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ninanevermore.
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You can never defend the guy who commits suicide, even when you feel sorry for him. You just have to bit your tongue when a person near you starts clucking his or her tongue and saying something along the lines of, "I'll never understand what makes a person do something like that. It's the most selfish thing you could do, in my opinion."
If you say something like, "I'm glad you don't understand, and I hope you never do," they will look at you strangely and extend their negative assessment of the deceased to you as well.
If you say, "Probably because he wanted the pain to stop," they will look at you incredulously and respond that it was a permanent solution to a temporary problem, etc. etc.
So you keep your mouth shut. Defending the indefensible never wins you any friends or scores you any social points. Explaining the why of an act of desperation won't make the other person feel more enlightened, it will only make them defensive toward their own ignorance.
No, I'm not depressed and not thinking of taking my life. But I have a special insight most people, not even those who have suffered from depression, don't have. Depression really is all in a person's head – their biological brain, to be exact. It's a matter of physiology, not attitude. It's one of those things I figured out in college, but not in any class that I took.
I have lived with type 1 diabetes since I was 8 years old. From time to time, my body will undergo a metabolic shift that requires me to adjust how I manage my diabetes. When I was 19 and in my second year of college, I first became aware of a condition we diabetics call the Dawn Effect: our blood glucose (sugar) levels spike in the early morning hours for no good reason known to man. I suspect there might be some sort of biological benefit to this in a non-diabetic: the liver releases some glucose for energy to get you out of bed and out the door, and the pancreas releases some insulin to metabolize it, and – viola! – there you stand, bright eyed and bushy tailed, one of those annoying morning people everyone else hates. But when only the first half of this mechanism works, and you get the glucose without the insulin, the results are anything but "viola."
I began waking up about this time with a sense of doom and dread. Mankind, I realized, was evil and beyond redemption. Nuclear war did not sound like a bad idea, but more like the only hope for the universe to wipe the plague of humanity out of existence. I hated my life, I hated myself, I hated every other person on the planet. But I noticed that as the day progressed, humanity always looked a bit better.
I did not monitor my blood glucose very often in those days, but on a whim I did one of those mornings when I was opting for nuclear annihilation. Lo and behold, my blood sugar level was north of 4 times what it ought to have been. I took a shot of what was then the fastest acting insulin available to me, Humalin R. This stuff took half an hour to absorb, and an hour to peak, or reach its maximum absorption. On that particular day, I didn't have a class until later, so I set my alarm for an hour and went back to bed. The high glucose has me feeling lethargic, for one. Also, having your blood sugar drop that fast on an empty stomach makes you feel kind of queasy and gross. Might as well sleep through all that. When the alarm went off I woke up and loved mankind – flawed, stupid, quirky, ridiculous, but ultimately charming mankind – once again.
I soon learned to adjust my insulin levels to avoid waking up wanting to die and take the rest of the world with me. I have also suffered from depression off and on that has nothing to do with my glucose level, which has been trickier to deal with. But the high-glucose induced depression opened my eyes to the fact that depression has more to do with what is going on with your body chemistry than it does with what is going on in your life. It gave me the ability to work around depression and ignore it, even, since I knew it was an illusion. Not everyone can do this, and most people think the problem is that their life and the world around them sucks, not that something is out of balance within them physically. The problem isn't mental, the problem an illness like any other that just so happens to effect how we think and feel. Ideally, it should carry no more stigma than having an ingrown toenail or a bad cold does.
For the record, for those who have been fortunate enough to never be depressed, it is not the same thing as sadness. Sadness is an emotion: it is something that you feel. Depression is a big Nothing that you have blocking your access to your emotions. When you are depressed, you do not feel sadness, anymore than you feel happiness or love or joy or wonder. It's like a migraine headache that affects your soul: it is pain, but you can't take your finger and point to where it hurts. Trying to feel through depression is like trying to watch a television set through static: you might get an idea of what is being broadcast – of what it feels like to feel – but the distortion keeps you from getting any pleasure from it. I am using analogies to try to paint a picture of something that has no shape, form, or describable color, but hopefully you get the idea.
I know first hand, which puts me in the awkward position of sometimes being the only one in the room who can defend the indefensible if I'm willing to put my neck out. Usually it's not worth it because who judge other people do it because they enjoy it and they resent you if you call them out on this. The good news about depression is that since it has a biological basis, it often (though not always) responds to medical treatments. I'm all for better living through chemistry if that's what it takes to get you back to functionality.
Of course, since I take insulin I'd be a hypocrite if the idea of taking medication to fix something that's not working in my body were abhorrent to me. There is no natural remedy for what ails me; hence I must embrace the unnatural options I have that enable me to live and enjoy, ironically enough, all that the natural world has to offer. Some people die because the idea of taking an antidepressant seems unnatural to them. Anyone who has ever watched a wildlife documentary knows that nature has an ugly side and includes a lot needless of suffering. If that's what you're into, I'll be here to defend you. But between you and me, I think it's kind of stupid.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
You can never defend the guy who commits suicide, even when you feel sorry for him. You just have to bit your tongue when a person near you starts clucking his or her tongue and saying something along the lines of, "I'll never understand what makes a person do something like that. It's the most selfish thing you could do, in my opinion."
