> See, and when I get depressed or anxious or panicky, there *is* no stuff
> to get depressed etc. about. No causation. It is clear to me what is a
> depression and what is a caused-mood. They're distinctly different for
> me.
Hmmmm...
I'm really quite new to all this, but I am not so sure there is a huge
difference for me, except in hindsight.
I spent many years moderately depressed. It probably started when I was a
child. I can come up with a long list of 'reasons' that I was depressed,
but the behavior and especially the extended nature of it was not a normal
response to those fairly short-term roots. I had a number of
not-so-depressed periods too, and I can pretty easily identify the reasons
for those. Instead of being generally not dark and occasionally darkened
by real things, it took special reasons for me to make it up to something
like normal. Right now, partly as a secondary effect of the depression, I
have really good reasons to be depressed. The only difference is that I
have something very real to latch onto and worry myself into a soggy ball
about. I can get myself deeper in darkness than I ever did with the
chronic depression, but that's actually a fairly normal response to an
acutely bad real situation.
Relating this back to meds, it's wierd for me. I know the fast-acting
stuff I started on when the Really Bad Shit hit me was a life-saver,
literally. The Prozac is way different. Whether I believe that it is
anything more than snake oil saturated sugar in a yellow/green capsule
depends on when you ask me. I zapped the acute ugliness with hydroxyzine
for 2 weeks and got a start at getting my head around a change that
challenges my sense of identity. I could feel that stuff working. Since
switching to Prozac I'm darker, more anxious, and less focused, but a lot
less drowsy. This is week 5, and I'm waiting. On the other hand, I've
acquired a really viciously black sense of humor more acute than I
remember ever having. I am comically pathetic at times and I seem to be
the first one to notice. Yesterday I made a crack that had my therapist in
wild laughter for about 10 seconds, until she caught herself was
horrifed. Is that the Prozac turning away those wandering homeless
serotonins or just a natural adaptation? I dunno. I keep taking the pills
because I hope that maybe one of these days I'll wake up and have some
change I can put my finger on.
The only thing I know for sure about the Prozac is that unlike regular
unoiled sugar pills, I cannot take them with a multivitamin, a Mega-B, and
a swig of black coffee on an empty stomach.
My wife just drove up. I gotta go cry and whine and beg and be crushed.
YoYo
Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>In article <6km93i$m...@eyrie.org>, ka...@eyrie.org (Kate Wrightson) wrote:
>
>> See, and when I get depressed or anxious or panicky, there *is* no stuff
>> to get depressed etc. about. No causation. It is clear to me what is a
>> depression and what is a caused-mood. They're distinctly different for
>> me.
>
>Hmmmm...
>
>I'm really quite new to all this, but I am not so sure there is a huge
>difference for me, except in hindsight.
[snip]
Well, there's kind of a chicken-and-egg effect here. You feel bad. This is
caused by low levels of seratonin. But the levels of seratonin are
affected by the things you experience and think and feel.
For some people, meds will lift one's mood enough to give them enough
energy to deal with the problems that are depressing them.
For others, low seratonin is just something that occurs naturally and for
no apparent reason. Meds, in and of themselves, are an adequate solution.
For still others, there may be some combination of these.
Bill Stewart-Cole
> Well, there's kind of a chicken-and-egg effect here. You feel bad. This is
> caused by low levels of seratonin. But the levels of seratonin are
> affected by the things you experience and think and feel.
Tangential path here, watch out...
Has anyone heard of any research into the pathogenesis of SSRI-sensitive
emotional disorders with an eye to dietary patterns?
If anyone with a physiology/metabolism background is curious about where
I'm going, think diabetes. The combination of a genetic adaptation to
feast/famine patterns with a chronically abundant diet seems to make some
people overcompensate and end up chronically undersensitive to insulin,
mimicking insulin deficiency when in fact they tend to have high insulin
levels. Serotonin (like insulin) is linked to nutritional factors, and it
would be interesting if anyone had looked closely at the possibility of
some analogous mechanism. My understanding of SSRI's is that they slow
scavenging of serotonin in order to leave it in synapses longer and
actually hit receptors, which would seem to indicate the same sort of
underlying reduced sensitivity as seen in adult-onset diabetes.
Of course my neurobiology is over a decade old, and I'm sure the SSRI
revolution has led to a far deeper understanding of serotonin than the
simple picture I had drawn for me as an undergrad. It's just a nagging
sense of commonality that struck me, and if there's anything out there
that anyone could point me at, I'd appreciate it.
I'm pondering whether there's some way to meter my tryptophan intake...
YoYo
Stephanie da Silva <ari...@taronga.com> wrote:
>Would I have been better off on drugs? Very likely, but they didn't
>have the neat drugs back then that they do now, did they? But I think
>what I'm trying to say is, it is possible to survive these types of
>situations on one's own.
Of course it is. It's also possible to survive bad bacterial infections
without antibiotics.
I don't mean to sound standoffish there, but lately I've run up against a
number of folks (not anyone here) who seem to regard taking meds as a sign
of weakness or laziness, and I don't understand why treating the brain is
regarded so differently from treating any other part of the body.
YoYo
Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>Of course my neurobiology is over a decade old, and I'm sure the SSRI
>revolution has led to a far deeper understanding of serotonin than the
>simple picture I had drawn for me as an undergrad. It's just a nagging
>sense of commonality that struck me, and if there's anything out there
>that anyone could point me at, I'd appreciate it.
It sounds reasonable, though seratonin is related to a lot more than just
nutrition.
(BTW, I seem to remember hearing recently that a Dopamine Reuptake
Inhibitor has been developed. Anybody know anything about that?)
Kate Wrightson
In article <6koks4$8...@bonkers.taronga.com>,
Stephanie da Silva <ari...@taronga.com> wrote:
>I had something similar happen to me, but much longer ago - during
>parts of 1978 and 1979. Caused by a boyfriend who massively mistreated
>me. For years afterwards, I thought I'd had a nervous breakdown
>(catchphrase in those days), but later when clinical depression became
>the disorder du jour, I realized that's what was wrong with me. I
>know I had problems and I knew I should have sought treatment but I
>eventually snapped out of it, on my own, without either therapy or
See, and this is what I guess I'm not saying clearly. There are
depressions that are caused by something, as described by Stephanie and
Hillary and Discord. In these cases, I wholly agree; medication is
probably not the first or best answer as much as time and possible
therapy.
But then there's what I have. My depressions are not caused by anything.
I cannot point to something and say "that event is what caused a year of
catatonia". They just happen, because of my brain's biochemistry. I
cannot predict their appearance, I do not know how long they will last,
and I do not know how intense they will be. Because there isn't anything
that caused them, going to therapy can be an utter waste of money:
Therapist: Why are you depressed?
Me: I don't know. Everything is going so well.
Therapist: There must be something.
Me: No, really, there isn't.
Therapist: Why are you hiding it from me? Did someone die, did you lose
your job, did you have a bad breakup?
Me: No. I'm just depressed.
Therapist: Then there's nothing I can do for you except take your money.
For people like me, it's non-causal depression or lifetime medication to
regulate my biochemistry. It's different from depressions caused by
Significant Life Events; while the depression is the same, the etiology is
wholly different. It's awfully hard to fix what went wrong when there
isn't anything that went wrong to cause the problem.
I feel like we're all sort of talking past each other in this thread
because we're talking about different sorts of experiences. When I say
that I see psychotropic medications as a cure, it's because of the sort of
depression I have. I don't see psychotropics as a cure for grief, though.
For causal depression, talking therapy is probably going to be a lot more
helpful than biochemical therapy; for non-causal depression, the opposite
is true.
Bill Stewart-Cole
> Stephanie da Silva <ari...@taronga.com> wrote:
>
> >Would I have been better off on drugs? Very likely, but they didn't
> >have the neat drugs back then that they do now, did they? But I think
> >what I'm trying to say is, it is possible to survive these types of
> >situations on one's own.
>
> Of course it is. It's also possible to survive bad bacterial infections
> without antibiotics.
>
> I don't mean to sound standoffish there, but lately I've run up against a
> number of folks (not anyone here) who seem to regard taking meds as a sign
> of weakness or laziness, and I don't understand why treating the brain is
> regarded so differently from treating any other part of the body.
I think that sums it up very well.
I was, I see now, clinically depressed for years, with "reasons" (some
tangible, some in my head) that certainly didn't justify it, and a
progression that didn't map to the real world. I was deeper in darkness
and more withdrawn last year than ever, even though my real life and my
(sometimes mistaken) understanding of it were markedly better than ever.
Here comes an overworked metaphor. It was like walking on an unset broken
leg. In my case, a compound fracture, and one which I ignored while
leaning on someone else. Losing that support without any warning that I
was able to recognize just did more damage, but the basic problem is still
there, the further damage is a lot like the original, and while I MIGHT be
able to
I cannot speak from the perspective of successful talk or medical
psychotherapy or of really getting over major hurt without help. I know
that I cannot afford to take a decade to get well, because I have at least
one grave obligation to get at least somewhat well reasonably fast. If the
medication helps, great. If the talk therapy helps, great. If you'd asked
me 6 months ago about either, or about whether I needed any help, I would
have scoffed at it all. If someone had surreptitiously fed me some magic
anti-depressant then (i.e. one that definitely worked instead of the stuff
I'm STILL skeptical of as I take it religiously) I would probably not have
the real life problems I've developed since.
Bill Stewart-Cole
In article <6kok16$8...@bonkers.taronga.com>, ari...@taronga.com
(Stephanie da Silva) wrote:
> In article <bill-29059...@192.168.1.1>,
> Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>
> >My wife just drove up. I gotta go cry and whine and beg and be crushed.
>
> But see, you don't.
Easy for you to say.
I wasn't as pathetic as I have been, mostly because Sandra was very sweet
and not distant and it rather disoriented me. She even brought a frozen
bag of her fabulous pot-stickers, all ready for me to cook up if I ever
remember to eat again.
