Badluck: The untold story
FUN FACT
About 50% of all women and 25% of all men suffer from depression at least once in their life. For the majority of these people, a single “normal” depression period passes after six months. Depression is usually divided into three levels:
- Mild depression
- Moderate depression
- Severe depression To shorten things down and to give you a better idea of the levels, I’ve found a quite good explanation: A mild depression means that a person is feeling low, but can handle their day-to-day business and can handle social interactions even though it require some effort.
A moderate depression means that you no longer can handle the “normal” day-to-day activities and your social life suffers. This is also when sleep is affected.
A severe depression means that you can’t handle even the most basic needs anymore, such as eating and drinking. Thoughts of suicide can be frequent. (Not everyone with severe depression is actually suicidal though).
THE PERSONAL PART
Why am I listing these "stages"? Since I've had the pleasure of going through them all (and currently having a front row ticket to the wonderful limbo between the mild and moderate part) I thought I'd describe my own experiences with them.STAGE 1: The mild
I think it was around the year 2007-2008 or so when I first suspected I had some sort of depression, or at least a very stubborn "low period". I was feeling down most of the time when I was alone, and thought I was kind of useless at most things. At this point in life, I'd never had a serious girlfriend and wasn't very successful with the ladies at all. I had severe problem with acne as well, so it didn't really help with my already low self-esteem. My mild stage went up and down for a couple of years, with a normal mood one week and then a "low" period the week after.I could still handle my job even though my performance suffered a bit, mainly due to my low self esteem (when you are in a line of work which requires you to be authorative and decisive, low self esteem is a bad idea - trust me on this). Nobody noticed that I was a bit low, and I didn’t want them to find out either. There isn’t really much else to say about this stage, since it’s the easy part of life.
STAGE 2: The moderate
Depression can be triggered (or even caused by) stress, and I got to experience this firsthand sometime during 2010. I felt like I couldn't handle my job due to incompetence (in hindsight: it wasn't, it was due to high workload in conjuction with inexperience) and I almost got stressed out. When you get a headache just from thinking about going to work every day for a month, there is something wrong with your job.This situation lasted for almost six months, and by then I was almost fatigued. This is when I started getting panic attacks and it was pretty much a daily occurence that I cried when I got home from work. My sleeping patterns changed drastically. I went from being able to fall asleep pretty easy to lying awake for a couple of hours after bedtime just tossing and turning. Looking back at this chapter of my life, I suspect it was a nice concoction of my former (mild) depression and extreme stress. (I know, it sounds like a pretty normal job - but I’m leaving quite large parts out since the text will be too long otherwise). And I decided to run away from my problems back home, by accepting another job overseas…
STAGE 3: My personal middle-east conflict
Yeah, I went overseas dressed in a uniform as part of an international peacekeeping mission to escape from my stressful life back home. Sounds normal right? Trying to reduce stress by going to another country where people actually are trying to shoot you, a nice change of pace huh?To be honest, the change of scenery wasn’t really an attempt to reduce stress - I was actually hoping for being hit by an IED1 or something. I didn’t want to admit that to myself when I applied for the job, but I always knew the real reason somehow. At this part, I was tired of feeling down all the time and feeling stressed - but I wasn’t suicidal yet, I’d just stopped caring about my own well being. Unfortunaely, things got worse.
The job was very stressful even though I wasn’t in a combat unit. Not because of the environment or hostility but because of the immense technical and administrative workload that I encountered. Apparently it was my responsibility to manage, develop, educate technicans and users, handle long term planning as well as current operations for the advanced computer system my country decided was a good alternative to a C4-system you can actually use AND maintain.
I learned how to cope with the workload after a couple of months, and just when I thought I’d pull through a personal crisis occured. I will not go into details, since that part is extremely private, even if I am dishing out pretty much my entire emotional state on the internet. To make a long story short: the stress from the work, my already existing depression and this new occurence all smashed up in my head and I started to get really depressed and I started getting physical symptoms. My stomach gave up on me, and all I could eat for months were fresh fruit and vegetables (with the occasional beef to get some proteins) without feeling nauseous, and I was already sleeping bad due to long working hours: 16-18hrs of work/day with 1h PT before bed (which amounts up to about 4-5hrs sleep/night). While this combination is manageable for a couple of weeks, 5-6 months of this will make you feel pretty funny.
