OCD Hand Sanitizer

If you can’t laugh at your mental defects once in awhile, you’re never going to get better. I definitely laughed when I saw this sitting on my desk:

Repeated hand cleaning was never my biggest OCD quirk. Checking my laptop bag a dozen times before leaving work and checking the door nob before leaving the house were much bigger hangups for me. But I have used a lot of hand sanitizer in my day, so this may come in handy at some point.

OK, it won’t. Taking it out of the package would ruin the joke.

So I’ve hung it right beneath the “Happy Childhood Memories” breath spray someone gave me at Christmastime six years ago. When I’m sitting at the desk and I look to my left, I now have this to cheer me on days when I need the lift:

Some people find this stuff insulting. If you’re really sick from the disorder and you’re at a point where you haven’t gotten help yet, that’s understandable. So here’s a tip from someone who’s been down that road: Laughing at yourself makes the demon smaller and a lot less scary.

Humor is an important coping tool for someone learning to manage depressive mental disorders. Abraham Lincoln, a chronically depressed man for much of his adult life, relied on it during the darkest days of the Civil War. He reveled in telling jokes or amusing stories.

And it helped get him through the pain, long before anti-depressants were created.

So learn to laugh and do it often.

It may not help you find happiness, but it’ll help you move on.

That’s what I’ve learned, anyway.

Talk Therapy: Sane or Satanic?

I touched a nerve with my post about the pros and cons of the therapist taking the patient through the same things over and over again. They didn’t slam my perspective outright, nor would they. But they flagged some dangers in this technique that are important to share.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZzus86pdls&fs=1&hl=en_US]

What makes their feedback so valuable is that they are therapists themselves. The following responses came my way by way of the LinkedIn NAMI group’s discussion board.

Thanks for sharing, my friends. Readers: See what they have to say and do what you will with the knowledge. There’s more than one way to skin this cat, as the comments show.

First, you should watch this video, which I put in that last post, because that’s what really hit a nerve.

In one of my favorite TV series, The West Wing, Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman undergoes a long, brutal therapy session:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23dBqzo2aYY&version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1]

Kathleen Hockey, Author, Speaker, Mental Health Professional: It seemed to me Josh already knew what happened and the therapist was forcing him to be honest about it, to the therapist and thus to himself. This is good. However, I question the therapist who forces a client to hash over and over in his/her mind things in order to get at what is not remembered. That kind of digging is questionable practice. Also, not found in the West Wing piece (for drama’s sake obviously) is that the therapist’s next step would be to help Josh change his beliefs about the traumatic event and emotionally disconnect from the experience. Talking about the painful experience incessantly without this piece does make a client relive the experience, which is not good.

Me: All valuable points, Kathleen. I agree it’s questionable to rehash things just to get at what’s not remembered. From my experience as a patient, the rehashing was (or certainly seemed to be) designed to make me be honest about things I was dismissing on first and second brush. My experience is that a good therapist always seems to tell when I’m not being honest with myself. That’s when the rehashing happens. It was helpful to me, though I didn’t like it much at the time.That said, everyone is a little different in how they’ll respond to certain tactics. Thanks for your input.

Elena Yobaccio, Private Practice as Elena Yobaccio, MA – Psychotherapist: This therapist is fairly aggressive, which makes for good drama but effective trauma therapy does not (imo should not) progress like this and can be damaging. one of the theories behind “retelling” the traumatic event is that the therapist can help ground and moderate the client’s overwhelming emotions, help them take the story in digestable chunks of whatever size, and reintegrate the impossible-to-accept story into “normal” narrative memory so that it can finally be put to rest and associated memories and emotions, while painful, are no longer interrupting and disrupting life on an involuntary basis. i personally believe this is true and that our minds and hearts will only safely “remember” when we are strong enough, and with a safe enough person–not because we are pushed into it. with that said, encouragement, support and validation are all crucial to the process.

I have worked with many, many severely traumatized patients. I have rarely actually done actual trauma therapy because i have rarely been in a position to perform it safely. i have been through poorly done trauma therapy myself, and I have seen it done well and and done poorly with peers. I do know many people who have told me they avoid seeking therapy precisely because they are afraid they are going to be rushed into a feeling state they already know they can’t tolerate. or, they think that they are going to have some kind of massive cathartic remembering that is going to “cure” them so they try to hasten the process and succeed only in retraumatizing themselves. I think these kind of dramatic reenactments make for entertaining footage but don’t really help people understand what therapy actually is and does.

