Being a (put label here) I want to say everything at once in the first sentence. This is going to read like one of those movie scripts where they keep having flash backs intermingled plots and mixed issues all leading toward some kind of a conclusion.

A visit to the psychiatrist:

I just finished reading a book that I would never buy. My psychiatrist loaned it to me, “The Gift of Depression” by John Phelps MD. The book was a gift from a patient with a hand written note on the inside cover. He really didn’t give me the book, he handed it to me after reading a letter I gave him mentioning  giving my psychologist a copy and her being kind enough to read it and discuss it with me. He then asked where here his copy was jokingly. I told him that I had bought him a copy but the psychologist thought that he would not read it so I passed it on to someone.

At the end of the session I ask him “are you going to let me read the book” testing him, he replied "only if you return it, I haven’t read it yet"! Reading “The Gift of Depression” demonstrated to me why doctors give away patients books without reading them. I decided to review both books and send it with back with them. I would have never bought either book normally, especially “The Gift of Depression”. I subscribe to a newsletter at mcmanweb.com that did a review on “Why Am I Still Depressed” making a well reasoned suggestion that you give your doctor a copy. It is a good book that describes manic depression from the latest perspective, cutting edge thinking. The book really pissed me off because I had already tried everything in it.

My psychologist remarked that she had noticed the fine distinctions made in the book about various degrees of mixed mode ultra rapid cycling hypomania in some of her patients since reading it. The problem with the book is that everyone in the end gets better - in reality many never get better, many get worse, many commit suicide.

A component of manic depression is the certainty that one is never going to get better. After forty four years I think that it in my case it is a reality based conclusion. Lifetime “treatment resistant” drug sensitive patients have remised and relapsed so many times they reach a point toward the end where they stop kidding themselves. They can’t take anymore drug experiment guessing games. They know beyond any reasonable doubt that they are never going to get any better. “Why Am I Still Depressed” is a useful diagnostic tool and helps the patient understand and describe what is going on but offers nothing new in the way of treatment. The DSM-IV is the psychiatrist bible whatever is wrong with you mentally must be found in it to make a diagnosis. Doctor Phelps book helps bridge the diagnostic gap until the New Testament, the DSM-V is released in 2011.

 “The Gift of Depression” no thank you - the title says it all. "Twenty one inspirational stories sharing experience, strength, and hope. Together we will end the stigma." This book flipped my bipolar switch. Five minutes after reading it this free blog was online and this was being written, hypomania driven. Gift - how dare they their mental illnesses is real enough beneath the surface a hint of underlying failure although every story ended on a positive note I am waiting on the next update before calling any of them cured. The book is a bit elitist in the sense that the emphasis is upon successful professional mentally ill people. I have long known that some of the most arrogant peculiar people on the planet are psychiatrist, psychologist and especially social workers. The mental health field is rife with mentally ill practitioners.

The entire field of psychiatry has become a pharmaceutical drug pushers guessing game. Old drugs in new skin patches, drug cocktails, mix and match color psychotropic’s, witch doctors bitches brews “I only change one mind bending drug at a time” he the doctor says mixing a new cocktail of woe. It is time to take a lesson from the witch doctors let the psychiatrist take the medication to find the cure, not to say that many don’t do take their prescribed medications. I would love to hide a camera in a psychiatrist office and see how many different patients he saw over a three month period, watch their progression over a year or two second guessing diagnosis, medications and results like observing rats in a cage.

Psychiatrists think that the patients who don’t come back got better if they happen to notice that they didn’t come back. I am sure than many a patient convinces them that the magic pills had elicited a cure just to stop having to take any more. The wild scary ones the ones hearing voices like “Pat Robinson” talking to god can easily be drugged into a zombie like compliance with a few facial tics and hand tremors.

 

Psychotropic pharmaceuticals are both a blessing and a curse they freed the" lock them away forever" mental patients to roam the streets talking to themselves only to end up in and out of jail and or prisons where they are drugged senseless before being put back out onto the streets to do it all over again. I have been cured innumerable times so many times in fact that I have become hypersensitive to drugs remissions replaced with slowed progression and hopeful stabilization. I have been statistically cured in 30 percent of the studies of every new drug released although most of them worsened my condition. A couple helped for years then stopped. At the end of the list two drugs that have helped all of my life - one a legal and highly addictive benzodiazepine and one illegal - Marijuana which I credit for getting me through my last 32 years of work despite my mental illness.