It's hard to explain the significance of that, because no one reading this
has ever seen me with a plate of those pot-stickers, or seen her response
to my appreciation of her cooking. The only comparison I can make is to
some sort of sexual gift, but it's deeper than that, and Sandra definitely
knows it. She was in a hurry, but she came in, gave me a hug and a kiss on
the cheek, dropped off Megan's stuff, noted my ongoing wasting away in a
complimentary manner, put the food in the freezer, apologized for being in
a hurry, and repeated the phrase that sometimes sounds like a terrible
rejection and sometimes like a hint of hope: "I am still your friend."
Of course, that all is great while it lasts. It never lasts for more than
the little snippets of time that she blows through dropping off or picking
up Megan and her things, or some object she has left here or whatever.
Then whether the encounter is pleasant or pathetic I obsess on it until
the next time. In the larger picture it just keeps me suspended where I
am. I'm afraid to try to move on until I know without any possible doubt
that I have to, because all the 'moving on' scenarios look so bleak. I
still wear my wedding ring because I still feel everything it symbolizes,
and I still can't leave behind the only thing I've held on to all my adult
life. Even if I manage to not be pathetic and ellicit a crushing when
she's here, I do the job alone later.
Bill Stewart-Cole
> Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>
> >Of course my neurobiology is over a decade old, and I'm sure the SSRI
> >revolution has led to a far deeper understanding of serotonin than the
> >simple picture I had drawn for me as an undergrad. It's just a nagging
> >sense of commonality that struck me, and if there's anything out there
> >that anyone could point me at, I'd appreciate it.
>
> It sounds reasonable, though seratonin is related to a lot more than just
> nutrition.
Certainly, but there's a popular hypothesis for how adult-onset (Type II)
diabetes comes about involving diet and genes that might have an analog
with serotonin. Type II diabetics don't lack insulin, which is produced
in response to raised blood sugar (i.e. eating) they just have a
chronically depressed response to insulin. The pathogenesis hypothesis is
that the depressed response is the result of chronic insulin elevation
building a resistance. Thre is a theoretical model of how that can be a
positive adaptation for people who live in a feast and famine environment,
but it goes wrong when one lives for long enough with a decent constant
food intake.
Serotonin is limited by diet, because the only synthetic path for it in
the body is from tryptophan, an amino acid that itself cannot be
synthesized in the body and must be eaten. The contented drowsiness many
people get from a big meal is partly due to high blood sugar facilitating
the transport of tryptophan across the complex system often referred to as
the 'blood-brain barrier' and as a result raising brain serotonin levels.
This also explains the irrational crankiness of a lot of people when they
are hungry. My wife and daughter both display this problem in the extreme.
The running joke: PMS stands for Pre-Munchies Syndrome. Generally the meal
needs to include both a tryptophan source and a carbohydrate source, but
this isn't a very hard combo to get: as my daughter says "I need a glass
of milk to calm down and think!"
Anyway, there is the (well-documented and well-studied) direct linkage
between blood sugar and serotonin levels, but I'm wondering if anyone has
looked at an unconnected but analogous model for serotonin sensitivity
dysfunction similar to the one widely accepted for insulin sensitivity
dysfunction (i.e. diabetes). Maybe depression-prone brains are able to
adapt to occasionally getting big spikes of serotonin by desensitizing,
and a modern Western diet results in that desensitization becoming
chronic. Years of regular balanced meals rich in protein and the unusually
adaptable serotonin receptors just turn off. That's my wild hypothesis. I
am curious if there's been any investigation in that direction, and I
guess I have some searching to do.
Russ Allbery
YoYo <yo...@xochi.tezcat.com> writes:
> I don't mean to sound standoffish there, but lately I've run up against
> a number of folks (not anyone here) who seem to regard taking meds as a
> sign of weakness or laziness, and I don't understand why treating the
> brain is regarded so differently from treating any other part of the
> body.
Personally, the the reason why I'd be leery of taking drugs is because
I've heard enough about the side effects and some of the things they can
do to your head to be seriously afraid of them. 'course, I've been lucky
so far and haven't had anything happen to me to warrant them; if that
happened, it'd be a hard choice.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Bill Stewart-Cole
In article <m3ogwfh...@windlord.Stanford.EDU>, Russ Allbery
<r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
> YoYo <yo...@xochi.tezcat.com> writes:
>
> > I don't mean to sound standoffish there, but lately I've run up against
> > a number of folks (not anyone here) who seem to regard taking meds as a
> > sign of weakness or laziness, and I don't understand why treating the
> > brain is regarded so differently from treating any other part of the
> > body.
>
> Personally, the the reason why I'd be leery of taking drugs is because
> I've heard enough about the side effects and some of the things they can
> do to your head to be seriously afraid of them.
Take my word for it, there are times when a reduced libido is a very good thing.
Some of the worst scare stories about Prozac and other SSRI's are really
just that: unscientific anecdotes specifically collected to intentionally
scare people. One need only look at who is collecting and promoting those
scare stories to understand the motivation.
That does not mean that all psychoactives are 100% positive. Certainly
there are addiction problems with some, unpleasant side-effects that
sometimes crop up, and people who end up using them as a crutch because
they get lousy care that is nothing but drugs.
>'course, I've been lucky
> so far and haven't had anything happen to me to warrant them; if that
> happened, it'd be a hard choice.
I'm really new to this, and I was very skeptical of psychoactives up until
about 7 weeks ago. That's when I was at a point where I could have either
self-medicated myself in a self-destructive way, resisted that and stayed
on the edge of psychosis (or over the edge), or do what I did and get my
brain functioning normally enough to cope with reality. Sorta. The drugs
sure as hell haven't done a perfect job, and I'm still not fully convinced
that the wonder drug of the 90's isn't really just sugar saturated in
snake oil, but I know that the stuff I could feel working (primarily an
antihistamine that was used for anxiety and panic problems) salvaged
enough sanity that I could still function. It also made it possible for me
to live with a situation that felt like the end of my life long enough to
recognize that maybe it's just the end of any hope for an enjoyable life
(hey, it's a step...). Yeah, it was a hard choice. It was a choice to
live and not get so crazy that I no longer had the ability to make my own
choices.
It's a little scary to recognize it in those terms, and some people have
scoffed when I've put it that way, but it is no exaggeration. In a sense I
was lucky because I got the episodic raving loonies instead of completely
losing touch with reality once and for all. I suspect that most people
have some sort of similar breaking point, where the mind will just stop
working usefully under the stress and shock. It's no fun to go through or
even think about but it a really good thing that there are medicines
available for the brain when it goes awry, just as thre are medicines to
treat infections or decongest the sinuses or settle the stomach.
Tangential veer ahead...
The more I think about psychoactive skepticism, the more ascientific it
seems to me, even though I've always been something of a skeptic and yet
have always been pretty scientifically grounded. Everyone has experience
with various parts of the body just not working quite right. Sometimes
medicine can help that. No one blinks at the thought of voluntary
chemical mind modification (alcohol, caffeine, nicotine) although anyone
who did the intestinal analog to recreational drinking would be considered
really wierd. (see alt.tasteless...) Brain dysfunction is not as easily
definable as intestinal dysfunction in mild forms, but when it becomes
obvious and debilitating it would be insane to NOT treat it where there
are known effective treatments. It's not generally considered appropriate
to tell someone with colitis to just get a grip, but people with similarly
debilitating brain problems get approximately that advice all the time.
Russ Allbery
Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> writes:
> Some of the worst scare stories about Prozac and other SSRI's are really
> just that: unscientific anecdotes specifically collected to
> intentionally scare people. One need only look at who is collecting and
> promoting those scare stories to understand the motivation.
Actually, I was referring to what I've heard on this newsgroup, and from
friends who have taken one drug or another. (Those in the latter category
have usually gotten the symptoms to clear up with either time or
medication changes, but the intermediate bad effects scare me.)
> Brain dysfunction is not as easily definable as intestinal dysfunction
> in mild forms, but when it becomes obvious and debilitating it would be
> insane to NOT treat it where there are known effective treatments. It's
> not generally considered appropriate to tell someone with colitis to
> just get a grip, but people with similarly debilitating brain problems
> get approximately that advice all the time.
My worry about medication that affects such things is more personal. I'm
an extremely introspective person who works in a highly technical
position, and I absolutely rely on my mind to continue functioning
properly not just for my job but more critically for my emotional state,
my ability to interact with other people in the fashion that I'm used to,
and my ability to clearly perceive what's going on around me.
Things that threaten that, whether it be the imbalance or the side effects
or unknown effects of the *treatment* for the imbalance, scare me quite a
bit. If medication one is taking for other chronic health problems isn't
working, one can look at what's happening and analyze that; with
medication that affects one's mind, one may lose the ability to analyze.
So it's definitely not that I'd tell someone to get a grip, it's that the
drugs scare me as much as the mental states that cause the need for the
drugs do. Hard choices that thankfully so far I haven't had to make.
YoYo
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>Personally, the the reason why I'd be leery of taking drugs is because
>I've heard enough about the side effects and some of the things they can
>do to your head to be seriously afraid of them.
Such as?
YoYo
Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
>Some of the worst scare stories about Prozac and other SSRI's are really
>just that: unscientific anecdotes specifically collected to intentionally
>scare people. One need only look at who is collecting and promoting those
>scare stories to understand the motivation.
The worst ones seem to involve violent and/or suicidal ideation shortly
after beginning medication. If you look at the literature you find that
this happens with *all* antidepressants, not just Prozac, and not just
SSRIs but Tricyclics and MAOIs, too. It's generally regarded as a
psychological, and not a chemical effect, and shouldn't be a problem if
the patient is adequately supervised in the first few weeks of medication.
For my own part, I can say that I had about a week-long period of anger
and irritability. It was a lot like what I felt like when I quit smoking.
