Do I remember my first depression?

How could you forget a thing like that!

Do I remember my first depression? I saw the question in a Bluesky post and my answer is just way too long for 300 characters. So, do I remember? I've experienced four distinctly different styles of depression over the last six decades and I do not remember the first time for the last two.

The most frequent was the Big Crash after Crazy-Making Time ( the concept titles I used for my experiences before I was diagnosed and had an understanding and the terminology for Bipolar Disorder. )

The first one of those, I count as my first actual depression, happened at 17 years old. My behavior that Fall, in my senior year of high school was classic mania, excess everything. (Even to the point of moving and changing high schools three times in three months.)

In January, I crashed. Big time. I slept 23 hours a day for three months. My Grandma would wake me up for a groggy hour each day to use the facilities, eat something and drink some water.

They called the doctor. Yes, way back then when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, doctors made house-calls. He did a quick check-over including taking my temperature (with a thermometer that probably hadn't been cleaned in weeks, if ever) and listened to my chest through the awe-inspiring, magical stethoscope. He firmly, unequivocally (and I do mean with full authority and without a shadow of a doubt) diagnosed Bronchitis.

From that day until I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1, 23 years later, and started charting life-time symptoms from memory, I believed I had Chronic Bronchitis. That, every year or two, I was so overwhelmed by lung weakness that all I could do was spend months in bed. Fun fact: I have had Bronchitis exactly 3 times in the last 27 years.

When I returned to school (the school I started the Fall semester at before spinning up and moving living locations so many times,) my English teacher gave me an ultimatum.

After all these years, I remember her name and exactly what she looked like. She was one of the few teachers I do. That teacher laid down the law. She told me if I missed even one more day of school, she would flunk me AND keep me from graduating.

She was serious and I believed her. I believed her so hard that the day after I was severely sunburnt, on Senior Day at the local amusement park, I wore a sheet to school with a neck-hole and armholes cut out. When I got to her class (second period,) she sent me home…but I did not miss the day. (I’m that kind of a literal girl!)

But, when I was 14, I had an ugly deep, dark three weeks in the summertime. I remember wishing I had never been born so deeply that it was a keening cry from the depths of my soul. That was when I made my first attempt to unalive myself. One day, my suffering was just so bad, I did not think I could bear it any longer.

Escaping was my sole focus. I, deliberately and purposefully, took a bottle of pills. A whole bottle, 2 and 3 at a time. Afterwards, a surreal calm overtook me and then I got scared. I did what any 14 year old could imagine doing and called a lifeline. The guy that answered that phone call should have never been allowed to have that job.

He asked me what kind of pills I had taken. When I told him aspirin, he laughed at me and told me I'd be fine. Since then, four doctors and two therapists said that was entirely not true, that the dangers were very real, very serious and that I needed to have talked with someone from poison control.

So, those dark ugly times have happened theee times in my long life. And I did try to unalive myself each time. It was just that unbearable. My heart breaks every time I think about the people challenged with this illness who mostly have those deep dark depressions over and over for months and months at a time with only brief periods of not feeling bad.

It's a miracle to me that we have so many survivors. I have terror and tears for all my brothers and sisters who just didn't, just couldn't make it. I barely survived three times of torture in my life. Can you imagine, suffering like that year after year after year?

The third kind of depression I suffered through only happened a few times. I don't remember a lot of situational details because ugh, who would want to. I woke weeping inconsolably for weeks. Crying so hard, I could barely breathe. Forget about eating, that just did not happen. Neither did working. Neither did living. I just sat somewhere like a lump with the tears pouring 24/7. I’m pretty sure I even cried in my sleep.

I do remember going to primary care one time and begging for anything that would make it stop. I was told the only way I would get a prescription would be if I voluntarily entered counseling.

Now, a lot of folks don't remember or weren't around during the 1960's when I was a child. There were no effective medications for Manic-Depression. Reagan had not emptied the asylums yet. Lithium, the first drug approved to specifically treat mania, was not approved by the FDA until 1970.

