“Depression is rage spread thin” – George Santayana
“You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” – “Morpheus”: The Matrix
A deadly serious article – or articles - since, as I start typing this right now, I myself don’t know how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Many of you only know me as Ramsay the online clown, Ramsay the grumpy fucker, Ramsay the bodybuilder, Ramsay the washed up ex-bodybuilder that hangs around the gym making a nuisance of himself, smiling and laughing and all the time knowing full well that most folk just think he is just a bit of a nob. I'm cool with that, I embrace it in fact. I can honestly say, perhaps only a select handful of people have really seen me serious, and of those that have, they have still only ever seen what I have allowed them to see.
So this article is going to be serious. To the poisonous bitches who I know spread shit about me, struggling to fill their empty lives by bitching about mine, and to the tough guys and goldfish bowl gangsters who make threats whilst in an audience to do X/Y/Z to me (usually, for childish reasons) yet never materialise, stop reading now. This isn’t for you, you are probably too fucking thick to take it in anyway – go gossip, go do what bitches do, folk are wise to you and just humour you anyway.
To those of you still here, you might be asking – “what the hell is he writing this crap for?”. You might read the disorganised ramblings I am going to lay down here and think I am being self indulgent; for I will be talking about myself, a lot. But the fact is, out of all of you reading this now – most of who are probably debating whether to continue reading in case it gets funny or go watch TV instead – I am afraid I am writing this for an even smaller, silent subset among you.
For that select few, although it will seem outwardly that I am writing about myself, I will in fact be writing about you. More than that, I will hopefully speaking directly with you.
It doesn’t take an Einstein to realise from the above quotes, that I am referring to those that suffer from depression. It is an insidious, silent illness, brushed aside and mocked, assumed to be something that can be overcome by just “manning the fuck up” or popping a few pills. There is a great embarrassment, a sort of shame, amongst those who suffer – I know I felt it and tried to hide my mental misfires for so long myself – but there needn’t be this stigma, this fear.
So my goals for this writing are inherently simple. Too many of us suffer in silence, thinking we are alone, isolated. And, while this is admirable – to a point – it is both foolish, and unnecessary. The funny thing is, bodybuilding seems all too rife with people affected by depression. I can't figure if it is because bodybuilding attracts folks who are predisposed to these issues, or if it causes the issues itself.
Probably, to some degree, its a little bit of both.
Anyway, to those among you whom I might have struck a chord with, please read on. Get yourself comfy, let us have a chat - you are never alone – and let us see how deep this rabbit hole goes.
The Grey
I’m 34. Well, 34 and 8 months, to be more exact. I often make jokes about being middle aged, and then follow those jokes up by saying that after the things I have done to my body over the years, I must be well past the mid point of my life. But have some of those things caused my mental issues? I don’t think so, worsened possibly – I'd concede that much - but not caused.
I remember my first experience with “depression” – God I hate the term. I was 16, and that’s why the Amy Winehouse quote above rings true with me. I can’t remember how it came on me, but what I can remember is the deep rooted feeling that there is no point – in anything. No point in doing anything, no ability to feel anything. The colour drains out, and everything goes grey. Everything hurt me, and scared me in equal measure, and I just wanted out of it. I couldn’t interact, I didn’t feel part of life. I felt like I sat on the surface of life, unable to penetrate – and not really wanting to anyway from what I could see through the membrane. Everything seemed false, and I didn’t care about or for anything, or anyone. From the outside I shut down. Barely spoke, barely ate. My mum done her best, but I didn’t go to school, didn’t move. I felt myself retreat into my own padded cell in my head where I’ve always been the most comfortable, and the days passed, as they do.
When I eventually started coming out the other side, my mum convinced me to go to the doctors – practically moved me there bodily herself – only for me to be told, abruptly, that I need to “grow up” before being sent on my way.
This was my first illustration of how useless the medical community can be at times. It was my first of many such experiences since, and when a similar occurrence happened some months later, I didn’t even bother with them at all.
So, I don’t think anything I have done to my body in adulthood has caused my issues, because the problems pre-date any real drug usage or bodily abuse by many years. Indeed, when I did “experiment” it was as much as a search for treatment as anything else, and later, with alcohol, a search for oblivion.
I only say this as a precursor, because when my problems reached their darkest depths so far, in July/August 2011, the first thing the doctor tried to do was lay the blame at my door for using anabolic steroids in my bodybuilding endeavours. Big bad steroids. After all, it says in the text books that they can cause these issues (even though LOW testosterone has now been implicated more as a key factor in CAUSING male depression). That’s what the GPs do though, they try to lay blame. Obviously I simply said “look at my medical records” and they went strangely quiet when the penny dropped that my first documented flirtation with depression pre-dated my first usage of anabolics by some 3 years.
There isn’t really at this juncture, much need or point in me going through every factor that may have caused my issues (I believe now it is mostly just a misfire or series of misfires in my brain, augmented by various life experiences) or documenting all the things I have done, thoughts I have had. If you are reading this and are affected by similar issues, you already know anyway. You play scenarios out in your head for all sorts of things. You smile on the outside, put a veneer up, but on the inside you are constantly thinking negatively, destructively. You can be strong for other people, you can handle big things going tits up; when it comes to being strong for yourself, and lots of little things going wrong, you crumble.
