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Mental Health |OT| Depression & Co.

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I tried being flirty with a girl today, that I've been talking to for a few weeks. Profile Picture of her kissing her dog on FB. I said "lucky dog"

She deleted the picture.
 
Cameron122 said:
I tried being flirty with a girl today, that I've been talking to for a few weeks. Profile Picture of her kissing her dog on FB. I said "lucky dog"

She deleted the picture.
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It could be nothing related to what you said, but depending on who she has on facebook (family, etc) it may have made her a little uncomfortable. As a rule, I say keeping things platonic over social media like facebook is a good idea. If the chatting leads to her wanting to hang out in person, my best advice would be to take that slow and see how things go. :)

I say this because as a girl, I've had some guy friends make comments on my pictures where they unintentionally crossed a line that made me uncomfortable, whether they were joking or being serious.
 
Cameron122 said:
I tried being flirty with a girl today, that I've been talking to for a few weeks. Profile Picture of her kissing her dog on FB. I said "lucky dog"

She deleted the picture.
Click to expand...
If a girl ever made a serious reply to a picture of me and said "you're really handsome!" or "wow, you're hot!" I would be giddy for days on end. I understand why people can be 'creeped out' by compliments but I'll never know that side because I've never been told I'm handsome unless it's to try and make me feel better. Fuck damn, what it must be like to even look of average attractiveness.
 
Nithidia said:
It could be nothing related to what you said, but depending on who she has on facebook (family, etc) it may have made her a little uncomfortable. As a rule, I say keeping things platonic over social media like facebook is a good idea. If the chatting leads to her wanting to hang out in person, my best advice would be to take that slow and see how things go. :)

I say this because as a girl, I've had some guy friends make comments on my pictures where they unintentionally crossed a line that made me uncomfortable, whether they were joking or being serious.
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I thought it was quirky enough not to be 'forceful'. Maybe I'm overthinking it. I ran out of dosage today so I'm feeling less than usual. Thanks y'all for your input :)
 
Just got fired from an awesome job and keep forgetting to take my meds. It's amazing how quickly you relapse after not taking the meds. Maybe it's a reliance placebo effect...
 
Cameron122 said:
I tried being flirty with a girl today, that I've been talking to for a few weeks. Profile Picture of her kissing her dog on FB. I said "lucky dog"

She deleted the picture.
Click to expand...

I think that's pretty funny. It's an innocent comment I see nothing to get offended about. Too bad she may have taken it the wrong way. I think people just take things too seriously sometimes.
 
BigEvilTurtle said:
Just got fired from an awesome job and keep forgetting to take my meds. It's amazing how quickly you relapse after not taking the meds. Maybe it's a reliance placebo effect...
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Whatever it is, take your prescribed meds please. I've been there, thinking I'm feeling good. Don't take em for a while, and bam. Right at square one.
 
Cameron122 said:
Whatever it is, take your prescribed meds please. I've been there, thinking I'm feeling good. Don't take em for a while, and bam. Right at square one.
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I notice that if I take them sporadically and or every other day, I start to feel depressed very quickly after. I've been on them for a few months now. I'll get right back to taking them regularly.
 
BigEvilTurtle said:
I notice that if I take them sporadically and or every other day, I start to feel depressed very quickly after. I've been on them for a few months now. I'll get right back to taking them regularly.
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Thank you bud.

I'm sure some of you know this, and are told this often, but I'm gonna tell y'all what my parents told me when I got back on em after coming back home. There's no shame in needing medication. A diabetic isn't ashamed of his insulin, a person with poor vision isn't ashamed of their glasses!
 
Cameron122 said:
I thought it was quirky enough not to be 'forceful'. Maybe I'm overthinking it. I ran out of dosage today so I'm feeling less than usual. Thanks y'all for your input :)
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Yeah, it was probably nothing to do with you. She may have just not liked the picture and your comment on it reminded her that she had it up. :p

I don't think it was anything you said at all. I brought up the "uncomfortable" thing because I'm awkward about anything on facebook. I am a terrible example really. :p
 
Godofnerdiness said:
So...Uh...Something weirdish happened just now.

