Posted by coral on October 23, 2000, at 9:17:41
In reply to Glyn: Our morbid fascination with posting........, posted by shar on October 23, 2000, at 8:50:59
FASCINATING post! My sister has made a career of her physical illnesses. With her, it's NOT if she's going to have another surgery, but when. What's tragic is that her surgeries are a very sophisticated form of self-mutilation, and part and parcel of her BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). It's a means for her to be in the limelight, center stage, and again, part of BPD. It's almost a Munchhauser-by-self. On the other hand, I've gone in absolutely the opposite direction. During the very rare incidents of purely physical illness/injury, I've hidden it. After a car accident with a fractured jaw, compressed spine, and torn trapeziod muscles, I "toughed" it out, not letting anyone know there was anything wrong. The depression knocked me flat and I didn't have the strength to hide it. It crippled me to incapacitation for over three years. The remedy for me was meds and therapy. After being depression-free for six years, I've had a relapse (much less severe, much shorter) and the same remedies are working.
Glyn, as a creative person, a writer, I fully appreciate the concern over where does the disorder end and passion begin? I can't write on Zoloft. So, until I'm free of this episode and can safely come off the Zoloft, I'm not writing, my primary passion in life. But, I also can't write when I'm depressed (except journaling for therapeutic and accurate recording purposes). So, for me, it's like having both hands broken and in casts up to my elbows. I can't write with broken hands and I can't write with casts on. So, I'm deprived of the one activity that gives me the greatest satisfaction.
For writers in the past, I suspect the use of such drugs as cocaine, heroin, opium and alcohol served to dull the pain of the depression enough so they could get in touch with the place they write from (but that's just my opinion.) As much as I ache to write, it's suicide (and that could be literal if I went back to the bottom of that dark pit where I was before) to push my recovery ill-advisedly.
Given what's known (and that's not all by any means) of brain chemistry, meds do make sense for some people. I know in my case, meds allowed me to be able to benefit from psychotherapy. I'm so uncomfortable with the concept of popping happy pills to avoid the difficulties of life, (which does happen), and I'm equally uncomfortable with the concept that meds are "happy pills" to conquer depression. When the meds are the right ones for the individual, it's like insulin therapy for a diabetic, again, in my opinion. I KNOW when I'm healthy - and that's being off meds and out of therapy and having the need for neither.
poster:coral
thread:46800
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20001022/msgs/47171.html