During this time, I started to avoid other people and only interacted when the work demanded it. I had a really short temper, and was really frustrated. When you live in a camp which is 1kmx500m, there isn’t really much privacy - but I found a secluded spot where I could hide from everyone. After a while, people apparently took offense by my self-chosen isolation and started calling me an introvert and a bore. By this time, I had no energy left in my body, so I gave in to peer-pressure and started hanging out with people but without any own will and opinions. It was the easiest thing to do. This made my self-conscious go even lower, and I got the feeling I wasn’t myself anymore. I had constant stomach-ache and I’m surprised this episode didn’t give me an ulcer.
This misery lasted for a couple of monts, until we were shipped home. Strangely, I didn’t want to leave.
STAGE 4: The Severe
When I got back home and returned to my regular job, I got incredibly restless. Imagine going from my above mentioned workload to doing absolutely NOTHING for 10 straight weeks (we were apparently having a "low intensity period"). This is the part were I started to ignore my basic needs, such as eating.To handle the restlessness, I started working out 5-7 days a week, went to collegues at work and offered to do their jobs as well, and stayed up late learning some programming skills. My sleep got affected real bad during this period. I had trouble getting to sleep, and when I finally managed to fall asleep I woke up 3-4 times/night with a twitch - and every time I had a hard time falling back asleep. What little work I managed to do at my job was badly affected, I started drinking 2-3 times/week (and by drinking, I mean the scandinavian way of drinking), I avoided all social interactions that didn’t include alcohol. Since I didn’t eat much, except for vegetables and yoghurt, I dropped in weight quite rapidly and people started complimenting me on my weight loss. (One of the best diets I’ve ever tried actually; being incredibly suicidal and having constant stomach-aches really makes the pounds drop).
It wasn’t until a doctor actually asked me if everything felt OK since I got home from the middle east that I accepted that I wasn’t feeling fine. I said I was feeling restless, and she scheduled me to the company psychologist. We are now in the year 2012, and crying myself to sleep was a daily (or rather nightly) occurence.
I went to the sessions with the attitude that as long as I could fix my restlessness, all else would fall in place and I would be back to normal again. It wasn’t until after a couple of months that I realised that I was fooling myself and I told the shrink everything - and I mean everything. At this time, I was actively planning suicide. I used to work at a place where guns and ammunition are quite frequent, and the combination of suicidal tendencies and guns is not the best place to be. I even made sure “my affairs were in order”, a.k.a. I made sure to write down my last will at a funeral agency. I actually still have the copy & confirmation right next to me in my desk drawer. When I told this to the shrink, he thought it might be a good idea to start some sort of treatment, which I agreed to. I figured that my life couldn’t get any worse at this point and it was worth a shot. If I had managed to feel like shit for the last 2-3 years, I could easily pull another 6 months or so before setting my plans into motion.
I started taking anti-depressants (SSRI) in combination with regular meetings with the psychologist. This actually gave me the strength to quit my job and move across the country and starting over (this is the second time I chose to run away, have you noticed?). And now, its 2014 and I’m still alive. I thought I managed to beat my depression a year ago, but I now know that it was some sort of weird stage of denial. But I have some perspective now, and at least I don’t plan on putting a gun to my head in the foreseeable future (which in my case is somewhere around 4 weeks).
STAGE 5: Epilogue
I'm not done with this text. It's just to give you an idea of my background, and how I got to where I am today. I will elaborate on some topics that I've written about, and some other topics as well. Trust me, this blog is far from over. These are some of the topics I'm planning on writing about:- Concentration problems
- Self-medication: alcohol and exercise
- Suicide and suicidal thoughts
- The art of acting
- The insignificance of everything
- Pretty much anything stress-related
- … and more that will come to mind when I write the other topics. I guarantee that it will be a lot of improvised posts
Until next time
[1] Improvised Explosive Device