While growing up my parents used to fight every now and again. Or, at least, that's what I saw. Sometimes it was just yelling / name calling, other times they ended up getting... Violent. There were a couple of nights I sincerely thought one of them was going to murder the other. It was mostly over work, of which they leave me and my siblings in the dark about so I don't know the details. I digress. They have said multiple times they would divorce in the midst of a heated fight, but the next day they'd apologize to me and said they still love each other.

Tonight they very sat us down and calmly said they're getting a divorce. This is out of the blue really, it's been a few months since the last ourburst(although that one was honestly the worst, jesus fuck). But they said they love each other and were joking around, and that they'd still be good friends. My Mom is taking my sister with her and moving fairly closeby, but she plans to visit often.

I... Uh... Has anyone else had parents seperate like this? I don't know what to make of it. It's... Odd. I mean, I guess I'm not too upset because all the previous fights sort of prepared me for this, and it might be for the best. I'm gonna miss having my sister around. Really miss her. Really really.. Ah fuck I can feel the waterworks. Enough of that!
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My parents split when I was 7. From the sounds of it, your parents fought a lot more than mine ever did. Mine would argue Sunday mornings, my mum would cry but they would never be violent with each other. One afternoon they sat me and my brother down and told us my dad was moving out. Then they took us to a local fair that was in town, which was the least fun evening I've ever spent.

What I'm saying is I think what happened is pretty normal.

It's totally ok to cry in this situation, you're better off just letting it out.
 
I'm not even sure what the fuck i am anymore, i can be happy and literally jumping for joy one moment and being on top of the world to being angry and agressive the next to being detached and distant the next to feeling disgusted and ashamed the next. I have no idea what sets me off either way and i don't know whether i'm coming or going, i have times where i feel completely at ease and at one with everything but they don't last. Generally it's just a constant cycle of extremes and lately they've been switching faster and more erratically.

I'm reluctant to talk to people about my life, what i think and how i'm feeling and such, i don't have anyone i feel i can talk to about these things. It's a trust/shame/'ineednoone' thing for me, I try with my family sometimes but they tend to take what i say the wrong way, misinterpret me or freak the fuck out.

I've been having a really shite week and yesterday my family tried to get me to talk about it, i was reluctant but the pros keep telling me to try and be more accepting of help etc, a problem shared and all that.

They asked what was wrong and so i told them...and all i got was tears. Tears, misinterpretation and lectures.

I cried for the first time in years yesterday, i've become quite good at swallowing my tears before they have a chance to surface but yesterday i cried, i'm getting lower and lower and suicidal ideas are taking their grip. I don't particularly wanna die (orly?) but i'm tired of living a life like this and i'm worried, emotionally i can change very drastically very quickly and i act on them. I feel helpless, useless and out of control.

I've been thinking about bi-polor. Is it easily missed? Easily tested for? I've seen a few doctors and psychologists but only for the depression and medication from the doctors and anxiety with the psychologist, i've never really spoken about the mood swings or anything.
 
wastewater said:
I'm not even sure what the fuck i am anymore, i can be happy and literally jumping for joy one moment and being on top of the world to being angry and agressive the next to being detached and distant the next to feeling disgusted and ashamed the next. I have no idea what sets me off either way and i don't know whether i'm coming or going, i have times where i feel completely at ease and at one with everything but they don't last. Generally it's just a constant cycle of extremes and lately they've been switching faster and more erratically.

I'm reluctant to talk to people about my life, what i think and how i'm feeling and such, i don't have anyone i feel i can talk to about these things. It's a trust/shame/'ineednoone' thing for me, I try with my family sometimes but they tend to take what i say the wrong way, misinterpret me or freak the fuck out.

I've been having a really shite week and yesterday my family tried to get me to talk about it, i was reluctant but the pros keep telling me to try and be more accepting of help etc, a problem shared and all that.