When I was little, I was trained to avoid mental health providers. Over and over I was told "If you talk like that, they will catch you. They'll lock you up and shock you!" And "Don't EVER let anyone send you to a Shrink, they'll dig around in your brain, poke and prod at your mind and make you into an entirely different person!”

Both those pieces of information were truths at the time. Not just bogeyman stories kids are told to make them behave. Real life cautions over and over. I imagine similar to what most people of color, especially many young Black men, grow up hearing, learning and taking to heart.

So, terrified, I just miserably shook my head no. I left that doctor's office and continued crying the whole time I was driving home. It is really, really hard to watch the road with tears in your eyes. Women do that, it seems like all the time, for a variety of reasons. Just one more thing, most men don't know, never thought of.

The last kind of depression I lived through is the only kind I have experienced since stabilizing on meds. NOT when I started meds but four years later when I finally stabilized. A lot of that was my fault. I had the unrealistic expectation that there was a med that would fix me completely without any side effects (at all.) I drugged-shopped until a psychiatrist stopped me.

He told me since I had not stabilized in four years, I was not bipolar and I was taken off all meds. Those seven months without any med support prompted that third and deadliest attempt to unalive myself.

The details are vivid to this day. So are the few extra kindnesses I took for the maid I imagined would find me. When I wasn’t successful and finally just gave up, I called a friend to come get me and bring me a dry shirt. I did not go to hospital, did not see a doctor.

Some weeks later, I went to the free clinic. Of course I had to, no money, no insurance. (I see really hard times coming for those kinds of circumstances in a country where there are also no grants for indigent services.)

A nurse practitioner at the free clinic listened to me. Listened to me crying because at that point 2 months after my last attempt, I was weeping again. She asked me if I believed I had Bipolar and that meds would work. I desperately agreed and got a full adult dose prescription for lithium.

It made me sick to my stomach. It made my hands tremble. I didn't complain. I took it and stabilized. I took lithium for five years until I got toxic and had acute kidney disease. My husband was terrified and traumatized when they told us at the hospital that I could never be able to take lithium again.

I want to stop for a second. Just in case there are any young people facing medication decisions, facing the decision of whether or not to take lithium. It worked for me. For five years, I had no mania and very gentle depressions.

A good med should prevent the extremes. The in-between symptoms need to be handled with life choices (good sleep, routine meals, exercise, calming and self-care strategies.) Hit me up if you need the tips😜.

Lithium worked at what was a high dose for me for five years. Five years of drinking way too much soda and almost no water. It is a naturally occurring heavy salt. Salts pull water. But it took me FIVE years of insufficient water intake to get that sick, to get toxic.

Everyone is different. We, like all other human beings on this Earth, were not made with little cookie cutters. Your mileage may vary. But I firmly believe I would not have gotten toxic (and that most people won't) with enough water intake.

Off my soapbox again. I'm past that momentary feeling, my desperate need to pass on what I've learned so it don't pass on with me. Back the the fourth type of depression in my life. (Remember, your mileage - or your loved one's - may vary.)

I call this type of depression I live with now "meh - I'd rather be sleeping." Since I control my medications and my illness (as much as humanly possible,) I'll let that go on for about a week. Just to make sure I'm not just having a bad day or two like everyone else on the planet has.

After that week, I call my med prescriber (I now use exclusively nurse practitioners for psych.) I get a short-term prescription to pull me out of it. Without that prescription, those episodes usually last 4-6 weeks. Not dangerous, not deadly, not painful - just meh.

So, yeah, I remember my first depression. I don't remember all of them just like you, gentle reader (lol, I have always wanted to write that!) will not remember every time you ate mashed potatoes as a child. Some things are just so familiar, just happen so often that you know they happened regularly, but you are just not sure when or how often.

Until next time,

Love, Ree