In terms of relational talk therapy, the key to successful trauma processing is not just remembering, it’s repairing the flow of memory so that the “trauma” is not sitting around un-inegrated in our minds. i think of traumatic memory as kind of an iceberg with big jagged edges free-floating and tearing through the fabric of the soul and the present moment. IMO talk-therapy dealing with trauma should and can only be done by a trained professional after a very strong alliance has been built with the client to provide them with the emotional bond necessary to endure and successfully experience and transform traumatic affect.

With that said, there are also alternatives to “talk therapy” for trauma, such as CBT and EMDR, which at least some people are reporting extremely helpful for PTSD treatment. CBT has never worked well for me, but I know it works well for some and has nothing to do with “telling and retelling” – it’s all about managing symptoms such as phobias and flashbacks; not my speciality either. And I have not personally tried EMDR.

I don’t know that any of this addresses your original point about repeatedly going over old ground, I just wanted to address the TV clip which is pretty representative of how media commonly portrays therapy and trauma therapy in particular.

Me: All great points. Thanks.

Gerry Hughes, Owner, Neuro-Linguistic Learning Center: When working with trauma or PSTD, our first rule is to NOT allow the client to associate in the memories and never allow the client to re-experience the emotions of the event. That type of ‘talk therapy is hack therapy, It is outdated and I think you could make the case that it is abusive. It is the very reason most sane people avoid therapy. 

There are solid techniques to release the emotional charge on traumatic events without re-traumatizing the client. EMDR can be extremely useful especially when the past events are mixed and confused.

NLP and TIME Techniques are awesome at releasing traumatic events. I average about 12 hours (4 sessions) to completely remove the fears, flashbacks, etc. associated with a traumatic experience.

Me: Thanks so much for the insight on NLP and TIME techniques. Fascinating and very helpful information.

Facebook Follow Friday: Dec. 17

Welcome to the latest edition of Facebook Follow Friday. Each Friday there’s a tradition on Twitter called Follow Friday, and I decided to do a Facebook version here. What’s it have to do with OCD and addiction, you ask?

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv9-zSWMGP0&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Simple: A person in recovery needs the people around him/her to stay sober and abstinent. Most important are your family and closest friends. But the friends on Facebook can be helpful too, especially those who brighten up the wall with positive, witty, thoughtful posts. That stuff rubs off on the reader, and if that reader has fought depression, addiction, anxiety and all those other things, the mood gets a needed lift.

The folks I want to acknowledge this week are mostly from the security world. In knowing them through my day job, they have also become friends:

Jeri Ellsworth: She’s actually one of my new connections, a self-taught computer chip designer best known for, in 2004, creating a Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, called Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV. The “computer in a joystick” could run 30 video games from the early 1980s, and was very popular during the 2004 Christmas season, at peak selling over 70,000 units in a single day via the QVC shopping channel. Check out her work and you’ll forget about your troubles for a bit.

Erin Jacobs: Known in the twitterverse as SecBarbie, Erin is a security professional who has done much to advance the cause. She writes a blog that makes security accessible to everyone,  and can always be seen at the big security conferences. I’ve learned a lot from her.

Jack Daniel: Another of my security friends, a fellow member of the NAISG board of directors, the man with the 31-year-old beard, driver of the Shmoobus. Jack’s more than a man and more than a security pro. He’s an experience. 

Brad and Davida Dinerman: I’ve known this husband-wife force of nature for a long, long time. Brad is the engine behind NAISG (the National Information Security Group) and Davida is a longtime PR pro who has helped me out with many an article over the years. I’ve learned a lot from them, too.

Andy Ellis: He’s CSO of Akamai Technologies and is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I’m not sure I would have pulled off my series on distributed denial-of-service attacks this year without his input.

Bob McMillan: Bob is one of my colleagues at IDG. He writes for the news service and is one of the most prolific security journalists I’ve ever met. I’ve been grateful as hell for his articles this year.

More next week…

 

WTF Is That Shrink Doing?