They asked what was wrong and so i told them...and all i got was tears. Tears, misinterpretation and lectures.

I cried for the first time in years yesterday, i've become quite good at swallowing my tears before they have a chance to surface but yesterday i cried, i'm getting lower and lower and suicidal ideas are taking their grip. I don't particularly wanna die (orly?) but i'm tired of living a life like this and i'm worried, emotionally i can change very drastically very quickly and i act on them. I feel helpless, useless and out of control.

I've been thinking about bi-polor. Is it easily missed? Easily tested for? I've seen a few doctors and psychologists but only for the depression and medication from the doctors and anxiety with the psychologist, i've never really spoken about the mood swings or anything.
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I would definitely ask about Bi-Polar disorder. There are two types of it, I believe.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/bipolar-disorder/index.shtml
 
I am on my way to meeting Windam to give him a vital computer component and disillusion him forever with my in real personage.

I am still in my work clothes (and by work clothes I mean Fangamer t-shirt and black work pants and steel toe shoes worn last night while stocking shelves) and am dishevelled and full of dust and not makeup. I am pretty sure we both have social anxiety issues so wish us luck. lololol

Also my front door knob broke so that it's locked shut and we took the knob off but the piece is still in there lodged in the door frame. xD Kind of amazing!
I had to escape through my backyard to head off to see Windam. Dedication!

Also I am really sleepy lol I thinks it's kind of like being drunk because that's when I ramble stupid things mostest.
 
I feel like such a hypochondriac. For a very long time I've had trouble making decisions about anything, and a tendency to feel negative or down about things, even when I get a new job (how will this job affect my personal life? I think). Now I know from personal experience how irritating it is when people falsely equate being sad or down with being properly depressed. My grandfather's suffered with actual clinical depression all his life, and tried to take his own life a few years back (he's doing splendidly right now, considering).

Just took a quiz online and it states I'm "severely depressed". Now I know online quizzes might as well be a lot of hot air, but it did worry me. There's no rational reason for me feeling down right now, I'm doing pretty well. I have a healthy long-term relationship, and a part-time job while I'm at home from Uni for the Summer. I just either feel guilty, worried, sad, or totally apathetic. I have "bad days" and this is one of them. I feel myself getting so irritable with my whole family, especially (and this is awful) my autistic brother. I love him to bits, but I just snap at him, and I hate myself for it. One minute I'm worrying about what I'm going to do with my imminent future and my career, the next moment I'm rather grimly resolving that it doesn't matter because I'll be dust in 60 years or so anyway. I can't even face going outside today for a jog. I love it when I don't feel like this, when I get a little high, when everything seems to click because it's such a fantastic contrast. I'll write this today and then feel utterly stupid, probably delete the post tomorrow because I'll feel absolutely fine, or I'll find some way to rationalize being in a good or happy mood to myself and be okay for the day.

The phrase "mental health" is intimidating as fuck I guess, and even if I don't get a reply or get called out as just being a little bit gloomy, then I don't mind, because at least I typed it out. Can't really talk to my family about it right now, my Mother's just lost her Mum so I'd feel so selfish talking to her. And overall I just feel like a drama queen focusing so much on myself and my feelings, again I feel selfish.
 
^ Well, if you've been feeling pretty awful for long periods of time, it could mean you are suffering from depression. even if everything is going kind of well, Sometimes it happens (random brain quirk or a genetic vulnerability or over time from life stresses). Maybe talk to a doctor about it and see what they think?
It's not selfish to want to know more about your own health and well-being. It is good for you to have written it down and tell yourself you have thought about it at least. I think everyone finds the subject daunting, especially what it might mean for themselves, so at least you were brave enough to give it some thought.
Take care! And hope things go well. You're always welcome to stick around here and try to discuss things through if you have questions.


Also, phew. Crisis averted. Windam and I did not both die from anxiety and now I am gonna head home to sleep! Yay!
I WAS pretty nervous though! So if I came off badly, Windam, I am sorry!
 
