Sam-E Trial
I’ve been reading up on a dietary supplement called SAM-e.
The article I read claimed that in addition to treating mild depression, SAM-e was proven equally effective as Chondroitin or Glucosamine in treating joint pain and in the prevention and treatment of osteoarthiritis. In some cases SAM-e outperformed the other supplements. This was especially of interest to me since I have a tendency towards depression and I have some joint issues in my right arm.
Although it is sold in Europe as a presciption-only drug to treat depression, SAM-e is widely available in health food shops in North America. After considering the information here, I stopped into my neighbourhood nutrition shop to see if they carried it. A one month (30 tablet) supply at 200mg per tablet was $27.99 before tax. That’s about a dollar a day. I was concerned by the possible side effects of taking large doses of SAM-e, so I decided to cut the tablets in half and take one 100 mg half-tablet daily.
So this is my two-month SAM-e trial. The wikipedia article mentions that it can take up to a month for the supplement’s benefits to be felt, so I will keep posting with any relevant findings I have.
Peace
Difficulty Sleeping
I could write a book on this one, but I think a couple of paragraphs will be fine. My problems with falling asleep began when people moved in to the apartment upstairs and began partying at 3 am. Often they would continue until noon.
It wasn’t long before I dreaded falling asleep at night. In response to the noise they made, I began to suffer panic attacks, adrenaline rushes and an unbelievable hyper-sensitivity to almost any sound as I was trying to fall asleep. It was like the sounds were an invitation in to this dark and dramatic place in which I could rant, accuse, condemn and plan how awful the next day would be because I was sleep deprived. My mind was in overdrive.
I know that this noise and sleep problem contributed significantly to my depression. It was obviously a neuro-pathway that has a well-worn groove and was in desperate need of re-wiring. And even though the tenants are long gone, I still have the same initial knee-jerk reaction when I hear footsteps, doors opening or any other sounds that eminate from the apartments above, below and beside mine. But how I react now is completely different.
Now that I am going through the practices outline in “The Mindful Way Through Depression,” I find that one specific part of the body scan really helps me when it’s time to fall asleep. It’s the focus on the breath and it enables the mind to begin to quiet down.
Of course there are always interruptions, stray thoughts, etc., especially when I’ve been dealing with stressful situations during the day, but I seem to be getting better and bringing the focus back to the breath.
I know many people have said they find meditation and guided meditation makes them fall asleep. And while this is certainly not the point of either, if it isn’t doing any harm, people should be free to try it. (Take what you like and leave the rest.) Many times I find myself on the cusp of falling asleep, usually three quarters of the way through the body scan.
This past week I experimented with opening my eyes. It worked beautifully. My point is that not every method will work exactly the same way for everyone, and that you have to sometimes tweak a process until you have it tailored to your specific needs.
Meditation: Escape and Practice
My friend Mark said he thought that depression might be the mind and body’s way of levelling out, and drawing attention to needs and issues that are not being taken care of in our lives. I think that with certain types of depression this might be very true. I undertook the exercises in “The Mindful Way Through Depression” as a means of a) furthering my meditation practice and b) trying to alleviate some of the recurring depression I was experiencing.
I’ve often felt bouts of depression start as a series of thoughts, fears or sadness, and after I began reading up on it, and learning about how the mind works, I was not always susceptible to the “invitation” to become depressed. Then I began to experience the onset of depression as a sensation in my body. A feeling of being “off” or “ill at ease” in a way that is hard to define, and one that I had not previously experienced. This was very troubling to me. But in the past few days I have stepped up my meditation practice at home (in addition to the weekly meditation group I attend) and have found that the Body Scan and Sitting/Breathing sections on the CD that accompanies “The Mindful Way Through Depression” is an incredible way to circumvent this disturbed feeling in the body.
After a very stressful week, I’ve made the decision to go more deeply into the processes outlined in “The Mindful Way Through Depression” and will begin their recommended eight week program. Stay tuned as I work my way through it.
Seemingly Unprovoked Crying Spells (Symptoms of Depression)
If you’re not prone to bouts of depression, the act of crying usually marks the release of emotion, usually greif, sadness, sometimes pain or emotional suffering (feeling hurt, neglected, etc.) Crying is not (in and of itself) an indicator of depression, although it can be a symptom. If that sounds confusing, here’s an example from my own experience; I often cry after visiting my father where he’s living (a long term care facility). The crying is not an indication of a depression, but rather an expression of sadness, empathy, and a mixed bag of other emotional issues that are best left out of these pages.
The thing that trips me up with this particular symptom is how the word “seemingly” crept into the phrase. If you’re not conscious of what provoked you into crying in the middle of a public street (or wherever the spell occured), maybe it’s not all that important at the moment. Maybe the important thing is that you had a feeling arise and you were open to it and let it surface.
Eckhart Tolle referred to emotions as the mind’s reflection in the body, so imagine that if you’re completely disconnected from your unconscious mind, you can get a sense of it through the physical sensation in your body. Along these lines, perhaps the “unprovoked” crying spell wasn’t so unprovoked. Perhaps it’s a way of drawing pointing towards something that needs our attention.
