Atypical visit to the doctor. Photo by Deshan

I’ve taken the prose. I’ve also taken enough Psychology to know when a doctor is asking, literally, prescriptive questions. For a long time I was feeling shit for no particular reason. I obviously had reasons, but they were retarded, hence I’m in the Asiri waiting room, clutching a print-out and feeling wholly depressed by my surroundings. Not my life per se, the hospitals just seem kinda hack-job. You get about 10 minutes – often behind a sliding wood door – with a doctor. I’m remembering coming here with a girl, I’m tripping out, need to sit still. Shit hadn’t even happened yet, crazy. Talk to the shrink, who’s treble my age, and realize that I probably know enough to bullshit him. I know just enough psychiatry to be a hypochondriac. The dominant thing, far eclipsing wholly ineffective psychoanalysis, is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It’s weird, but it’s basically structured, repetitive exercises that can mentally massage out some kinks. But there are like 3 people in the country who do it. The vast majority have their scrips out, ask if you feel heavy, have trouble sleeping and put you on some prose and valleys. And the sad thing is that the pills work. Apparently, it may not even be what’s in the pills, just the act of taking pills at all.

There’s a study on the thing, the TV, newspapers. They’re saying that a review of clinical studies shows that anti-depressants work about as well as placebo. Which I’d always thought. I use to feel better the moment I took the things, before anything could possibly hit my bloodstream. I also didn’t (and kinda don’t) care, cause I felt better and it got me through some extended periods of not wanting to get out of bed. I’ve had people close to me with some severe objection to the pills, in fact, I assume that even writing this will have a backlash. However, the voice of reason in my long history of mental turpitude at one point put me in the car and took me to the pharmacy just to do something. My view is that depression is serious, and there’s no particular honor in suffering through it. It is important to get help and if that means pills so be it. Of course, the fact is that what’s in the pills may not matter.

Thing is, the pills have a definite physical effect. Having one in the morning without breakfast gives awful, acidic heartburn. They can also have the (to me debilitating) effect of delaying orgasm, often indefinitely. In the end that was the reason I stopped. Not because I was that much better, but because I’d rather have sex and be miserable than be well-contented eunuch. Not that it’s so drastic of course, but there are physical effects. It just seems that one of them isn’t (versus a placebo) alleviating depression.

I was almost pissed when I saw the report. Because, fundamentally, whatever marketing and crap they have in there did make me feel better. Perhaps only because I believed in it, and now I guess I believe it a bit less. A lot of life is a gamble, just depending what you’re gambling with. With the prose I was eating breakfast and not thinking with my nether regions as much, which wasn’t entirely bad. I mean, picking stocks and trying to beat the market is fundamentally retarded (compared to just buying an index fund) but people get paid a lot for doing it. In the same way Prozac is making millions (or not, the generic Prodep costs absolutely nothing, like 30 cents for weeks worth) and people feel better, so why not. Depression is a bitch and I’m actually a bit scared of them taking those pharmaceutical rituals away. I mean, if you’re going to tear down a God you should at least replace it with something. Perhaps the better way of looking at this research is that sugar pills cure depression. Makes me feel better at least.

Posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 in Brain, Personal, Science.