YoYo
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>Actually, I was referring to what I've heard on this newsgroup, and from
>friends who have taken one drug or another. (Those in the latter category
>have usually gotten the symptoms to clear up with either time or
>medication changes, but the intermediate bad effects scare me.)
In my own experience, they're more annoying that scary
>My worry about medication that affects such things is more personal. I'm
>an extremely introspective person who works in a highly technical
>position, and I absolutely rely on my mind to continue functioning
>properly not just for my job but more critically for my emotional state,
>my ability to interact with other people in the fashion that I'm used to,
>and my ability to clearly perceive what's going on around me.
Again, in my own experience, the drugs did not affect my ability to do my
job. For the first couple of days, I felt kind of "*bleah*" (I don't know
how to describe it any better than that), but it wasn't any worse than
trying to work with a cold or something. I was able to interact with
patrons without losing my cool (I'm pretty good at that, anyway).
>So it's definitely not that I'd tell someone to get a grip, it's that the
>drugs scare me as much as the mental states that cause the need for the
>drugs do.
I think that's a bit overcautious. Aside from some minor transitional
effects, my experience with antidepressants has been unambiguously
positive.
Hillary Gorman
In <bill-30059...@192.168.1.1>,
Bill Stewart-Cole <bi...@scconsult.com> wrote:
*
*Certainly, but there's a popular hypothesis for how adult-onset (Type II)
*diabetes comes about involving diet and genes that might have an analog
*with serotonin. Type II diabetics don't lack insulin, which is produced
*in response to raised blood sugar (i.e. eating) they just have a
Not in the early stages. However, after the hyperglycemic stage (which is
often not picked up by doctors because people are simply embarrassed to
admit that they pee all the time, or they are happy that they are eating
more and losing weight, so they say nothing....), the beta cells generally
DO stop making insulin.
During the early onset stage, there is a lot of insulin being released in
a futile attmempt to lower the persistent hyperglycemia, and this
unfortunately results in a downregulation of the peripheral insulin
receptors, resulting in a worse problem. Then the beta cells can't keep up
with demand and end up burning out, and atrophying...then, you end up with
an upregulation of the peripheral insulin receptors - and for a time, the
patient may go through a "honeymoon" phase, where some low amount of
insulin is being made, and there are enough receptors around, and things
are working well. This doesn't last that long.
*chronically depressed response to insulin. The pathogenesis hypothesis is
*that the depressed response is the result of chronic insulin elevation
*building a resistance. Thre is a theoretical model of how that can be a
Right. The "resistance" is the downregulation of the peripheral insulin
receptors.
*dysfunction (i.e. diabetes). Maybe depression-prone brains are able to
*adapt to occasionally getting big spikes of serotonin by desensitizing,
I wouldn't be surprised....but, IHNFC about that.
h.
--
hillary gorman http://www.hillary.net in...@hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
upenn school of vet med class of 2000
Bill Stewart-Cole
In article <slrn6n2l2v....@manx.misty.com>, hil...@hillary.net
(Hillary Gorman) wrote:
> Right. The "resistance" is the downregulation of the peripheral insulin
> receptors.
Yes, I understand. This is why SSRI's make me go HMMM... and think about
possible analogies. Not a blood sugar/serotonin link (that's easy) but
some sort of common model: downregulation of serotonin receptors. Which
would be why SSRI's work better than the turkey sandwich diet. The synapse
scavenging reuptake is not downregulated with serotonin receptors, so
pumping more serotonin into the system isn't a big help.
Just a wild theory.
(and thanks for the detailed technical stuff. It's been most of a decade
since I thought about beta cells and receptor regulation.....)
Georg Bauer
In article <6koks4$8...@bonkers.taronga.com>, ari...@taronga.com
(Stephanie da Silva) wrote:
>what I'm trying to say is, it is possible to survive these types of
>situations on one's own.
It must be possible - at least people survived such things long before
those drugs were invented. I don't think that everybody having depressions
back in those days became alcoloholic or commited suicide. What I am
trying to say is: drugs are ok if you have physical conditions that
require them, I am always a bit suspicious when they are used to solve bad
situations. The problem often is that people totally rely on their drugs
and can't cope with life without afterwards. And having to get over a
drug-addiction after getting over some very bad situation isn't fun.
Not that I want to say that anyone around here has a drug-addiction or
something like that - it's just that I think that nowadays people rely on
drugs much to often.
bye, Georg
--
"Sicher ist, das nichts sicher ist. Aber selbst das nicht."
- Ringelnatz
Abby Franquemont
In article <6kounh$p...@xochi.tezcat.com>, YoYo <yo...@xochi.tezcat.com> wrote:
[snip]
>I don't mean to sound standoffish there, but lately I've run up against a
>number of folks (not anyone here) who seem to regard taking meds as a sign
>of weakness or laziness, and I don't understand why treating the brain is
>regarded so differently from treating any other part of the body.
I think people are different, like, in terms of what works for them.
I think I used to be a lot quicker to have real fixed opinions about
this stuff before te past 2 years of my life, particularly having a
kid. A lot of people, folks who'd had kids and stuff, would tell me
all kinds of things that were based on their experiences, and as much
as I appreciated it, it was tough. Like, people would say, "You'll
need painkillers," and I would say, "I really hate painkillers in
general," and they'd say "Yeah but this will be different!" and I sat
there wondering, were they right, or did I really know myself, or what?
And so then it came to the moment of truth and it was definitely the
most painful thing ever and I doubted I was gonna come out the other
end of it all intact. But then I did and I felt great, and I was glad
I didn't have a painkiller haze.
But, see, someone else might have had one hundred percent a different
outlook on the exact same experience. And that's totally fine. And
that same other person might have come out the other side feeling just
like I did, and thought feeling that way sucked, and felt like, "Man,
I wish I had just had 200mg of demerol." I would have not liked that,
but it's not up to me to have a judgement to pass on someone who would
have.
And it doesn't bother me at all, not one bit, that someone could have
the exact experience I did, and think about it differently, and want
to treat it all differently. What does bother me, though, is stuff like
people being sure that what works for them will work for another
individual, and more importantly, a whole industry that often preys on
people when they are at their weakest, in order to make a buck off
drug sales, procedures, and so on.
In the course of having a baby, I often felt preyed upon. There were
countless ways in which I was just supposed to do what made things
easy for the practitioner dealing with me. My acceding to that was
success for them; my not fitting a mold was a problem. So long as the
whole thing could be readily solved and a check marked off, it was cool.
It was like being a human version of the crappy help desk ticket that
no one really wants, just cut'n'paste a stock answer here, so what if
it doesn't quite match up exactly to the real issue, okay, mark it as
being taken care of, and forget about it.
I've felt the same way seeking professional help for emotional issues.
As if a light bulb went on over someone's head and they said, "Aha,
depression. Well, I'll just stick this prefab text in here while we
talk about it," or "Apply this patch and we'll call this settled."
Sometimes, yeah, that text applies, or that patch is what's needed, but
I never felt like anyone took the time to be sure, or like they were
more invested in the whole thing than they'd have to be in order to be
able to check that visit off their to-do list or what have you.
Sometimes I wished I had been the person calling with the stupid user
question. Sometimes I was. What I don't like is just, kinda, this
dynamic that I see sometimes that's like the whole health care industry
is a really bad help desk. Like most help desks, it's overloaded and
understaffed, and no one gets paid enough to care whether or not someone
calling for help really gets the best possible help for them as unique
individuals with unique problems, besides, it's not their job to go
doing full reinstalls on hosed systems when clearing your disk cache
will make the symptom go away. Yes, sometimes that IS the problem. But
a lot of the time there's more to it. You can fix it short-term so
many times and then the whole thing blows up.
Well okay, now that I've taken the 2-minute spurts I've had throughout
my rather bizarre day to try to say all this coherently I obviously
haven't been incredibly successful... but.
Depression is my worst enemy ever. This has long been the case. I used
to always have this attitude of being tough about things, like, "If I
just TRY HARDER I'll beat this fucker, it can't take me out," or else
like "What, me depressed? As if." I could put it out of my mind that
way, or else I could push it to the back of things by keeping myself
busy. And the other thing I could do was get some kind of feeling good
about myself fix by doing nice things for other people. So I did all
that kind of thing for years. And it was killing me. So about a fraction
of a second before I snapped like a brittle twig, all of this dawned on
me and I decide to make sweeping changes in life so that I had a life
which I could maintain without killing myself. It was very, very hard.
But in the long run it was what I needed. Of course there's a long list
of people who would have rather I kept on as I was. I don't doubt that
meds might have helped me keep going... and that things might have been
different... but I think eventually it would have come to the same point
again, and I would have ended up reaching the same conclusions.
In the final analysis there's only ever really been one thing that has
made me be able to shake off depression, though, and that's to DO
something. Doing something, anything, takes the edge of the whole thing
enough for me to be able to look at things clearly, and then there is
almost always something staring at me that I have to do to fix the cause
of it all. And when it was years, and no cause of it all, and nothing I
could do about it... to my horror... what I could do about it was stop
lying to myself about my life and how much I liked it.
And if all of that didn't do it, didn't make things better, then to be
quite honest, I would be at an utter loss. I guess I fear meds in a way.
Like, if I can't fix it somehow with the power of my own mind... and I
have to have meds to make it okay... then that scares me because then
that's an outside thing I need, that I pay money for in one way or
another, and it's like a form of servitude I don't know if I could cope
with.
I felt this way about postpartum depression too, which was a major
whopper. It pained me to see situations like one woman who had been
suffering from depression after having a baby and having all these
issues about not feeling good about sex and not having much desire
for it, and instead of her doctor saying, "That's normal and OK" he
gave her meds which at the same time as I was reading her stories on
a mailing list folks here are talking about those meds making them
have problems with sex... aigh!