ExigentContact said:
Nah, dude, I saw what you were saying earlier and it resonated with me. It's just hard to pull anything positive from the ether of the mind when I'm thinking the same stuff, more or less. Also being new to the topic doesn't help, lol.

It's good that you're on better ground now, though. And for the most part, I agree about the right-to-death. It's a controversial area as far as mental health is concerned (and only slightly less so when it comes to terminal illness and the like), but I do believe in autonomy and respecting people's wishes. That said, the decision to end a life must always be weighed heavily, and in most cases the general consensus is that those suffering from mental illness are not in the right state of mind to make a rational/ethical choice on the matter. I'm not so sure in some cases, but in general I agree that most aren't.
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I can get that. Sometimes you do get that feeling of "how can I advise, when I can't get myself out of the same situation" going through your mind. Sometimes, just a simple response to assure someone they're not alone can make a difference. Silly thing is, you can sometimes come across someone with feelings you have and can come up with advise for them, but not yourself. Silly brains.

I've not had a sharp decline in mood since my post, and I hope it stays that way. I think if someone gives it some long term thought and their choice hasn't changed, then they should have the right to pass away the way they want to. Especially in the case of terminal illness, but that is just my thoughts.

Prax said:
Also, phew. Crisis averted. Windam and I did not both die from anxiety and now I am gonna head home to sleep! Yay!
I WAS pretty nervous though! So if I came off badly, Windam, I am sorry!
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I wonder if this is the first dgaf meet? I'd be curious to find out. I saw the related posts and I think it's awesome that you helped out windam with this, even though it is a non-health problem! I guess dgaf covers a lot of issues. I hope you both got to have a nice chat while you were at it, even if anxieties might of been a bit conflicting.
 
A friend reminded me today that I have to get up the courage to feel like I am worth caring for before I can actually be cared for.

Well, so much for that. =/
 
Double post...Because fuck it.
Friend nudged me to draw...and here's the result:

fire.jpg
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I'm very happy that my friends here liked my latest piece... but at the same time, I'm bitterly disappointed that none of my musician friends seemed to give a shit. Not that posting a video on Facebook generally gets much attention anyway but everyone was aware of it. It just stings with the realization that these people only really liked me when I was useful to them. With my retirement (whether permanent or not), they've gradually drifted out of my sphere, remaining connected to each other but dismissive of me, as if I've suddenly become a leper.

I'm really bummed tonight. I don't mind who I am. A lot of people love who I am but I wish I could be more. I wish I could do more.
 
I feel like I'm going fucking crazy over an ex-girlfriend. We dated for 3 years and then broke up after a mutual agreement that things weren't working out. We stayed friends though and hung out now and then for years after. Fast forward to the last couple weeks where she came home to visit, I went to a couple parties with her and then I started having all these dreams about being jealous and craving her attention.

I'm not looking for advice, although that would be appreciated, I just wanted to vent and this seemed like a good place to do that.
 
I have so much stuff to reply to, jeez. I picked up some nasty little bug and I'm just starting to recover from being super sick and ugh. So now I'm behind in sending letters, responding to stuff, the whole nine yards. Need to catch uuupppppp!!!


I promised to talk about my experience taking an MAOI for depression, so...here goes.

So the Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOIs) aren't used as much these days for depression (although they may be making a bit of a comeback) - they see more use for the treatment of Parkinson's Disease, actually.

An MAOI, Iproniazid, was the first antidepressant ever marketed. It was a drug for TB, but in the early studies, it seemed to have a positive effect on mood. It came out in 1958.

MAOIs work by irreversibly inhibiting the enzyme Monoamine Oxidase (A and B) which, among other things, breaks down serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine in your synapses. So the drugs work by keeping your brain from chewing up chemicals with strong effects on mood. The effect is very strong and very fast.