A friend of mine recently started going to a therapist, and he’s puzzled as to why the therapist keeps making him rehash the week. Here’s my theory.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wASuHRuRo&fs=1&hl=en_US]

He’s asking a lot of redundant questions to dig up patterns. They seem like stupid, recycled questions. But when you have to answer the same, stupid questions over and over again, no matter how infuriating that is, something important happens. The stuff that’s really haunting you comes out.

You don’t even realize it’s happening. But it does.

One of my favorite TV series, The West Wing, captured this quite nicely in the episode where Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman undergoes a long, brutal therapy session:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23dBqzo2aYY&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Josh didn’t want to answer Dr. Keyworth’s  question about how he cut his hand, but the doctor kept dragging him through it until the truth came out.

That’s a dramatic example. But it makes an important point:

When we’re troubled, we keep things buried deep within ourselves.

And it takes what seem like the dumbest, most repetitive questions over and over again to get the real pain to the surface.

Those stupid questions will last for years. Get used to it.

And be patient, my friend.

You can’t see it now, but it gets better.

Editing the Legs Off Your High Horse

Erin and I were talking last night about the often shaky relationship between copy editors and writers. We writers tend to see copy editors as nitpickers who just want to make our lives harder. Copy editors tend to see writers as spoiled brats. But what happens when the writer is in the grip of OCD?

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR6HPzhlvoc&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I usually shy away from posts about the mechanics of writing and editing because it’s all so — mechanical. And it’s not really relevant to the topics of this blog.

Or is it?

The writers Erin has worked with for more than a decade are professionals covering a particular topic. They get paid to offer their expertise. But there are also the writers who do it for therapy. It’s a critical tool in any 12-Step program and if you’ve been treated for OCD like I have, writing is considered an important method for removing obsessive thoughts from your head. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Most of the time it does.

Here’s where the writers in Erin’s world intersect with people like me:

Sometimes you get someone who writes as part of their recovery program AND as a professional journalist. Most writers have a certain amount of prima donna in them (that goes for the guys). You turn in an article and feel insulted as all hell when the editor has the stones to change something or tell you it needs work.

Now, if you’re like me — a recovering OCD head case with an arsenal of addictive demons pointed at my head at all times — that tendency toward the prima donna becomes monstrous. That’s why I picked the song clip above for my mood music today. Because I’ve had many, many days where I got on my high horse over my writing performance and really did feel like the “Motherfucker of the Year.” That’s really what the song is about: Rock stars whose talents attain them a certain level of recognition getting fat in the head, thinking it’s their way or the highway forevermore.

People like us think we’re better than others. Even though we’re so messed up we can’t see straight.

It’s that type of person — someone like me — who NEEDS an editor.

A good editor can be a  lot like a 12-Step counselor. They’re ready and willing to take a buzz saw to the legs of your high horse. They tell you how to do better. That’s something every writer should be grateful for. 

There are bad editors who can make an article worse and leave a writer feeling dejected for no good reason. But then there are good cops and bad cops, good priests and bad priests. That’s life.

The point is that when you have a good editor, you should expect to be knocked several pegs down the ladder of reality.

I’ve been blessed to work with some great editors in my day: Gretchen Putnam and Al White from The Eagle-Tribune; Anne Saita and Eric Parizo from TechTarget, and now Derek Slater. Eric and I used to have some pretty prickly backs and forth and I after awhile I enjoyed and even looked forward to these moments. We made a lot of decent stories into good stories.

The latter three were well aware of my OCD when we worked together. They could have thrown up their arms, but they chose to work with me instead. I’d like to think I’m a better writer for it. And a lot LESS of a head case.

I still write from a high horse. I still need to have the legs sawed off from time to time.

I’m Narcissism Inc.

I don’t know if I’d want to work with someone like me.

But I’m aware of the problem and I work on it every day.

And I happen to be married to the toughest, most loving editors around.

The Christmas Dispirit

Yesterday was a day for vicious mood swings. It started on a high note at work. I got a lot done and I’m loving this new newsy focus we’re transitioning to. But by the drive home, my mood grew as dark as the sky.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIaXYIEQivk&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Things got progressively worse at home. Sean and Duncan were high maintenance and I let it get to me much more than I usually do. I started thinking in absolutes, which is especially bad when it’s focused on all the negatives.