I know folks for whom the right meds have been a godsend. I just don't
think they're the panacea which some folks seek. I know folks for whom
they've been a nightmare, and folks for whom they've just been a tool.
I don't think it's any different from liking novocaine or gas. I just
don't like the checkbox you-fit-this-formula-and-we-have-a-potion-fer-
that-and-we'll-sell-it-to-you-now approach to emotional issues. Those
happen with things like therapy too.
Okay, that's enough, this can't possibly make much sense anyway. What
was that about verbal diarrhea?
--
Abby Franquemont Nothing cures insomnia like the realization
J. Random BOFH that it's time to get up. --Fortune program
Abby Franquemont
In article <6khfvl$8...@huitzilo.tezcat.com>,
YoYo <yo...@huitzilo.tezcat.com> wrote:
>
>"Worried and sad" is better, by at least an order of magnitude, than
>anxiety-ridden and depressed. And the only drugs that can help you escape
>being worried and sad right now are illegal. :) It's enough right now to
>keep body and soul together.
Heh. Always a fun place to be.
>Obviously, your life is going to suck for a
>while.
You know of all the funny things, when someone said that to me at a
similar kinda point, it was THE MOST comforting thing anyone could
have said. Just, it's going to suck for a while. Then eventually, it
won't, except for sometimes. It was a million times more helpful than
all the glossing over it, ignoring it, trying not to talk about it,
or false reassurances that everythign would be okay.
>You need to do what you can to get through it, and just try to
>keep the faith that things are going to get better eventually.
That can be such a tough faith to cling to. I am always able to use
logic to remind myself that eventually things will get better, but
then I can also use logic to remind myself that after they get better,m
there's a good chance they'll then proceed to get even worse.
*grin*
Faith is tough.
YoYo
Abby Franquemont <ab...@foad.org> wrote:
>>Obviously, your life is going to suck for a
>>while.
>
>You know of all the funny things, when someone said that to me at a
>similar kinda point, it was THE MOST comforting thing anyone could
>have said. Just, it's going to suck for a while. Then eventually, it
>won't, except for sometimes.
Well, yeah. And it seems like an obvious point, except that it's not.
The other thing that I find reassuring is "It sucks for everybody
sometimes". It may smack a bit of shadenfreude (sp?), but I'm really
helped by the fact that there are others for whom things suck.
>>You need to do what you can to get through it, and just try to
>>keep the faith that things are going to get better eventually.
>
>That can be such a tough faith to cling to. I am always able to use
>logic to remind myself that eventually things will get better, but
>then I can also use logic to remind myself that after they get better,m
>there's a good chance they'll then proceed to get even worse.
>
>*grin*
>
>Faith is tough.
It is, but it's not impossible. For me, the best thing is knowing that
there are things I can do to make things better. I can see a therapist. I
can take my meds. I can confront my problems head-on rather than avoiding
them. Even if these things don't work straight out of the box, at least I
get the satisfaction that I'm *doing* something about it, and that helps.
YoYo
Abby Franquemont <ab...@foad.org> wrote:
>I've felt the same way seeking professional help for emotional issues.
>As if a light bulb went on over someone's head and they said, "Aha,
>depression. Well, I'll just stick this prefab text in here while we
>talk about it," or "Apply this patch and we'll call this settled."
>Sometimes, yeah, that text applies, or that patch is what's needed, but
>I never felt like anyone took the time to be sure, or like they were
>more invested in the whole thing than they'd have to be in order to be
>able to check that visit off their to-do list or what have you.
Hm. I've always felt very well-taken-care-of with my therapists (except
for the first one, but he was a loser). My therapists have given me
tremendous insights into my problems, mostly in terms of the
what-to-expect end of things. It's been very helpful.
But maybe you're expecting too much. I mean, any professional is just
that. They're doing this for a living, and the first thing they're going
to do when they see you is try out all the things that have worked for
them in the past. They're not going to take the same kind of intrest in
you that your friends do, and unless you're in a very long-term
therapeutic relationship (many months or more), they're not going to be
able to get to the root of your psyche. So they try out the standard
patches first, and if one of them works, that's what you go with.
>Sometimes I wished I had been the person calling with the stupid user
>question. Sometimes I was. What I don't like is just, kinda, this
>dynamic that I see sometimes that's like the whole health care industry
>is a really bad help desk. Like most help desks, it's overloaded and
>understaffed, and no one gets paid enough to care whether or not someone
>calling for help really gets the best possible help for them as unique
>individuals with unique problems, besides, it's not their job to go
>doing full reinstalls on hosed systems when clearing your disk cache
>will make the symptom go away. Yes, sometimes that IS the problem. But
>a lot of the time there's more to it. You can fix it short-term so
>many times and then the whole thing blows up.
You get what you pay for, and with the insurance industry being the way it
is, that's not much. If you want a full reinstall, you're going to have to
pay for it. And that means thousands and thousands of dollars. If you can
come up with that, you can have the Lexus. If not, you'll have to settle
for the Aspire. Sucks, but that's the way it is.
(And socializing the system isn't going to help. That'll just insure
that everybody gets the Aspire.)
>And if all of that didn't do it, didn't make things better, then to be
>quite honest, I would be at an utter loss. I guess I fear meds in a way.
>Like, if I can't fix it somehow with the power of my own mind... and I
>have to have meds to make it okay... then that scares me because then
>that's an outside thing I need, that I pay money for in one way or
>another, and it's like a form of servitude I don't know if I could cope
>with.
Okay. This is where I have to disagree. There is no meaningful difference
between "fix[ing] is somehow with the power of [your] own mind" and taking
meds. If you recognized that meds are what you need, and you make the
decision to take the meds, you *have* used the power of your own mind to
fix it. It's just that the solution didn't fit your preconcieved notion
of what it should be.
As far as it being outside yourself and paying money for it, let me ask
you this: If a doctor told you you had high blood pressure and needed
medication to control it, would you consider that a form of servitude?
Sure, you could try to control it by diet and exercize, but you'd still be
a lot more likely to die of a stroke.
I understand your fear, and I felt the same way for a long time. But when
you get right down to it, the brain is just another organ. It can fail to
regulate itself just like the pancreas or the thyroid gland can do. And
sometimes the biochemical solution is really the only one there is. If you
make all the changes in your life you can make, and your depression
*still* doesn't get better, this could be the case. And it could also be
the case that the biochemistry contributed to the decisions you made that
you're unhappy with.
I'm not saying that you, Abby, should definitely take meds. I'm only
saying that ruling it out is every bit as irrational as thinking they're
the only possible solution.
>issues about not feeling good about sex and not having much desire
>for it, and instead of her doctor saying, "That's normal and OK" he
>gave her meds which at the same time as I was reading her stories on
>a mailing list folks here are talking about those meds making them
>have problems with sex... aigh!
Enh. Yeah, SSRIs can give you problems with sex. That happens for a
minority of people. For some people it improves things. Obviously, if I
want to have sex, I can't take Paxil. If Paxil were the only drug that cut
my anxiety, it'd be a really hard choice, *but at least it would be a
choice*. I'd be in control of what happened.
Consider this woman you're talking about. Let's say she responds well to
the meds. Then her problem is solved. If she doesn't unless she has a very
bad reaction, she's no worse off than when she started. If she responds,
but has a side-effect, she's in a much better position, mentally, to
decide how to deal with the side effect.
I guess what I'm saying is, I don't really see a downside to giving it a
shot. At the very least, you'll know whether they help or not. If they
don't, at least you can eliminate that from your list of options, and that
means you're one step closer to finding the right one.
Kai Henningsen
ab...@ucan.foad.org (Abby Franquemont) wrote on 02.06.98 in <6l25v3$dfj$1...@ucan.foad.org>:
> Well okay, now that I've taken the 2-minute spurts I've had throughout
> my rather bizarre day to try to say all this coherently I obviously
> haven't been incredibly successful... but.
On the contrary, this was very well written and quite understandable. In
fact, now that I've read it, I have trouble commenting and being at least
half as coherent.
> In the final analysis there's only ever really been one thing that has
> made me be able to shake off depression, though, and that's to DO
> something. Doing something, anything, takes the edge of the whole thing
> enough for me to be able to look at things clearly, and then there is
> almost always something staring at me that I have to do to fix the cause
> of it all. And when it was years, and no cause of it all, and nothing I
> could do about it... to my horror... what I could do about it was stop
> lying to myself about my life and how much I liked it.
I *think* I'm currently not in danger of that, because I again think that
I know exactly what sucks about my current life, and some of what I could
do differently, and why I don't. (And also which aspects I _do_ like.)
So while I might not always admit it, I know the stuff that's problematic,
and if I find that I have to, I can do something about some of it, and the
others are almost exclusively outside of my control anyway.
That could, of course, change at any time.
On the other hand, it seems that I've developed a way of dealing with a
crisis that keeps me functioning even when important parts of the world
seem to break down, such as when my father died and I was the one who had
to tell every other family member, one at a time, because I was the only
one there when it happened. That was seriously bad, but I believe I came
out better than the others. Well, my siblings were a lot younger and my
mother was much nearer to him than I, so that might account for it.
Impossible to tell.
But I think the important thing is that since growing up, every major
crisis has turned out to have something that I could *do* to survive it,
which has helped enormously - as kid, this was very different, I usually
could only wait for it to end, which sucked extremely.
> I guess I fear meds in a way.
I think that's also true for me. There are extremely few meds I take at
all - these days usually something like an Aspirin per month or even less,
and nothing else. Most stuff just gets better by itself.
Now, partly, this is no doubt something silly like "if I don't take
anything, I'm not _really_ ill". But part of it is a reaction to the
modern medical world, where there's something for everything, and I _know_
it's not healty to take _that_ much.
I have no idea what I'd do if I developed a serious psych problem, such as
lots of people here have. (Well, I'm not without problems, and they were
worse when I was a kid, but they were never, AFAICT, of the sort peopel
here need to fight with meds.)