Feeling Hopeless (Symptoms of Depression)
Sometimes I feel sorry for my friend Mark. He’s usually the one I end up on the phone with when I get to what I call “the breaking point.” It is during these times that I feel pushed up against a wall, and I don’t know if I have the vocabulary to acknowledge that I have lost almost all hope.
Hope: the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.
It strikes me as peculiar that the feeling is not of a complete loss of hope, but rather it’s like this burning terror that I am about to lose it. Some part of me knows this is not a good thing, does not feel adept at handling the circumstances, and needs some kind of adjustment. It’s like telling the body: hey, you can’t breathe anymore. Just stop. For me to live without a sense of hope is like the body not being able to breathe. Take it away and I fly into panic mode. Then I call Mark.
Hopeless: not able to learn or act, perform, or work as desired; inadequate for the purpose.
The last time this happened (about two weeks ago) I had this surprising revelation the next day: what a horrible, selfish ugly thing to do! It was as thought I’d suddenly seen a side of my behaviour for the first time and, as in any “a-ha! moment,” pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place.
Here’s the weird part: I don’t see that there are exercises to be done to actively work on rebuilding hope. With me, it seems as though it’s one of those things that organically shrivels and dies when I’m depressed. Like a side effect. But then again, what if feelings of hopelessness feed into depression? What if it’s an endless cycle/circle?
I have to say that when a person is able to take responsibility for their actions, it becomes very difficult to dump on others. I know it’s good to have a support net when things are dark and tenuous, but I’d like to think that we are our own best first defenses. I’m finding that mindfulness exercises and all the readings I’ve been doing are bringing me up a level or two, so that when I do sink into depression, I recognize the process faster, and am able to move myself around and out of it faster, and without dragging others down with me.
Misery doesn’t love company. It just doesn’t like itself.
Feeling sad or down (Symptoms of Depression)
I had a conversation with a relative this week that prompted me to think about how my tendency towards sadness and negativity may have had its origins. I really had to stretch my memory about as far back as I can recall. I remember plenty of good times, fun times and happiness in my childhood, but always, always there was a gaping hole in my psyche, or mood spectrum, that only seemed to be filled by the feeling of sadness, and being engaged in the sharing of it. Weird. Why didn’t anyone ever say anything to me about until I was in my 40s?
There is the classic line about how even negative attention is better than no attention at all. I don’t remember feeling ignored. So it strikes me as a little unusual that when I was very young I was often compelled to tell people the most horrible and—sometimes—exaggerated things in order to elicit sympathy from them. I don’t know why, as a child, I would do this. Perhaps there were things going on at home to which I was oblivious, which made me feel as though I had to get people close to tears in order to feel as if I had their attention. And naturally, I misinterpreted their attention for caring. Or maybe it’s some ghastly chemical imbalance that made me do it. It wasn’t until my teens and my first romantic crush that I realized I could no longer lure people in with my depressing stories.
Many conversations have veered into speculating about how the adoption process affects the very young. Things now are quite different, but when I was an infant, the process involved a five-to-seven month stay in foster care before being adopted into the chosen family’s home. Was it to make sure the merchandise wasn’t defective? Half an hour later, I’ve gone through the first three pages of google search responses and came up empty handed. I’ll have to call the Children’s Aid Society to find out.
So, regardless of its origins, I do have a marked inclination towards melancholy. I’m becoming more aware of these tendencies, and invitations (as I like to call them) to be sad and hopeless and forlorn. They often begin as subtle disturbances in the body and soon after, manifest as a shift in mood, or escalating negative trains of though. Many of the techniques I’ve learned from reading Eckhart Tolle, some of the many books of Buddhist practice as well as this most recent find “The Mindful Way Through Depression” have all helped me to be more sensitive to and aware of these invitations, and to not fall into despair.
R
Loss of interest in normal daily activities (Symptoms of Depression)
Loss of interest in normal daily activities
What is a normal daily activity? Waking up? Making the bed? Walking the dog? Putting on the coffee? Turning on the anti-SAD light and reading in front of it for half an hour? I usually do these things every day when I wake up. Some are by force of habit, and others I’m afraid to miss because I know the end result of neglecting them.
Sometimes I skip the light and reading because I’ve got to go visit my dad, but apart from these things, my days tend to be fairly structured. I have not lost my interest in adhering to that structure, mostly. But sometimes I don’t want to go to work.
Sometimes I become nauseated by the thought of having to speak to strangers.
Sometimes I don’t want to cook because I’ll have to clean up after it and, frankly, with all the stomach problems I’ve been having lately, it seems wiser just to swig from a bottle of Pepto Bismol. Nice meal. Nummy.
So, you can perhaps guess that my ranking on loss of interest in normal daily activities was not so high.