I take Parnate (Tranylcypromine), which is, oddly enough, an amphetamine derivative (It doesn't have amphetamine-like properties). So you can end up on MAOIs nowadays if your depression is resistant to treatment with SSRIs and tricyclics. They're really useful for treatment-resistant depression, basically. Parnate is a drug from 1961, which is forever ago for a psychiatric drug. This usually means a) it's not super safe and b) the side effects will be brutal.

So I started taking this stuff about a month ago. I started on 10mg, a super low dose, with plans to work up to 30mg for the full effect. The first week went really well, actually. It helped that we went home on a little trip, as I get a boost out of seeing my family anyway. The first thing I noticed was that even the starting dose made me profoundly tired. The evening dose was great, as I have so much trouble sleeping. But after the first few days, I also had a morning dose, so I'd pass out around midday. It was actually okay, though, because I started to feel better after just a few days on the drug, somewhere during my 20mg a day dose. MAOIs work MUCH faster than the SSRIs - the mechanism is more direct than the subtle stuff SSRIs do. The sleepiness got a bit better, too, so things were going great.

Then I hit the full 30mg dose. I continued to feel really good. It's hard to describe. I kept telling people that some vital spark that had been missing was back, and I no longer felt so dead inside. And they seemed to recognize it in me, too. The 10mg morning dose no longer knocked me out, but now I had a 20mg evening dose and that proved to be too much. It's probably just too high a dose for me and we got there a bit too fast (maybe). The dose was too high so I felt just a little bit too good. That doesn't really describe it - I wasn't high or anything - but it really played into the other big problem. The 20mg dose completely knocked me on my ass. I got so sleepy I would fall over walking around our house in the evening. There was a definite drunken/punch-drunk quality that set in, as people on here who were voice chatting with me at the time can attest to. For some reason, I just would not go to bed. So I'd stay up and get increasingly weird, slurring everything I said, knocking into shit (I had a couple of nice bruises), and sending out incoherent messages to people. I would remember very, very little of this the next day (leaving me to wonder why I was so banged up). The problem was, I felt so much better! The drug was really doing something for me. I haven't gone back and looked at my posts, but I'm pretty sure there's a positive status update in there from me, describing the sensation. Shortly after that, I posted about having to go into the hospital.

My wife saw me falling down all over the house and my friends were telling me about the messages and the slurred speech - it sort of all came together as a huge "oh shit." But it was such a mess in my head because I was finally starting to feel okay again, and I thought the side effects were getting better. I was REALLY reluctant to get off a drug that had had such a profound effect so fast.

So we had a big meeting with the doctor and we decided to drop me back down to 10mg a day (one evening dose). We were so early into things that we could stop the drug right away if I continued to be nutty. And fortunately things settled back down. I think they would have gotten better at 30mg, too (in fact, I think things were settling down), but better safe than sorry.

I've continued on at 10mg since then (near the end of June?) with good results. My mood got a big boost from my Maine trip, and then dropped down for a bit after I came home. We might see about slowly going back to 20mg a day, as I feel good, but some of that feeling that I can actually get off my butt and do stuff with my life is just not there. My mood is pretty good, pretty normal, the tiredness is gone (which also sucks as I can't sleep again), I have more energy, I'm just more myself overall.

So there are still two problems with the MAOI. First, as with any psych med, it will change how you respond to other psych meds. I take klonopin occasionally for these weird bouts of unexplained anxiety I get. I'll sometimes wake up in a super anxious state and spend the entire day trying to calm down. Klonopin really helps, but with the Parnate, I've found that it really messes with my memory. It's slightly embarrassing because klonopin also makes me tell everyone how much I love them. So I've gone back and looked at text messages I don't remember sending and feeling slightly embarrassed that I was so mushy. I guess I don't mind the mushiness (I mean what I say, and there's a definite genuine quality to it - it's not like "why would I ever say that?!?!") so much (although it can get more over the top than I'd like), as having had a really sweet interaction with someone and then not remembering it. It makes me sad and scared and upset, all at the same time. That loss of control is very scary, especially when that control is compromised in other ways by depression and anxiety.