> I know folks for whom the right meds have been a godsend. I just don't
> think they're the panacea which some folks seek.
Very true.
> Okay, that's enough, this can't possibly make much sense anyway. What
> was that about verbal diarrhea?
*You* made a lot of sense. I hope I did make at least some of it. And I'll
believe that diarrhea diagnosis once I see you write as much as some other
people I've known, which is at least ten times as much.
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
Abby Franquemont
In article <6l3h8k$h...@xochi.tezcat.com>, YoYo <yo...@xochi.tezcat.com> wrote:
>Abby Franquemont <ab...@foad.org> wrote:
>
>>I've felt the same way seeking professional help for emotional issues.
>>As if a light bulb went on over someone's head and they said, "Aha,
>>depression. Well, I'll just stick this prefab text in here while we
>>talk about it," or "Apply this patch and we'll call this settled."
>>Sometimes, yeah, that text applies, or that patch is what's needed, but
>>I never felt like anyone took the time to be sure, or like they were
>>more invested in the whole thing than they'd have to be in order to be
>>able to check that visit off their to-do list or what have you.
>
>Hm. I've always felt very well-taken-care-of with my therapists (except
>for the first one, but he was a loser). My therapists have given me
>tremendous insights into my problems, mostly in terms of the
>what-to-expect end of things. It's been very helpful.
*envy*
>But maybe you're expecting too much. I mean, any professional is just
>that. They're doing this for a living, and the first thing they're going
>to do when they see you is try out all the things that have worked for
>them in the past.
Well, I guess the main thing I always expected was twofold: for them to
_believe_ me, and take me seriously, and for them to think of me as an
individual, or at least, well, not come off totally like "Aha, you're
one of _these_, and I'll put you in this box, and this is what we do
with people like you with Your Problem." I can totally believe I've never
had a good therapist, and also that I'm not an easy person to counsel
in general. In many cases I have just felt like I'd be just as well off
playing with eliza, and better off doing what I've long done, and sitting
and writing about it (journals are a terrific way to deal for me, I find).
>They're not going to take the same kind of intrest in
>you that your friends do, and unless you're in a very long-term
>therapeutic relationship (many months or more), they're not going to be
>able to get to the root of your psyche. So they try out the standard
>patches first, and if one of them works, that's what you go with.
And I can understand the logistics of it. I just sort of it resent it
on a certain level, like, when I've gotten the ol' "Well, people in
your position typically feel this," and I say "Well, what I feel is
different, it's more like this," and get back a kind of "Oh, sure you
do," response. *sigh*
I certainly don't expect that person to be my friend. But I dunno. I
can't say therapy was ever the most effective thing for me, at least,
not formal one-on-one type therapy. I think I've done allright with
things like having groups of people to vent and rant with or whatever.
*grin*
>>Sometimes I wished I had been the person calling with the stupid user
>>question. Sometimes I was. What I don't like is just, kinda, this
>>dynamic that I see sometimes that's like the whole health care industry
>>is a really bad help desk. Like most help desks, it's overloaded and
>>understaffed, and no one gets paid enough to care whether or not someone
>>calling for help really gets the best possible help for them as unique
>>individuals with unique problems, besides, it's not their job to go
>>doing full reinstalls on hosed systems when clearing your disk cache
>>will make the symptom go away. Yes, sometimes that IS the problem. But
>>a lot of the time there's more to it. You can fix it short-term so
>>many times and then the whole thing blows up.
>
>You get what you pay for, and with the insurance industry being the way it
>is, that's not much. If you want a full reinstall, you're going to have to
>pay for it. And that means thousands and thousands of dollars. If you can
>come up with that, you can have the Lexus. If not, you'll have to settle
>for the Aspire. Sucks, but that's the way it is.
Well. See. That's part of the point. I usually do end up paying. And
still getting the Aspire. So I stopped buying.
Incidentally, as an aside, with the whole insurance agency being what it
is, when I was pregnant and went to an HMO for the whole deal, it was as
if I wanted to ride the subway even, but they wanted me to get on the
school bus with the driver from hell instead. But then, for half of what
it would have cost to pay out of pocket for the whole deal, I found this
wonderful midwife, and paid her, and she was wonderful, because she wasn't
in the business because it was lucrative, she was doing it because she
thought it was important. I know there has to be, like, a comparable
situation for mental health stuff. I just don't know what it is. See,
and I'd be glad to pay in that case and support that model. I don't really
like the insurance industry.
But that's that tangent.
>(And socializing the system isn't going to help. That'll just insure
>that everybody gets the Aspire.)
Okay, that wasn't that tangent. See, I don't 100% believe that. Okay,
it was that tangent, that's just all I'm going to say about it right now.
>>And if all of that didn't do it, didn't make things better, then to be
>>quite honest, I would be at an utter loss. I guess I fear meds in a way.
>>Like, if I can't fix it somehow with the power of my own mind... and I
>>have to have meds to make it okay... then that scares me because then
>>that's an outside thing I need, that I pay money for in one way or
>>another, and it's like a form of servitude I don't know if I could cope
>>with.
>
>Okay. This is where I have to disagree. There is no meaningful difference
>between "fix[ing] is somehow with the power of [your] own mind" and taking
>meds. If you recognized that meds are what you need, and you make the
>decision to take the meds, you *have* used the power of your own mind to
>fix it. It's just that the solution didn't fit your preconcieved notion
>of what it should be.
Okay. I think we're talking about a couple of different situations,
for starters. I also think I didn't do a great job of making what was my
original point, which is that it's totally cool if different things work
for different people. I'm not, like, threatened by the existence of meds.
I'm not all "Oh, you should just have therapy, meds suck," or whatever.
This is kinda why I was trying to use the whole birth strategy bit for an
analogy. Like, for instance, I hated it that there were all these doctors
that would say "Research has shown that pregnant women don't really want
to know about possible complications in great detail, so we won't answer
that question," and I'd say, "Well, see, _I_ want to know." And I did.
And it made me feel better. But I know other women who expressly do not
want to know. One way of feeling about it isn't inherently superior, and
I really hope that's not what it seemed like I'm trying to say because I
am actually trying to say the opposite.
But, what I do think is that people whose job it is to deal with these
issues for numerous people need to not have one simple answer that they
always assume is The Thing. I think it's ludicrous to imagine that there
is One True Answer to something like depression, One True Answer that will
always solve it. And I totally agree with you, sometimes the solution
does not fit your notion of what it should be. And that's what I want
there to be drugs _for_. I don't want them to be the patch.
>As far as it being outside yourself and paying money for it, let me ask
>you this: If a doctor told you you had high blood pressure and needed
>medication to control it, would you consider that a form of servitude?
>Sure, you could try to control it by diet and exercize, but you'd still be
>a lot more likely to die of a stroke.
Well, see. The very first thing I'd do would be ask for a second opinion.
And the very second thing I'd do would be to learn more about high blood
pressure. Like, a lot more. Like, I'd be all over the medical journals. I
would be a big pain in the ass for the doctor, most likely. And I _would_
rather avoid having to take the medication, yes. And I would consider it
a form of servitude, yes.
I have bad knees. It's a hereditary thing. They first started to dislocate
regularly when I was 13. It's "chronodysplasia of the patella due to
extreme laxity of the patellar tendons." My dad has the same thing, except
he's got pins in his knees. Same with his sister, and my grandmother, and
a number of folks in my family. It's the Franquemont crappy knees. When I
first had the real problem with it, I got carried a mile or two back to
town and taken to the curandero's house, where he gave me a shot of nasty-
ass 180-proof cane sugar booze and took a swig himself, and swooshed it
around in his mouth with chewed-up coca leaves, then spit it all over my
knee. He talked to me about this kind of problem (the leg bending the
wrong direction at the knee) and told me what it was called, and all that,
and took my foot and put it against his stomach, then said, "Now act like
you're stepping on it." I was skeptical. He gave me another shot. I was
empowered by the stupidity of drunkenness and stepped. He took my kneecap
from the back of my knee all the way back around to the front, and tied
it all up with a tight ace bandage and said to keep off it for a day. My
dad, victimized by the same bad knees, was skeptical. But I was walking on
it the next day. "I spent months in a cast," he said. Lorenzo, the
curandero, is one of my personal heroes.
Yes, he medicated me with the hooch. Yes, he used a local anaesthetic.
And yes, I took it. And no, I don't think that's any different from any
kind of medication. But what IS different is that he said, "You're going
to have hellish trouble out of those knees. They'll do that a lot. But,
you can make it not so bad. You have to make these muscles stronger, and
you have to change how you think about walking, and you should probably not
be doing things like running a lot." We came back to the States, and the
orthopedic surgeon who fixed my badly broken arm looked at my knees, and
predicted surgery by the time I was 17, or I wouldn't be walking. "You're
going to need replacement knees," the guy said. And he's a damned fine
doctor -- my broken arm healed up real well -- but you know something?
I'm almost ten years past the point where I was supposed to need new
knees. Yeah, sometimes they suck. Yeah, I don't do a lot of running. Yeah,
sometimes they pop out. But you know what? Everyone I know with pins in
their knees has problems too.
My way of dealing with the bad knees isn't inherently better. I just
_like_ it better. I'm not going to tell everyone, change the way you
think about walking, get in the habit of doing isometric exercises any
time you sit still, and forget about running the marathon. It would be
like trying to sway someone to liking my favourite colour, instead of
theirs. It's completely subjective. And I don't think less of someone who
likes yellow, just because I like green. But that doesn't mean that if I
were shopping for shirts, I'd like the yellow one as much as the green.
All I object to, really, is the thing where it's like "Well, we give
people in your situation yellow shirts." Even if it's "In the past, we
have seen a number of people like yellow shirts," I would rather that it
came out like "Well, we've seen people like yellow shirts, so that is one
option. Some others are green shirts, red shirts, and blue shirts. Does
one of those sound like something you'd try?"