I was looking around at all the Christmas decorations with a scowl. I wrote the other day that Christmas doesn’t suck like it used to. But there are still days where I hate the holidays.

I love what it stands for.

I despise the capitalistic shit fest American culture has turned it into. And yesterday was a lot about all the things we HAVE to buy. I also get pissed off at all the Christmas shows that suggest this time of year be perfect, that we all be nicer to each other and be generous with our time and money so the less fortunate can have hope. The translation when I think in absolutes goes something like this: Be nice this month and we can all go back to being fucktards next month.

Public school systems do nothing to help matters and make the next generation kinder and gentler. Unless you’re in a parochial school Christmas is a secular affair. Keeping the Christ in Christmas might offend someone. So we focus on the decorations and the holiday spending. Hell, some schools don’t even allow the decorations anymore.

If you’re reading this and rolling your eyes because I’m suggesting the holidays should be more about Faith and that we should be nice to each other year-round instead of each December — and if you’re looking down at me because you think only the weak believe in God, I got two words for you, and it’s not “Merry Christmas.”

To be fair, those of my Faith can be assholes of a different sort this time of year. My favorite example is “Happy Holidays” vs. “Merry Christmas.” We Catholics get all pissy when someone says Happy Holidays, because there’s no Christ in there. So what if the saying is based on the fact that there are several holidays this time of year, covering multiple beliefs. “Happy Holiday” covers all the bases —Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, etc.

I still say “Merry Christmas” to people though.

Sounds hypocritical of me, doesn’t it? Getting on my high horse a few paragraphs above and lamenting at the lack of Christ in Christmas? But like I’ve said before, I can be a self-absorbed hypocrite with the best of ’em.

And that’s what I’ve been for the last 24 hours: Self absorbed. 

And there was no good reason for it, because in the final analysis my life is going fine. I’m blessed beyond anything I deserve.

I had a slip of the OCD. I let the dark weather and the holiday runaround get the better of me. That led to me obsessing about everything that’s wrong with the holidays instead of everything that’s right with it.

Classic OCD behavior. I guess you could call it a day in my life on the OC-D List.

Thank God I have a wife who knows the signs and moves in to help. Last night her and the kids did a bunch of my chores while I was at an OA meeting. She instinctively knew my load needed to be lightened.

It amazes me that she catches on the way she does, because I really suck at talking about it. I can write about it and the world sees in. But when it’s just the two of us, I have trouble opening up. I start channeling my father without meaning to. My Dad is a great man and I love him wholeheartedly. But he’s always had trouble opening up emotionally, and that characteristic seeped into my pores while I was swimming in the gene pool.

But I’m trying to be better. I’ll keep trying.

And now I’ll stop bitching, because I hate it when other people go on Facebook and bitch about the hard day they’re having.

Did I mention that I can be a hypocrite?

Things Kids Say, Part 3

This was a tough weekend in the world of parenthood. Duncan was pretty manic. We expected this, because he suffers over the season’s lack of daylight just like his old man.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTwNkyKKgAI&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I’m constantly worried about the kids inheriting my genetic disposition toward mental disorder. I feel like Duncan’s mood swings are my fault, though I know it’s not that simple or even fair. All I know is that his mood swings rival my own. We’re getting him evaluated, and in the end things will be fine. He’s lucky because I’ve accumulated coping skills I can pass along to him when he’s old enough to grasp them.

For now I just have to be patient — something I suck at — and remember during his meltdowns that getting angry is hypocritical on my part.

Fortunately, Duncan helps me out, as does Sean, and, this weekend their cousin Madison. She slept over Saturday night and in between the various meltdowns, the three children let loose with a lot of witty words that lifted my spirits. In fact, they gave me enough material for a part 3 in my “kids say the darndest things” series.

You can read part 1 of the series here and part 2 here. I think you’ll walk away feeling that life isn’t so tough when you’ve seen it from a child’s perspective.

For part 3, my 2-year-old niece proves that she has the family comedy gene.

“You’re a stupid old shoe everyone steps on cause it’s ugly.” — Duncan’s attempted crusher on his dad (He was angry because I got Sean some gum and he was feeling left out. In hindsight, I can’t say I blame him.)