Lamictal is the end of the road for me I have taken the drug alphabet that I am going to take it is the final addition to the drug cocktail, the third leg of a stool. A finely tuned biochemical balance, psychotherapy, solitude, exercise and carefully managed lifestyle may carry me through to the next horror ahead. Reality based paranoia is a panic attack when driving or a manic encounter with the police a tightrope walk over the valley of insanity. The connection between substance abuse and mental illness is undisputed and yet the cure is imprisonment and forced drugging into compliancy. One would think that everyone in prison would be clinically depressed can you imagine the horror for someone who is manic depressive locked into a prison cell?

The wise pharmaceutical companies and good doctors will tell you that substance abuse causes mental illness. I am here to tell you mental illness causes substance abuse. Which came first the drugs or the illness? We treat mental illness with drugs from the start. All psychotropic pharmaceutical drugs are addicting requiring a tapering off withdrawal and switch over to the next one. Currently the benzodiazepines are the only ones that I know still prescribed for mental illness that are ever recreationally used. They are seductive relieve anxiety giving confidence numbing emotional pain and easily mix with alcohol. To my knowledge they have never been a street drug like pain killers. Prescribing pharmaceutical drugs for a lifetime is the order of the day. These new FDA approved addicting drugs being over prescribed in increasing doses that offer no pleasure are not considered drug of abuse because they have a difficult time getting anyone to keep taking them. The patients would rather face withdrawal than take them.

We have insanity within insanity addicting medications worse than the illness. Anti-depressants causing depression - manic episodes- psychotic breakdowns, anti-psychotics turned into anti-depressants - anti-conversant into mood stabilizers. The psychiatrist has no pain killers in his version of the PDR you couldn’t give away their drug samples from hell, no one wants to take them because they do not make you feel any better and are still addicting. Imagine if you will a mentally ill person being given one addicting psychotropic drug only to have them withdraw and try another and when that fails mixing them together.

Oh the horrors of marijuana the substances abuse poster child, not addicting, no pattern of increasing dosage the only side effects a mild euphoria and a slightly diminished mental abilities. A recent study indicated that email, pagers, telephone and instant messages diminished mental abilities more than marijuana does.    

The gift of depression is to the pharmaceutical companies. The drug cabal - psychoanalytically trained psychiatrist turned into drug rep whores - five minute medication appointments - bonus point for every prescription. The psychiatrist office is filled with drug advertisements with answers for every problem the list of side effects is astounding. Don’t worry only one in a thousand come down with some horrible disease. If marijuana had four out of endless side effects listed Medical marijuana would be doomed.

The doctor excitedly cones around to my side of his desk and shows me a Lamictal drug pamphlet and remarking that he is a spokesman for Lamictal. I ask him if that was good or bad. He never responded and sat down beside me and said “I write a lot” and I responded oh you write “he grimaced” and said “I wrote a book once” then indicated that he wrote a lot of prescriptions for Lamictal. Was that for me or a Hawaiian Vacation and bonus prizes?   

“The Gift of Depression” shows how far you can go with a good support network in a professional environment but its premise is flawed. God kept slipping in to help. Underneath all of the inspiration is a harsh reality these temporary survivors from hell are all very intelligent, managed to get good educations find mates, raise children and write a story for the book. Depression is a story with only one ending, death. All twenty one stories are not finished yet. We wish ourselves well with denial at the first loss of symptoms. We all want it to be like a bad dream to feel happy and stable regular and balanced and are quick to forget.

I have come to detest self help and psychology books, Psychology Today - bullshit tomorrow. When you can survive without getting fired for ten years you call all the pain and suffering all of those years your stable period. When you get married after five years of psychotherapy and divorced and fired a year later you call that a major breakdown a hospital event, when your dieing mother moves in and you get fired after ten years again you call that another major breakdown. When you get married again, your twelve year old dog dies you get divorced again and forced into retirement then committed for observation and totally disabled its checkmate, game over. I really don’t care anymore if I am depressed when I die - who isn’t - except those who go suddenly. Do Christians die easier? How about a reality TV show "Hospital Chaplin" three people die per episode "up close" for a free funeral and fifteen minutes of fame - Soul Train.