And I don't think that's too much to expect.
I also don't think you and I have a fundamental difference of belief
here. I'm truly not trying to be judgemental of anything that helps. I
don't think meds are the bad thing, or not taking meds is the bad thing...
I think the bad thing is depression.
>I understand your fear, and I felt the same way for a long time. But when
>you get right down to it, the brain is just another organ. It can fail to
>regulate itself just like the pancreas or the thyroid gland can do. And
>sometimes the biochemical solution is really the only one there is. If you
>make all the changes in your life you can make, and your depression
>*still* doesn't get better, this could be the case. And it could also be
>the case that the biochemistry contributed to the decisions you made that
>you're unhappy with.
I don't disagree with that at all. I, fundamentally, have a deep-seated
distrust of the American medical community as an entity. I know that
comes out when I talk about this kind of stuff. I'm weird about it. I
would rather make a cup of hot tea with lemon and honey and cloves and
pour a shot of whisky in it, and call that cold medicine, than take a
swig of NyQuil.
>I'm not saying that you, Abby, should definitely take meds. I'm only
>saying that ruling it out is every bit as irrational as thinking they're
>the only possible solution.
I agree with that. I think the more options, the better.
>>issues about not feeling good about sex and not having much desire
>>for it, and instead of her doctor saying, "That's normal and OK" he
>>gave her meds which at the same time as I was reading her stories on
>>a mailing list folks here are talking about those meds making them
>>have problems with sex... aigh!
>
>Enh. Yeah, SSRIs can give you problems with sex. That happens for a
>minority of people. For some people it improves things. Obviously, if I
>want to have sex, I can't take Paxil. If Paxil were the only drug that cut
>my anxiety, it'd be a really hard choice, *but at least it would be a
>choice*. I'd be in control of what happened.
>
>Consider this woman you're talking about. Let's say she responds well to
>the meds. Then her problem is solved. If she doesn't unless she has a very
>bad reaction, she's no worse off than when she started. If she responds,
>but has a side-effect, she's in a much better position, mentally, to
>decide how to deal with the side effect.
Okay, but how is that better than saying "Man, a lot of people feel this
way. It usually goes away within a few weeks. Don't worry. You're okay."
What got to me was she saw this doctor for like 5 minutes, he never said
any of those things to her, he gave her a prescription for something she
wasn't allowed to take while breastfeeding, so she stopped breastfeeding,
which she then felt guilty about. She'd been feeling crappy about not
feeling like having sex, and she kept feeling less like it. It just all
rang foul to me.
When I was pregnant I had this vision problem, that went away within
hours of Edward being born. But I had it the whole time I was pregnant.
I lost my depth perception, and things in front of me would shift from
side to side weirdly. I couldn't drive because I couldn't gauge rates
of speed or where things really were. First, they checked me out for
every pregnancy-related thing they worry about, and didn't find 'em.
Then they sent me to an opthalmologist. He found my vision to be perfect,
and sugggested I must be suffering from acute anxiety, which caused a
tunnelvision effect. I thought about that. I didn't feel anxious. I
didn't feel bad in any way. I just had no depth perception and these
weird optical illusions. They told me what I was describing didn't happen,
but I could go see a neurologist and maybe I should take something for
the anxiety. And then I found my midwife, and she said, "Well, that's
not the most common thing, but it does happen. Are you tending to feel
very thirsty? Fluid retention causes your eyeballs to change shape and
then you get this effect.." and she described it perfectly.
I felt like it was just, "Aha, hysterical woman. Medicate! Medicate! OK!"
It's damned hard to stick to your guns when you know _something_ is wrong
and _you_ can't fix it and what to do? And that's what I don't like... I
feel like the medical industry takes advantage of that weakness a lot of
the time.
>I guess what I'm saying is, I don't really see a downside to giving it a
>shot. At the very least, you'll know whether they help or not. If they
>don't, at least you can eliminate that from your list of options, and that
>means you're one step closer to finding the right one.
I think that's fair. Sadly... it just isn't the way that such things
have been approached with me. I mean even if I were talking to someone
who could prescribe shite and who just said all the things you said, I
would probably feel differently. But for some reason that just isn't how
it's happened.
And I feel pretty much the same whether it's painkillers, ssri's, or
cold medicine. I'm just weird that way I guess. I think all of those
things have their places.
YoYo
Abby Franquemont <ab...@foad.org> wrote:
>Well, I guess the main thing I always expected was twofold: for them to
>_believe_ me, and take me seriously,
Well, if they're not doing that, you should be out the office within
minutes. Seriously. If you for one moment get the idea that a therapist
isn't taking you seriously, you should be outta there.
>>They're not going to take the same kind of intrest in
>>you that your friends do, and unless you're in a very long-term
>>therapeutic relationship (many months or more), they're not going to be
>>able to get to the root of your psyche. So they try out the standard
>>patches first, and if one of them works, that's what you go with.
>
>And I can understand the logistics of it. I just sort of it resent it
>on a certain level, like, when I've gotten the ol' "Well, people in
>your position typically feel this," and I say "Well, what I feel is
>different, it's more like this," and get back a kind of "Oh, sure you
>do," response. *sigh*
Mmh. I wonder if you're not being a little paranoid. I mean, everyone
experiences their problems a little bit differently, but that doesn't mean
that they're not more-or-less the same problem.
One of the big facets of my depression was this feeling like I'm *totally*
unique - like, the way I experience the world is completely without
precident, and *nobody* is capable of, or even interested in,
understanding. Well, in my case, anyway, that's bunk. I was just
depressed. If someone had told me that at the height of my last major
episode, I probably would have had this reaction like, "What do you know
about *me*!? Stop trying to *classify* me, maaaaan!"
It also seems to me - and I don't mean to sound critical here, this is
just an observation - that given some of the things you've said on other
topics, that you have a real "thing" about being taken seriously. You seem
to be hypersensitive to the idea that somebody might not be taking you
absolutely seriously at all times. I think this might lead you to percieve
slights in this area where there really aren't any.
Also, therapists are trained to look for cues in your voice and body
language that might say something other than what's coming out of your
mouth. A good therapist will be up front about this. (My current therapist
told me that the reason she doesn't have email is that she actually wants
to hear voices so she can look for that stuff.)
>>You get what you pay for, and with the insurance industry being the way it
>>is, that's not much. If you want a full reinstall, you're going to have to
>>pay for it. And that means thousands and thousands of dollars. If you can
>>come up with that, you can have the Lexus. If not, you'll have to settle
>>for the Aspire. Sucks, but that's the way it is.
>
>Well. See. That's part of the point. I usually do end up paying. And
>still getting the Aspire. So I stopped buying.
There's paying, and then there's *paying*, IYKWIM.
>>Okay. This is where I have to disagree. There is no meaningful difference
>>between "fix[ing] is somehow with the power of [your] own mind" and taking
>>meds. If you recognized that meds are what you need, and you make the
>>decision to take the meds, you *have* used the power of your own mind to
>>fix it. It's just that the solution didn't fit your preconcieved notion
>>of what it should be.
>
>Okay. I think we're talking about a couple of different situations,
>for starters. I also think I didn't do a great job of making what was my
>original point, which is that it's totally cool if different things work
>for different people.
Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that you seem to have irrationally
ruled it out for yourself. I mean, if that's the way you want to go, it's
your life. I'm just trying to point out that it's foolish to pass on
something that could potentially help you because of an irrational notion
that you have to do it yourself.
>that would say "Research has shown that pregnant women don't really want
>to know about possible complications in great detail, so we won't answer
>that question," and I'd say, "Well, see, _I_ want to know." And I did.
>And it made me feel better. But I know other women who expressly do not
>want to know. One way of feeling about it isn't inherently superior, and
>I really hope that's not what it seemed like I'm trying to say because I
>am actually trying to say the opposite.
Okay. I think this has a lot to do with how people relate to health care
professionals. I've noticed this more among women than men (though it
could be that women just seem more open about admitting to it). My
attitude is, doctors and therapists are my employees. If I don't like the
service I'm getting, they're fired. They're essentially consultants. They
make recommendations, but *I* make the final decision. A lot of people, it
seems to me, are in this mode where doctors are authority figures and feel
they have to do what the doctor says. If a doctor recommends something
that doesn't hit me right, the first thing I say is, "What are the other
options?". (I also do a lot of independant reading. If a doctor tells me
something that seems wrong, I say so. I.e., my doctor told me only about 2
percent of people who use Paxil have a sexual side effect. I said, "That's
not right. According to the literature it's more like 40 percent." He
said, "Hm. I'll have to check that out."
>But, what I do think is that people whose job it is to deal with these
>issues for numerous people need to not have one simple answer that they
>always assume is The Thing. I think it's ludicrous to imagine that there
>is One True Answer to something like depression, One True Answer that will
>always solve it.
I don't think anyone really thinks that. I do think that there are
therapists who throw meds at everyone because it's an easy way for them to
make money without much effort, but I think they're in the minority.
I think it's more like a heuristic (sp?). First you try solution A, and if
that doesn't work, you try solution B, and you keep going down the list
until you find the one that does work. That doesn't mean that anyone
thinks that A is the One True Answer, only that A is the First One You
Try.
>And I totally agree with you, sometimes the solution
>does not fit your notion of what it should be. And that's what I want
>there to be drugs _for_. I don't want them to be the patch.
It seems to me that depression has this really perverse effect of causing
people to resist the thing that will help them. You may agree with me in
principle that the solution can cut against your particular notion of what
it should be, but if someone suggests that the solution to *your*
paricular problem might be somthing that cuts against *your* notions, you
think that you aren't being listened to.
>>As far as it being outside yourself and paying money for it, let me ask
>>you this: If a doctor told you you had high blood pressure and needed
>>medication to control it, would you consider that a form of servitude?