“Wow! It really does bounce off butt cheeks.” — Sean, after throwing a glowing eyeball he got at the Museum of Science at Duncan’s behind. Duncan didn’t notice a thing.

“Geez, Dad. Can’t you help a guy out and lighten the mood a little?” –Sean, enraged that I made him put on his winter coat on a morning where the outside temperature was 10 degrees.

“My PINK balloon deflated. My PINK balloon deflated. My PINK balloon deflated. My PINK balloon deflated. My PINK balloon deflated. My PINK balloon deflated. My PINK balloon deflated. My PINK balloon deflated. My PINK balloon deflated. My PINK balloon deflated….” Madison, the niece, lamenting that the pink balloon she got at a birthday party the day before had deflated.

“My pillow pet came undone. My pillow pet came undone. My pillow pet came undone. My pillow pet came undone. My pillow pet came undone. My pillow pet came undone. My pillow pet came undone. My pillow pet came undone. My pillow pet came undone…” The niece, once again pissed off because her pillow pet unfolded on her.

“Proof the niece is a Corthell girl: She hasn’t stopped talking since she woke up.” Me, marveling over the niece’s verbal command. She got up at 5:45 a.m. with the boys and I made this observation sometime around 8 a.m.

“The niece has decided she wants to watch Calliou. Shoot me.” Me, after the niece demands that I put that wretched PBS cartoon on the TV. Erin says I’m too hard on Calliou and that he’s perfectly fine for Madison’s age group.  Perhaps she’s right. I just can’t get past the narration from the actress who played Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.” That same actress played an evil Bajoran in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” so I guess I take offense that she has the gall to tell me what the bald little punk is thinking and feeling.

“Duncan, knock it off,” the niece, trying to buck up Cousin Duncan during one of his unhappier moments.

“And we’ll be eaten by a giant clam,” the chorus to a song Duncan keeps singing. I think he made the whole thing up.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for part 4.


The Diagnosis

A lot of readers have been asking me about when exactly I was diagnosed with OCD and how I reacted to it. Did it drive me into a deeper depression? Did I worry about being misdiagnosed? Let’s see if I can retrace those moments…

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4bKGlkCUp5hBEVT14oifgI]

The diagnosis was slow in coming, though I always assumed I had what I had. When I first started getting help in 2004, that first therapist resisted giving me a diagnosis. For one thing, it was still way to early to pin an acronym on my demons. The therapist also hated diagnosing people because she felt a diagnosis was just a label that never tells the entire story.

My third therapist finally gave me a diagnosis in the spring of 2006.

I sat there in her office, staring at the floor as I told her about the old therapist’s dislike of labels.

“Well, do you have obsessive thoughts all the time?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said.

“Does it make you do compulsive things?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said. “I binge eat all the time even though I know it’ll eventually kill me. I just can’t stop.”

“Does it cause disorder in your life?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Every day is an exhausting hell.”

“Well, then we may as well call it what it is,” she said.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Was I misdiagnosed?

It really doesn’t matter. I had a problem that was destroying me from the inside out. Putting a label on it helped me because instead of smoke and shadows, I finally had a way to see my struggle in a more concrete fashion. It had finally taken a form. I could see it, therefore I could punch it. Punch it I did, repeatedly.

It always gets back up and I have to keep throwing punches. But it’s better than trying to swing at shadows.

It’s a tricky thing, because in plenty of cases people do get misdiagnosed and the results are damaging. It can lead to prescriptions that don’t get at the root problem, making you worse.

In my case, the diagnosis was accurate. The treatment turned out to be right on, at least.

I think it was more of a relief than cause for a deeper spiral into depression. Because I had something to call it, I could move on to the next phase of recovery.

I still had many bad days after that. Some of my worst days, in fact. It would still be another two years before I could bring my addictions to heel.

The anxiety attacks didn’t cease until I started taking Prozac in early 2007.

But slowly, I got better.

It would be stupid for me to tell you not to freak and backslide after getting a diagnosis. It can be a frightening thing.

The biggest fear is that everyone will define you if you go public. That didn’t happen to me. At work, I’m judged on how I do my job, not on my disease. Of course, the OCD sometimes fuels some of my best work, which makes that less of a problem.

To me, the lesson is to not let a diagnosis be the excuse to live a less than worthwhile life and give in to your darker impulses.