If you watch drug commercials on TV, during the zillion warnings they give, you'll often hear, "...do not take if you are taken certain medications known as MAOIs..." There are a LOT of potential interactions, and the drugs mechanistically lack the subtlety and selectivity of more modern pharmaceuticals. Klonopin has no interaction with Parnate per se (there's no warning about mixing them), but Parnate definitely accentuates the klonopin for me.

So here's the huge issue with MAOIs, and why you don't see them prescribed much [it's going to take some work to convince someone to put you on one, unless they're very good at their psychopharmacology]. When they first came out, there were several cases in which people had massive strokes and died. So there's that safety thing I talked about. The problem turns out to be dietary. Monoamine Oxidase breaks down tyramine, an amino acid found in certain foods, most notably aged cheeses and aged meats. Tyramine makes your blood pressure go way up, but it's usually rapidly broken down in your body so the effect was not known when the drugs came out. The MAOIs block this effect, so tyramine builds up and it can drive your blood pressure through the roof. There are a lot of foods that you're told to avoid with MAOIs - cheeses are the worst offenders and are the only foods implicated in fatal reactions, but things as diverse as snow peas, red wine, yogurt, beer, peanuts, and soy sauce can also cause issues.

When your blood pressure climbs, it makes you feel really anxious. So before you hit the level where you stroke out and die, you'll just go slightly nutty. My worst night on Parnate involved the too high dose and me eating a peanut butter sandwich because peanuts weren't on the diet I was looking at (the information about various foods can be super contradictory). It turns out peanuts have tyramine - my aunt and I have the same reaction - we just cannot eat them any more. Being really sleepy and really anxious makes you profoundly weird, it turns out.

I stuck to the diet pretty religiously after that, avoiding anything that contains tyramine. After talking more with my aunt, who has 20 years experience with an MAOI, I learned that most foods are actually okay (aged cheeses still being the one thing you absolutely should not eat). The advice was, after you have a little, you can see if you start getting a slight anxious feeling, which will tell you that you're having a reaction. I've slowly added foods back in - a glass of red wine and avocados both proved A-OK. And much to my delight, I found that I can even drink beer, which I had had to avoid during my vacation. Trust me, a cold beer never looks so good as when you know you can't have one. As it turns out, it's only beer from a tap that's a problem - bacteria in the tap lines are what make the tyramine. Bottled and canned beer is just fine. Now I just look longingly at macaroni and cheese (cheddar has extreme levels of tyramine)...

As I mentioned, I'm thinking my starter dose is just a little low for me to feel fully myself again. Getting back to 20mg, which is still a modest dose, is going to take some work, as my wife is going to make me do it at a super slow pace, after much convincing. Overall, I think what's most impressive is how quickly the drugs worked and what a profound effect they had. Had we gone a little slower, preventing me from going nuts (potentially), I think things would have been great. As it is, this is an exciting new thing for me and I'm just glad I had people around me to say "dude, your pills are making you nuts," so I could fix it.

I really do want to thank all of my great friends here (as well as anyone who read any of that!) for keeping an eye on me. Just for putting up with me when I go nutty, and then forgiving me for pissing them off, they would be saints. But the genuine concern, support, patience, gentle nudges to see doctors and get my shit together - it all means the world to me. Most people in this world want us to be well, but the people who really, really, really want us to be well, and let us know that they're thinking about it when we're not around, it pays to keep them close. It makes me want to fight harder, to be worthy of that affection, and to be able to do the same for them.

More stuff later, but it's way too late and I still need to rest up a bit from my cold.

Super duper <3 to you all.
 
Bagels said:
As people in chat will tell you, the only things that ever make me upset are genocide and people who put ketchup on hotdogs. Speak your mind, dude!
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Plot twist! Jubei is an alien warlord from the planet X, where ketchup based life is the norm.

KETCHUP AND GENOCIDE
 
I've grown out of ketchup in a big way. Never really use it on anything.

It's been replaced with spicy mustard, though evn that is used sparingly. Let the cooking do the talking for you I say.
 
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