>>Sure, you could try to control it by diet and exercize, but you'd still be
>>a lot more likely to die of a stroke.
>
>Well, see. The very first thing I'd do would be ask for a second opinion.
>And the very second thing I'd do would be to learn more about high blood
>pressure. Like, a lot more. Like, I'd be all over the medical journals. I
>would be a big pain in the ass for the doctor, most likely. And I _would_
>rather avoid having to take the medication, yes. And I would consider it
>a form of servitude, yes.
I certainly think second opinions are a good thing, as is independant
research. But I think considering it a form of servitude is unecessarily
extreme. I mean, by that standard, *eating* is a form of servitude.
>All I object to, really, is the thing where it's like "Well, we give
>people in your situation yellow shirts." Even if it's "In the past, we
>have seen a number of people like yellow shirts," I would rather that it
>came out like "Well, we've seen people like yellow shirts, so that is one
>option. Some others are green shirts, red shirts, and blue shirts. Does
>one of those sound like something you'd try?"
>
>And I don't think that's too much to expect.
I think that if you listened more closely, what you'd hear is, "People in
your situation usually respond best to yellow shirts." Not, "Here, take
the yellow shirt." Also, I think that if you said, "Are there other
options?" you'd hear about the green red and blue shirts.
I think that just as some people have a prejudice against herbal medicine
and the like, some people just assume the worst from western doctors, too.
I can't belive that my experience of medicine is so totally different from
most others. I think the difference is that I A) do my homework before I
go in, and B) am willing to work with the doctor. Both of these are
necessary - neither is sufficient.
>I also don't think you and I have a fundamental difference of belief
>here. I'm truly not trying to be judgemental of anything that helps. I
>don't think meds are the bad thing, or not taking meds is the bad thing...
>I think the bad thing is depression.
But what I'm trying to point out is that you seem to have ruled it out for
yourself for no particular reason.
>I don't disagree with that at all. I, fundamentally, have a deep-seated
>distrust of the American medical community as an entity.
I think that's unfounded. And I think having that distrust interferes with
whatever treatment you're getting. I think having a healthy skepticism is
a good thing, but your attitude seems to cross over into negative
prejudice.
Doctors are just people doing a job. You have to remember that. They're
not perfect, and like the rest of us, they're overworked and
overstressed. And you're not any more important to them than any of their
other patients. They are the sysadmins, and you are a luser. And their
attitude toward you isn't any less justified than your attitude is
towards a luser. You have to understand that and factor it into the
decisions you make. You have to understand that when a doctor recommends
something to you, it is the thing that has the highest probability of
working. It may not work in your case, but that doesn't mean the doctor
was wrong for recommending it to you.
>Okay, but how is that better than saying "Man, a lot of people feel this
>way. It usually goes away within a few weeks. Don't worry. You're okay."
It's better because it actually does something. I mean, if all you want to
hear is "Don't worry, you're okay," have tea with a friend. It's cheaper.
There's an implicit assumption that if you go to the doctor with a
problem, you actually want the doctor to *do* something about it. If
that's not what you want, then the doctor is not the person to be going
to.
>What got to me was she saw this doctor for like 5 minutes, he never said
>any of those things to her, he gave her a prescription for something she
>wasn't allowed to take while breastfeeding, so she stopped breastfeeding,
>which she then felt guilty about. She'd been feeling crappy about not
>feeling like having sex, and she kept feeling less like it. It just all
>rang foul to me.
Well, she could have said, "I don't want to stop breastfeeding. What other
options are there." She could have said, "How long can I expect the
depression to go on?"
>I felt like it was just, "Aha, hysterical woman. Medicate! Medicate! OK!"
>It's damned hard to stick to your guns when you know _something_ is wrong
>and _you_ can't fix it and what to do? And that's what I don't like... I
>feel like the medical industry takes advantage of that weakness a lot of
>the time.
I think that's your perception. You're expecting *every person* to be
aware of *every possible* eventuality. What I see, is that you went
looking for an answer, and the people you talked to gave you the answers
they had. One of them was right and the others weren't. That's normal. The
point is, you have to take responsibility for getting your own answers.
The doctors are there to help you. They're not there to do it for you.
>>I guess what I'm saying is, I don't really see a downside to giving it a
>>shot. At the very least, you'll know whether they help or not. If they
>>don't, at least you can eliminate that from your list of options, and that
>>means you're one step closer to finding the right one.
>
>I think that's fair. Sadly... it just isn't the way that such things
>have been approached with me. I mean even if I were talking to someone
>who could prescribe shite and who just said all the things you said, I
>would probably feel differently. But for some reason that just isn't how
>it's happened.
It's an assumption that's implicit in any scientific undertaking - which
is what western medicine is. I personally think that a good doctor would
put it in those terms for you, but a lot of them don't.
My therapist recommended meds based on what I told her about how I was
feeling. She sent me to the doctor for a scrip, since she's not an MD. The
doctor said to me, Paxil usually works and has the lowest side-effect
profile, so I tried it. When I had the side-effect, I went back, and he
said, "Okay, let's try another one." I said, "Which one?" He said, "Let me
go see what we've got." He came back with Zoloft because he happened to
have some in the sample closet. He never said, "At this point, we're just
gonna try stuff and see if anything works," but it was implied, and I
understood it.
You have to go into any medical endevor understanding these groundrules.
Doctors aren't priests. They're just technicians. Highly-trained,
expensive technicians, but still technicians. Their approach to a problem
is going to be to start with the most likely and work down the list to the
least likely.
The main point I'm trying to make is that just because a piece of advice
comes from the big bad American Medical Establishment (tm), doesn't mean
it's wrong, or ill-intended, or condescending. It's just the solution
that's statisically most likely to work. It may or may not work for you. I
think that if you go in with that understanding, you have a much more
realistic (and much less confrontational) expectation. And that can be
very helpful, because placebo effects can cut both ways.
Kai Henningsen
ab...@ucan.foad.org (Abby Franquemont) wrote on 03.06.98 in <6l4ksl$gtu$1...@ucan.foad.org>:
> In article <6l3h8k$h...@xochi.tezcat.com>, YoYo <yo...@xochi.tezcat.com>
> >wrote: Abby Franquemont <ab...@foad.org> wrote:
> Well, I guess the main thing I always expected was twofold: for them to
> _believe_ me, and take me seriously, and for them to think of me as an
> individual, or at least, well, not come off totally like "Aha, you're
> one of _these_, and I'll put you in this box, and this is what we do
> with people like you with Your Problem." I can totally believe I've never
> And I can understand the logistics of it. I just sort of it resent it
> on a certain level, like, when I've gotten the ol' "Well, people in
> your position typically feel this," and I say "Well, what I feel is
> different, it's more like this," and get back a kind of "Oh, sure you
> do," response. *sigh*
Gah. That sucks.
One of the problems with the medical system seems to be that doctors sort
of lose their perspective.
Now, it's understandable. Really. If a doctor felt serious empathy for
every patient, he'd need a doctor himself in short time; that's something
nobody can cope with.
Maybe the trouble is that a large number of people become doctors because
they have empathy (which they then lose to prevent burnout), and another
large number of people just sees it as something that pays well, and
there's damn few left that just try to do a good job.
Because they certainly can do a good job without being all empathic. Even
makes for being more objective.
But too many of them don't.
It's like nearly all the opthalmologists I've ever been to. How can
anybody expect someone to reliably decide which of two very similar lenses
is better in three seconds? But that's how they do it. No wonder the
results look like they were obtained by throwing dice.
One problem may be that time isn't cheap. But it doesn't sound that hard
to solve to me.
> >(And socializing the system isn't going to help. That'll just insure
> >that everybody gets the Aspire.)
>
> Okay, that wasn't that tangent. See, I don't 100% believe that. Okay,
> it was that tangent, that's just all I'm going to say about it right now.
I think there was a thread somewhere recently which had the result that
the assertion was, indeed, wrong. I think it involved some well-known guy
from Canada who had lived in the US and tried out both systems. :-)
> When I was pregnant I had this vision problem, that went away within
> hours of Edward being born. But I had it the whole time I was pregnant.
> I lost my depth perception, and things in front of me would shift from
> side to side weirdly. I couldn't drive because I couldn't gauge rates
> of speed or where things really were. First, they checked me out for
You just described (part of) my eye problem exactly, except I have it for
life. I *think* the "shift from side to side" effect matches too, except I
would describe it differently. What happens is that my brain refuses to
create a combined picture from what my eyes see. I can actually control
which eye I'm using at any time, and when I switch, it (obviously) _looks_
as if I just moved my head by the distance between my eyes - that is,
things near me shift from one side to another.
> every pregnancy-related thing they worry about, and didn't find 'em.
> Then they sent me to an opthalmologist. He found my vision to be perfect,
> and sugggested I must be suffering from acute anxiety, which caused a
> tunnelvision effect. I thought about that. I didn't feel anxious. I
Tunnel vision? There's no tunnel vision involved. Any opthalmologist worth
his degree shouldn't have trouble recognizing this - it's a very basic
malfunction of the human optic system. It's like a car mechanic not
recognizing a flat tire! (Now, determining causes might be more difficult,
I'll grant that.)
In my case, it's probably related to the fact that [consult dic: this
sounds strange] have a squint in one eye. One of the tendons was too long,
so when I was 4 1/2, they decided to operate, and now it's too short, so I
squint in the opposite direction. Plus, one eye has become short-sighted.
Anyway, my brain refuses to meld the two pictures together, it just lets
me decide which one to use. You're describing the effects pretty
accurately; they are a big part of the reason I've never tried to get a
driving permit. Another effect is not being able to play ball games,
except possibly some where the ball only crawls.