Like anything else in life, you gotta make the best of it.

Obviously, that’s easier said than done.

Diagnosis-Easier

Facebook Follow Friday: Dec. 10

Welcome to the latest edition of Facebook Follow Friday. Each Friday there’s a tradition on Twitter called Follow Friday, and I decided to do a Facebook version here. What’s it have to do with OCD and addiction, you ask?

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6JufyuBcSY&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Simple: A person in recovery needs the people around him/her to stay sober and abstinent. Most important are your family and closest friends. But the friends on Facebook can be helpful too, especially those who brighten up the wall with positive, witty, thoughtful posts. That stuff rubs off on the reader, and if that reader has fought depression, addiction, anxiety and all those other things, the mood gets a needed lift.

So here are the folks I want to acknowledge this week:

Anthony DeVito: I just recently connected with him and I remember him from back in the day. I’m finding that we share many of the same musical tastes and he shares A LOT of music. As readers know, music has been crucial to my recovery, so I always appreciate his posts.

Violet Lopez: Violet is engaged to my cousin Andrew, and I finally got to meet her during a trip to NYC in September. Not only is she a perfect match for Andrew, but her Facebook posts are always filled with sunshine. I like sunshine.

Melanie Segal: Andrew’s sister. My cousin. This gal has been through much of the same family drama I’ve been through, and she fights her share of health battles. So it always blows me away that she keeps her chin up the way she does. She’s always made me laugh, and she continues to do so on Facebook. I miss the time when we were at Salem State together and I took her lunch money on a regular basis.

Meredith Warren: I used to be her editor. I’ve remained her friend. She babysat Sean and Duncan for several Tuesdays during Lent so I could go do some RCIA stuff. Now she’s writing a political blog called “For Attribution” and posting regularly on Facebook. Which means I can critique her political views AND her writing style. It is a well-written, insightful blog. You should check it out. 

James Harris Winters: I was introduced to James through his wife, Lisa, a friend from the security world I work in. They both bring a lot of positive energy to Facebook. James does a lot of writing you should check out. There’s his blog, and his commentary on a range of social issues. And there’s humor. Not stupid humor. Witty humor. There is a difference.

I’ll end this week with a plug for the “Machine Man” Facebook page. When this film comes out you’re going to have a whole new understanding of what OCD is really about.

By the way, the maker of this film is bypassing the Hollywood bullshit and financing this project with a grassroots campaign, so please help her out if you can.

By the way, that filmaker has asked for .PDF copies of the posts I’ve written about “Machine Man” but I can’t figure out how to copy-convert a WordPress blog entry into a .PDF file.

If anyone knows how to do that, please share.

Thanks!

Just Drug It Away

Just saw a snippet of research suggesting a surge in the number of people taking pills for depression but a decline in the number of those seeking therapy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CUb4TuxN0w&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Here it is, from the Health, Medical and Science feed I subscribe to:

More depression, less psychotherapy, more drugs: Archives of General Psychiatry

More patients were being treated for depression in 2007 than a decade earlier, but fewer were receiving psychotherapy, researchers said.

Comparing 1998 with 2007, the percentage of those receiving psychotherapy fell from 53.6% to 43.1%, a downward trend that continued from the decade prior, Mark Olfson, MD, MPH, of Columbia University, and colleagues reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

For some patients, “depression care may be becoming more narrowly focused on pharmacotherapy,” they wrote.

This is something I see all the time. People get depressed and go looking for a quick way out of it. The quick way out is a pill.

To hell with the therapists, right? They’re just quacks. The doctors who subscribe antidepressants? They’re quacks too, but fuck it. They got a quick fix.

That’s the prevailing thought, but I’ve been down this road. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that pills will never, ever kill your pain at the source. It’ll make you feel better for a bit, but it will never last.

I take Prozac and it works well. But it’s not perfect, nor do I expect it to be. To truly deal with one’s depression, you have to get at that hole that’s in the center of your soul. That means years of intense therapy, learning how to develop coping tools and then looking at medication. 

That’s how I went about it, anyway. I readily admit no two people are alike when it comes to treatment.

But I have seen other people try the pills without the other things I’ve had to do. Their struggle remains painful.

Mine does, too. But the joy outweighs the pain these days.

Big Pharma helped. But only a little.