Depression Can’t be Cured.

I was reading an article by Shannon Ashley about the difficulty of diagnosing depression that was exactly right. While reading, I realized that I had something to contribute. As someone diagnosed with depression in 1997, I have been continuously ‘in treatment’ since 1998.

The reason I put quotes around ‘in treatment’ is that my first ‘treatment’ was my family doctor telling me to ‘just take saint johns wart, it’s good enough for your level of depression.’ Frankly, looking back he was an idiot. I was on this so-called treatment for almost five years. This was five years when I spent enough time hiding in bed ‘sick’ with depression that came near to breaking my marriage. More than likely contributed to losing a job in 1998 because while the company had to have layoffs and while I was the last hired I was also the one who took the most sick-days.

Finally, in 2003, my wife put her foot down, dragged me into the doctor, sat in the room with me and told the doctor point blank that the saint johns wart wasn’t working at all. Belatedly, six years after my diagnosis I started taking a real anti-depression medication. It helped my depression, but the side effects of these early drugs. Oh, wow the side effects, they were terrible. I won’t try to list them all, but low sex drive — like none at all — was one, plus much of the food I ate took on a metallic taste.