What happened to me in 2011 – when I had to admit defeat and accept my coping strategies could, in fact, no longer cope – is that I gave in and accepted Anti-Depressant drugs. SSRI class (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor). I literally had got to the point that I needed to take something, some sort of chemical intervention, and again it was my mum that took me to the doctors (good old mum). She got me an emergency appointment first thing in the morning after coming far too close to killing myself the night before. I don’t remember much of that appointment if I am honest. I remember being in tears for most of it, feeling huge shame and being asked stupid questions, such stupid fucking questions. I was issued a prescription for Citalopram – one of a few SSRI drugs commonly prescribed – to be started immediately – and sent on my not so merry way. Fit and forget.
I now believe that I – and many of you possibly – have been given the wrong treatment, a medication class which in the long-term, can make you worse.
But I needed something. I was in an acute state of depression, with a high risk of going terminal. In hindsight, I believe I should have been given something along the lines of Diazepam (Valium), because I just needed a short term numb, to keep me safe from myself while I rebooted my brain – but NHS paranoid fear of addiction and abuse pretty much ruled that one out. So instead I got the SSRIs which allow them to neatly wrap you up and tick the “successfully treated” box. Commision collected.
Flashbulbs
When they start you on these, they tell you that you need to give it at least 6 weeks. You are fucking with brain chemistry here, and it all takes time to stop protesting and simmer down. The irony is, that in this flux period, you are statistically at a higher risk of killing yourself. If you suffer from anxiety and/or panic attacks, the likelihood of those occurring is similarly increased. Go figure.
I hated that initial period. I could tell that I was being messed with. It felt like there were folk fucking about in my brain with screwdrivers, I couldn’t really trust my own judgement. I’d go vacant at times, or, completely forget things immediately – like I could go upstairs to get something, and by the time I was half way up there, I’d completely forgotten what it was I was after, or even why I needed it. And there was this funny physical sensation, I can only describe it as like electric shocks – in my brain. Or flashbulbs going off – this is how I have described it in an idea I am playing with for a novel. Whatever I call it, I’ve since found that this is fairly common.
This did settle down like the leaflet said it would though, and as the weeks went on, I started to feel the drug working on me in the manner it was designed to. On the surface, it looked like it truly was acting as an anti-depressant.
Here is the critical point though, and IMO any drug that manipulates serotonin levels is doing the same thing – it didn’t treat depression, it wasn’t an anti-depressant in the true sense – it purely masked the depression.
How did it do this?
The same way Tramadol et-al deal with pain. It doesn't make you hurt any less – it just makes you not care about it as much, or maybe it makes you forget how much pain you were in after the episode has passed. I mean, if you don't remember your pain, isn't it like you never felt it at all?
By making me not give a fuck. I didn’t constantly contemplate suicide any more not because I felt better, but simply because I didn’t give a fuck about feeling bad. It is a very subtle but huge difference, and vital to grasp, because this slowly begins to apply to every facet of your life when you take these things. You don’t care, about anything. You can’t be bothered with anything, and you have no motivation to do anything, but you also don’t care about any of that, you just accept it. This is what more elevated serotonin does in your brain. Makes you sort of content – in a harmful way.
Now that’s OK short term, but completely unworkable long term, in the big wide world. A human needs drive, needs to have aims, to hope, to achieve. SSRIs make you dis-interested in that, and I found myself returning back to the way I was at the worst of my depression. I’d sit in my bed, curtains drawn, all day every day, if given the choice. I'd be comfortably numb just watching TV, or maybe playing console games. I had no interest in the outside world, it could do nothing for me, and I could do nothing for it, we didn’t need each other.
The vital point to grasp though, is that a problem doesn’t stop being a problem, just because you don’t care, and to have no ambition, no anticipation of reward, no feeling of self worth – nothing - is just the very same mindset that underpins depression itself in the first place.
Then there is SSRI related sexual dysfunction, and I know at least a handful of guys in my gym alone who have struggled with this. They weren't for really discussing it until I opened up about the issues I had suffered. That old “I'm alone in this” feeling fucking with them I suppose, and hearing me being open – and not ashamed – talking about these issues seemed to get them talking too. You could see the weight lift off them. You know my doctor (soon to read the sharp end of my writing skills believe me) actually denied the existence of this side effect, even claiming she has never had anyone come to her about this depite prescribing SSRIs relatively freely. This is despite me quoting medical references to her.
As I just said though, it doesn't take a fucking rocket scientist to understand that your average guy (and woman too, not forgetting you lot) just isn't really going to be too excited to talk about this shit.
Anyway, I've written enough for now, I hope to expand on what I – and a few anonymous others – have experienced at the mercy of SSRI drugs, in my next article. Hopefully this might be of some use to the silent sufferers among you, of which bodybuilding seems to be full – if only to let you know you are not alone. Many of us see only in grey sometimes.
UPDATE
Update December 2013 – I actually wrote the guts of this some months ago – as evidenced by my age given in the article as 34 and 8 months. I’m now half way to 36, and still battling a lot of the issues, particularly drive/motivation related. I initially shelved this article because it made me feel… I dunno… weird. But fuck it, up it goes, and it serves as a good introduction for my next article where I can hopefully discuss some more ideas and thoughts – and maybe some light at the end of the tunnel for the many of you who I know are dealing with the same issues, more or less, that I am.
“Yeah, it’s been a ride,
I guess I had to go to that place to get to this one,
Now some of you might still be in that place,
If you’re trying to get out, just follow me,
I’ll get you there” :- Eminem, “I’m Not Afraid”
