My Happiness Project: Managing Depression Without Medication
I have struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life. In second grade, for example, my teacher made me stand in the hall because I had interrupted class for the umpteenth time. My reaction? I tried to strangle myself with the blouse’s tie (it was the early 80′s when such a shirt was still hot).
Over the years, my depression and anxiety grew worse. Deep, year-long depressive episodes struck at 12, 15, 18, 21, 23, and 27. Fear of homelessness and bad credit is what kept me from falling headlong into a bed-and-tissue-ridden abyss in my post-college years. Even when not in a major depression, I experience symptoms of dysthymia.
About 18 months ago, I decided to get serious about managing my mental health. I wanted to know what happiness felt like. It had been at least 15 years since I had felt happy. So I went to see a doctor. She prescribed an anti-depressant.
I took Cymbalta and sought therapy for several months. It worked somewhat. Medication took me from depressed and anxious to merely unhappy. It also gave me periodic gastrointestinal distress, persistent medicine-head, and took $50 out of my budget every month — and happiness still eluded me.
About a year ago, I stopped taking anti-depressents and decided to try a non-medicinal, multipronged approach. Despite some recent backsliding, I think it’s working.
Prong 1: Exercise
I am not a fan of the E word. I won’t even pretend that I am. But what I found is that exercising regularly makes me feel incredible. As little as 15 minutes of cardio — usually on my stationary bike or doing yardwork, but sometimes just dancing around the house — relieves tension and clears my head. I can handle stress as well as I did when I was taking medication, but without the extra costs or side effects.
Prong 2: Reducing alcohol consumption
I love booze. I even wrote a blog called Cultured Wino for a couple of years. Microbrews and gastropubs? Izakayas? Fuck yeah! But I’ll be damned if alcohol doesn’t cause my anxiety levels to spike. Throw in liver damage, wicked heartburn, hangovers, and the potential for chemical dependency, and dialing down my booze intake is just smart business.
Prong 3: Remembering to work less and do stuff I like more
I returned to painting and to a lesser degree writing. I am learning new things. I am reading again. Instead of working longer, I am trying to work smarter. I am setting up firmer boundaries between home and work.
My reasons for doing this are three-fold:
- It keeps my mind clear and focused. I find that the best way to solve a problem is to step away from it. Refusing to take work home gives my brain what it needs to problem solve.
- It gives me more opportunities to reach flow, or a near-meditative state of happiness and concentration.
- It breaks my usual work-stress-anxiety spiral: too much work makes me anxious me out which means I work more hours which just makes me more anxious. Because I am not repeating the pattern, I don’t fall into the trap.
Prong 4: Embracing new ideals
Three Buddhist concepts have become very valuable to me in this process, namely:
- Mindfulness, or being aware and awake in the present moment, and
- Detachment, or doing things without expecting a reward
- Impermanence, or the idea that everything is always in flux.
To accept that change is the only constant in life reminds me that a mood or a stressful period will not last forever. Mindfulness helps me see that right now isn’t bad just because it’s not what I want. And detachment reminds me that whining about the gap between have and want is what sends me into a tailspin. Detachment also reminds me that I am not defined by what I have or attain.
Buddhism’s talk about suffering and pain can come across as nihilistic, depressing or hopeless at first. But on a second or third reading, I think Buddhist texts offer a lot of wisdom about the sources of and fixes for the pain caused when your “whatshould” doesn’t match your “is.” I think this is why several books and articles on depression and happiness recommend practicing mindfulness and the related concepts of impermanence and detachment.
Prong 5: Therapy
Yes, I see a therapist. I like the perspective shift that comes from sessions with a licensed therapist. She asks the right questions and forces me to change my inner dialogue.
Why this approach works for me
- Its results are immediate. If I exercise that day, I feel better. If I don’t I feel worse. If I drink too much or too often, my anxiety ratchets up. If I don’t, it doesn’t. If I forget to be mindful, or to do things without detachment, or think that life will always be like this (whatever “this” is), I start to spiral downward. Feeling good immediately — not after a month of popping expensive pills — is a powerful motivator.
- It is cost-effective. Skipping the wine and beer aisle at the grocer easily saves me $30 – $60 a month on groceries. Not taking medication keeps an extra $10 to $100 in my pocket per month, depending on the medication. Exercise requires at most, a sub-$100 investment in some running shoes a couple of times a year. And, honestly, I can scrap the shoes if I decide my workout will be dancing around my house. Changing my thinking? It’s Fuh. Reeeeee. My therapy sessions do cost money, but it’s not exorbitant, and I think it’s worth it.
- It has no side-effects. Prozac / fluoxetine gave me wicked anxiety. Cymbalta, Zoloft and Lexapro would cause my stomach to feel like someone was sticking a hot poker through it right before giving me the runs. This plan? I might experience sore muscles if overdo it, but that’s about it.
In short, it just fits into my life and my philosophy much better than medication ever did or could.
Further reading
- The neuroscience of mindfulness on Psychology Today.
- The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn
- The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want
by Sonja Lyubomirsky
- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Songyal Rinpoche
- When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. WARNING: this book is bo. ring. But it contains an important lesson.