R
Depression: Self-Diagnosis Tests
I recently took three different self-diagnosis tests to determine whether or not I was experiencing signs and/or symptoms of depression. You know, it didn’t seem right to me that I should start blogging about depression if I wasn’t actually afflicted. In all honesty, I knew that I didn’t really need to do the tests because after a decade of aggressively anti-social behavior and a morbid fascination with my own misery, it was obvious to me that I was not a happy camper.
The results weren’t astonishing. They were, in fact, quite predictable. The only differences between the three “tests” were the intensity or degree to which I felt afflicted by the specific items (qualifiers). Over the course of two days and three tests, my scores ranged from a number 14 (mild) to a bitch-slap “get help” (chronic) to a shocker “depressed.” And while I don’t mean to knock the terminologies of these self-exams, the process certainly made me realize one thing: I didn’t really need to take three tests to figure out that I was depressed.
So what did I do with the information? I stored it away, and now I’m writing about it. To those reading who might know me, it will probably not come as anything near a shock. To others however, I’m writing in the hopes of shedding some light on a rather unpleasant state and that this information may help and inspire people to start wrestling with their demons. It’s possibly an ego-maniacal thing to do, but more probably a generous thing to do. At the very least I hope it helps someone.
The bad news is that it takes an enormous amount of work and presence to deal with the process of pulling oneself out of depressed states. The absolutely fucking amazingly awesome news is that it can work. I see it in action, increasingly, almost every day. I actually feel better, and better equipped to deal with my signs and symptoms than ever before.
But before I jump into writing about how I am working this, here’s a sampler of items from the various tests I took to determine whether one is or is not depressed. See if you recognize and relate to any of them.
- Loss of interest in normal daily activities
- Feeling sad or down
- Feeling hopeless
- Seemingly unprovoked crying spells
- Difficulty sleeping
- Trouble focusing or concentrating
- Decision making is impaired
- Unintentional weight loss or gain
- Irritability
- Restlessness
- Becoming easily agitated or annoyed
- Feeling fatigued or weak
- Feelings of worthlessness
- Los of sex drive/interest
- Thoughts of suicide or suicidal behaviour
- Unexplained physical problems such as back pain or headaches
In my next post, I will begin breaking down each of the items in this list and how they affected me. I will also begin compiling a nice links section to offer other resources on the internet that actually give something away for nothing. Welcome to the new age: your attention is the new currency. Till next time, keep repeating to yourself: I’ve got to stop repeating myself.
R
Thought Process: Just the facts, please!
“We are always explaining the world to ourselves, and we react emotionally to these explanations rather than to the facts.”
- The Mindful Way Through Depression
I woke up in an agitated state. I had been dreaming that while sitting using my Sun Touch light therapy box, my computer’s monitor began to display pop ups. And I had just reinstalled Windows less than two months ago. This was the third reinstall in as many months. I was pissed off.
When I pulled myself out of bed (remember, already agitated), I smelt the smell that means I overslept: the dog pooped. (At least he has the courtesy to do it in the bathroom on the tiled floor, which is much easier to clean than the carpet in the rest of the apartment.) I step out of the bedroom and see him sitting on the couch, staring at me, his tail wagging me a feisty good morning.
Now here’s the interesting part: Instead of opting for a guilt trip or an angry verbal tirade, I stopped.
In what probably amounted to no more than a second or two, I had a rather startling revelation: The pop ups were a dream and I had no “real” reason to be angry, especially at the dog. The reality of the situation is that I had installed one of the best antivirus programs on the market, and my computer was secure and safe. What I had done was to carry the emotional reaction from a dream into my waking life. I sat down on the couch and petted Oscar, and did one of those full-to-widescreen adjustments where you actually get to see extra things that had been previously obscured, or cut out. It was a nice moment, a privileged moment.
What’s the big deal? Instead of just following along the path of an agitated state of mind, I was afforded the opportunity to have a less passive moment with respect to my thoughts and feelings. It actually occurred to me that I could examine the thoughts and feelings. And when I did, I saw a much bigger picture, and adjusted myself accordingly.
Of course I wasn’t always that way. Normally a situation like this would trigger a whole parade of events, drama and emotional hand-wringing and, having happened upon waking, would probably have sabotaged my entire day. I’m really getting what the authors of The Mindful Way Through Depression mean when they say that our task is to look more deeply at the links between thoughts and feelings and to become aware of our thoughts and feelings in a way that is new to us. This is the backbone of mindfulness, or rather, one of the many. For the things our thoughts tell us often get stored as absolute truths instead of impressions. This can lead to an entire future of now-based problems where we have altered our perceptions based on stored misinformation.
R
Episode Two is Online
Hello.
Just a quick note to say I’m really getting a lot out of this book “The Mindful Way Through Depression” by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal and Jon Kabat-Zinn. So many things they write about resonate with me, so I will begin the process of video-blogging about it. That will be starting next week.
In the meantime, “The Cleanse,” episode two of The Joy of Depression, is online and available for your viewing pleasure. It is in high def, so remember to click the little HD logo at the bottom of the player and also the full screen function if you care to see my mug in such vivid detail.
Thank you for your time and attention. More soon.
Peace
R