If you say something like, "I'm glad you don't understand, and I hope you never do," they will look at you strangely and extend their negative assessment of the deceased to you as well.
If you say, "Probably because he wanted the pain to stop," they will look at you incredulously and respond that it was a permanent solution to a temporary problem, etc. etc.
So you keep your mouth shut. Defending the indefensible never wins you any friends or scores you any social points. Explaining the why of an act of desperation won't make the other person feel more enlightened, it will only make them defensive toward their own ignorance.
No, I'm not depressed and not thinking of taking my life. But I have a special insight most people, not even those who have suffered from depression, don't have. Depression really is all in a person's head – their biological brain, to be exact. It's a matter of physiology, not attitude. It's one of those things I figured out in college, but not in any class that I took.
I have lived with type 1 diabetes since I was 8 years old. From time to time, my body will undergo a metabolic shift that requires me to adjust how I manage my diabetes. When I was 19 and in my second year of college, I first became aware of a condition we diabetics call the Dawn Effect: our blood glucose (sugar) levels spike in the early morning hours for no good reason known to man. I suspect there might be some sort of biological benefit to this in a non-diabetic: the liver releases some glucose for energy to get you out of bed and out the door, and the pancreas releases some insulin to metabolize it, and – viola! – there you stand, bright eyed and bushy tailed, one of those annoying morning people everyone else hates. But when only the first half of this mechanism works, and you get the glucose without the insulin, the results are anything but "viola."
I began waking up about this time with a sense of doom and dread. Mankind, I realized, was evil and beyond redemption. Nuclear war did not sound like a bad idea, but more like the only hope for the universe to wipe the plague of humanity out of existence. I hated my life, I hated myself, I hated every other person on the planet. But I noticed that as the day progressed, humanity always looked a bit better.
I did not monitor my blood glucose very often in those days, but on a whim I did one of those mornings when I was opting for nuclear annihilation. Lo and behold, my blood sugar level was north of 4 times what it ought to have been. I took a shot of what was then the fastest acting insulin available to me, Humalin R. This stuff took half an hour to absorb, and an hour to peak, or reach its maximum absorption. On that particular day, I didn't have a class until later, so I set my alarm for an hour and went back to bed. The high glucose has me feeling lethargic, for one. Also, having your blood sugar drop that fast on an empty stomach makes you feel kind of queasy and gross. Might as well sleep through all that. When the alarm went off I woke up and loved mankind – flawed, stupid, quirky, ridiculous, but ultimately charming mankind – once again.
I soon learned to adjust my insulin levels to avoid waking up wanting to die and take the rest of the world with me. I have also suffered from depression off and on that has nothing to do with my glucose level, which has been trickier to deal with. But the high-glucose induced depression opened my eyes to the fact that depression has more to do with what is going on with your body chemistry than it does with what is going on in your life. It gave me the ability to work around depression and ignore it, even, since I knew it was an illusion. Not everyone can do this, and most people think the problem is that their life and the world around them sucks, not that something is out of balance within them physically. The problem isn't mental, the problem an illness like any other that just so happens to effect how we think and feel. Ideally, it should carry no more stigma than having an ingrown toenail or a bad cold does.
For the record, for those who have been fortunate enough to never be depressed, it is not the same thing as sadness. Sadness is an emotion: it is something that you feel. Depression is a big Nothing that you have blocking your access to your emotions. When you are depressed, you do not feel sadness, anymore than you feel happiness or love or joy or wonder. It's like a migraine headache that affects your soul: it is pain, but you can't take your finger and point to where it hurts. Trying to feel through depression is like trying to watch a television set through static: you might get an idea of what is being broadcast – of what it feels like to feel – but the distortion keeps you from getting any pleasure from it. I am using analogies to try to paint a picture of something that has no shape, form, or describable color, but hopefully you get the idea.
I know first hand, which puts me in the awkward position of sometimes being the only one in the room who can defend the indefensible if I'm willing to put my neck out. Usually it's not worth it because who judge other people do it because they enjoy it and they resent you if you call them out on this. The good news about depression is that since it has a biological basis, it often (though not always) responds to medical treatments. I'm all for better living through chemistry if that's what it takes to get you back to functionality.
Of course, since I take insulin I'd be a hypocrite if the idea of taking medication to fix something that's not working in my body were abhorrent to me. There is no natural remedy for what ails me; hence I must embrace the unnatural options I have that enable me to live and enjoy, ironically enough, all that the natural world has to offer. Some people die because the idea of taking an antidepressant seems unnatural to them. Anyone who has ever watched a wildlife documentary knows that nature has an ugly side and includes a lot needless of suffering. If that's what you're into, I'll be here to defend you. But between you and me, I think it's kind of stupid.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 08:00 pm (UTC)If anybody has a problem with it, or worse yet, an uninformed opinion, they should do the world a favor and STHU about it.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 06:21 pm (UTC)Imagine what AM radio would sound like if everyone did that. The only things left would be left would be sports and Tejano music.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 06:30 pm (UTC)Our bodies are complicated machines, and when any one thing in a machine gets out of whack, it effects the machine as a whole. If poor glucose control can trigger depression, I have no doubt that other imbalances might not have a similar effect.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 01:04 pm (UTC)But I know, it's not the right thing to do, and am glad I never actually carried it through. *HUGS*
no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 05:39 pm (UTC)