> the anxiety. And then I found my midwife, and she said, "Well, that's
> not the most common thing, but it does happen. Are you tending to feel
> very thirsty? Fluid retention causes your eyeballs to change shape and
> then you get this effect.." and she described it perfectly.
Possible. I suspect anything distorting the view enough might lead to this
effect. And I'm even willing to believe anxiety can do it, too, just from
the other side of things. Like cancer or broken arms (or flat tires),
there can be lots of causes that lead to the exact same effects.
> I felt like it was just, "Aha, hysterical woman. Medicate! Medicate! OK!"
> It's damned hard to stick to your guns when you know _something_ is wrong
> and _you_ can't fix it and what to do? And that's what I don't like... I
> feel like the medical industry takes advantage of that weakness a lot of
> the time.
They're trying to turn this into a mass production thing.
Kai Henningsen
ari...@taronga.com (Stephanie da Silva) wrote on 03.06.98 in <6l33ii$p...@bonkers.taronga.com>:
> In article <gb-020698...@hugo.westfalen.de>,
> Georg Bauer <g...@hugo.westfalen.de> wrote:
> >In article <6koks4$8...@bonkers.taronga.com>, ari...@taronga.com
> >(Stephanie da Silva) wrote:
> >
> >>what I'm trying to say is, it is possible to survive these types of
> >>situations on one's own.
> >
> >It must be possible - at least people survived such things long before
> >those drugs were invented. I don't think that everybody having depressions
> >back in those days became alcoloholic or commited suicide.
>
> I think I realized why I survived mine. Because once I realized what
> was causing the depression, I eventually figured out that if I removed
> said source, I would get better. In practice, it wasn't quite that
> simple (the 2 bouts were caused by him breaking up with me for 3 months
> at a time), but in the long run, that's what worked.
>
> For those who have no external cause for their depression, this
> certainly wouldn't work. I've also had panic attacks, but there was
> always something that caused them (anticipating an unpleasant encounter,
> e.g.).
I think what often happened in the latter case (and probably still does),
is that people got religious (or spiritistic, or what-have-you) in a bad
way. That is, not seeing any cause, but convinced that there MUST be one,
they went looking for it in imaginary places. (Don't get me wrong. I'm not
trying to say that's what's behind all religious people. I'm saying that's
how some specific people with serious problems reacted.)
Having found out about cause and effect can have some bad side-effects.
Kai Henningsen
yo...@xochi.tezcat.com (YoYo) wrote on 04.06.98 in <6l6906$u...@xochi.tezcat.com>:
> It's better because it actually does something. I mean, if all you want to
> hear is "Don't worry, you're okay," have tea with a friend. It's cheaper.
> There's an implicit assumption that if you go to the doctor with a
> problem, you actually want the doctor to *do* something about it. If
> that's not what you want, then the doctor is not the person to be going
> to.
There's something fundamentally wrong with this paragraph.
See, most people are not experts on medicine. Before asking a doctor, they
don't _know_ if it's something they could just wait out, or something they
need meds for, or whatever.
So how are they going to decide if they want something done about it
immediately? They have to find out how serious it is first.
First, the doctor should find out what the problem is. Then, he should
explain it to the patient, and what the options are, And then, the patient
should decide what he wants to do about it.
Of course, it often doesn't happen that way. Most people are familiar with
the dentist telling them "ok, we need to bore [or is it drill?]", not with
being asked about it. I think that's wrong, but that's how it very often
is.
> Well, she could have said, "I don't want to stop breastfeeding. What other
> options are there." She could have said, "How long can I expect the
> depression to go on?"
OTOH, if she's one who had the usual experience of doctors deciding for
themselves what's the "proper" thing to do all her life, why would she
even try to ask?
Why do you think so many people see doctors as authority persons? Because
many doctors habitually assume the authority, of course.
Not all of them do. But too many, IME.
> I think that's your perception. You're expecting *every person* to be
> aware of *every possible* eventuality. What I see, is that you went
> looking for an answer, and the people you talked to gave you the answers
> they had. One of them was right and the others weren't. That's normal. The
> point is, you have to take responsibility for getting your own answers.
> The doctors are there to help you. They're not there to do it for you.
I disagree here. They are the medical experts; they are the ones supposed
to come up with the medical answers. That's what they are getting payed
for. That's what they got their degrees for.
In the example of the missing eye coordination, I'm diagnosing a gross
failure in doing their jobs right.
They're not necessarily who has to make the final decision, but they
bloody well should do the necessary research.
Georg Bauer
>Okay, that's enough, this can't possibly make much sense anyway.
Actually I think it made a lot of sense. Nothing left to be commented on
by me. Except that with me it was my SO to help me through some situations
in the last years - actually it was her to help me to develop a bit into
openess. I think that some things lately (my parents both had a stroke
short after another - both still alive, but both with problems out of it)
would have gone far worse for me without her. So beside the DOing there is
always the TALKing that helps me a lot, too.
YoYo
Kai Henningsen <kaih=6vDLO...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>> It's better because it actually does something. I mean, if all you want to
>> hear is "Don't worry, you're okay," have tea with a friend. It's cheaper.
>> There's an implicit assumption that if you go to the doctor with a
>> problem, you actually want the doctor to *do* something about it. If
>> that's not what you want, then the doctor is not the person to be going
>> to.
>
>There's something fundamentally wrong with this paragraph.
>
>See, most people are not experts on medicine. Before asking a doctor, they
>don't _know_ if it's something they could just wait out, or something they
>need meds for, or whatever.
I'm not an expert on medicine, Kai, but I know enough to ask pertinent
questions.
>> Well, she could have said, "I don't want to stop breastfeeding. What other
>> options are there." She could have said, "How long can I expect the
>> depression to go on?"
>
>OTOH, if she's one who had the usual experience of doctors deciding for
>themselves what's the "proper" thing to do all her life, why would she
>even try to ask?
Because it's the intelligent thing to do. If you float passively through
your life, you're going to get screwed.
>Why do you think so many people see doctors as authority persons? Because
>many doctors habitually assume the authority, of course.
They can only do that if you let them.
>
>> I think that's your perception. You're expecting *every person* to be
>> aware of *every possible* eventuality. What I see, is that you went
>> looking for an answer, and the people you talked to gave you the answers
>> they had. One of them was right and the others weren't. That's normal. The
>> point is, you have to take responsibility for getting your own answers.
>> The doctors are there to help you. They're not there to do it for you.
>
>I disagree here. They are the medical experts; they are the ones supposed
>to come up with the medical answers. That's what they are getting payed
>for. That's what they got their degrees for.
If you'd read Abby's post, Kai, instead of looking for things to trash in
mine, you'd see that they did do that. If you're looking for perfection
from "experts", again, you're going to get screwed.
Peter da Silva
In article <6vDLO...@khms.westfalen.de>,
Kai Henningsen <kaih=6vDLO...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>Why do you think so many people see doctors as authority persons?
Same reason many of them see system admins as authority figures.
And it really rankles us to be treated as lusers.
(followups to net.religion.afterburner or something?)
--
This is The Reverend Peter da Silva's Boring Sig File - there are no references
to Wolves, Kibo, Discordianism, or The Church of the Subgenius in this document
| "Settle down, boys. There's pain enough for everyone in net.*." |
| -- Kate Wrightson |
Kai Henningsen
yo...@huitzilo.tezcat.com (YoYo) wrote on 04.06.98 in <6l7bkc$6...@huitzilo.tezcat.com>:
> Kai Henningsen <kaih=6vDLO...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>
> >> It's better because it actually does something. I mean, if all you want
> >> to hear is "Don't worry, you're okay," have tea with a friend. It's
> >> cheaper. There's an implicit assumption that if you go to the doctor with
> >> a problem, you actually want the doctor to *do* something about it. If
> >> that's not what you want, then the doctor is not the person to be going
> >> to.
> >
> >There's something fundamentally wrong with this paragraph.
> >
> >See, most people are not experts on medicine. Before asking a doctor, they
> >don't _know_ if it's something they could just wait out, or something they
> >need meds for, or whatever.
>
> I'm not an expert on medicine, Kai, but I know enough to ask pertinent
> questions.
That's a little different from what you said above, though. There you told
us that when people go to the doctor, it's assumed they want something
done about the problem.
> >> Well, she could have said, "I don't want to stop breastfeeding. What
> >> other options are there." She could have said, "How long can I expect the
> >> depression to go on?"
> >
> >OTOH, if she's one who had the usual experience of doctors deciding for
> >themselves what's the "proper" thing to do all her life, why would she
> >even try to ask?
>
> Because it's the intelligent thing to do. If you float passively through
> your life, you're going to get screwed.
People do what they learned to do. And yes, most people tend to get
screwed, and that's not limited to the medical system.
> >> I think that's your perception. You're expecting *every person* to be
> >> aware of *every possible* eventuality. What I see, is that you went
> >> looking for an answer, and the people you talked to gave you the answers
> >> they had. One of them was right and the others weren't. That's normal.
> >> The point is, you have to take responsibility for getting your own
> >> answers. The doctors are there to help you. They're not there to do it
> >> for you.
> >
> >I disagree here. They are the medical experts; they are the ones supposed
> >to come up with the medical answers. That's what they are getting payed
> >for. That's what they got their degrees for.
>
> If you'd read Abby's post, Kai, instead of looking for things to trash in
> mine, you'd see that they did do that. If you're looking for perfection
> from "experts", again, you're going to get screwed.
If you read my followup to Abby's post, YoYo, you'd have seen why exactly
I think they went grossly wrong there. No, they did quite obviously not
come up with the correct answers. They didn't even recognize the symptoms,
in spite of those symtoms not being very exotic at all.
I'm not looking for perfection. I'm looking for car mechanics that are
going to recognize flat tires, and not try to explain the problem with
something related to steering.
And as for "looking for something to trash in your post", why on earth
would I want to do that? Just because I disagree with that one paragraph,
doesn't mean I'm out to get you.