Saturday, August 20, 2011

For Nearly 30 Years My Major Depression & Anxiety Was "Winning The War" Then Something Happened

Looking back, it's hard to believe it's been almost twenty years since I first entered
in the office of a psychologist to see if there might be something wrong with me. I felt very different and out of sorts. I was in my twenties. It was in the counseling center at my local college in South Ms.

After six or more meetings, I realized nothing was getting better, and decided nothing
bad, except that he was suffering the same pressures and anxiety that everyone did in life. But it was not. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Then I decided that if I could get a decent job with a great salary, all of a sudden my problems
I got a job disappear as the principal writer and editor of a major network in Washington, DC At the age of
thirty-six. At the age of thirty-seven, had read enough about depression to know who did. Immediately
took action and visited a local psychologist who brought on board a psychiatrist to try a combination of talk therapy and medicine. Year after year I attended religiously meet me and took my therapy
large number of pills, the combinations of pills, pills contrast, increasing doses of pills, etc. Nothing worked
however, the medical community continues to congratulate myself for doing so much better. I asked them to
nothing had changed (I knew what I felt inside my body much more than they did), but insisted that
the changes are so subtle, that certainly would notice if I stopped taking my meds and left
therapy. It was what I did. There is no difference. By then, almost could not work out much less
the bed. I forced myself to do it. Still do not know how, but felt she needed.

In 1994, I had moved to the West Coast to pursue screen writing as the theory that if only I could
land a blockbuster, the happiness of the land on me and my (then) depression and anxiety
would be conquered. Anyone with common sense knows that the outcome of the match that the losers. And I lost.
After taking a series of seminars and workshops on screen writing, even writing several full
length motion pictures, I fell into a deeper depression. I returned to therapy and continues
in the new SSRI drugs that the medical community said they were "almost infallible." Am
glad you mentioned the word "almost" as they were the opposite. I stayed a fool, thinking
I would like to find an answer in a pill. I had not worked in the past, why would it now? But he said
me the new Prozac and similar drugs family worked when nothing else did.

Then my mother, who lives alone in Mississippi fell ill. I returned home to take care of it. This served
give me a purpose, and who had cared for me as a child, and I felt good on some days.

One afternoon in 1997, I was reading the New Yorker magazine and read an article about something
called the vagus nerve stimulator (VNS). This is a small computer chip device the size of a silver medal
dollar, implanted under the skin and wiring running to the mood centers of the brain,
emitting a magnetic pulse that was supposed to surprising effects on depression. Again, I was a little
skeptical, but this time there was a big difference. Although not yet in the market for depression (it had been for a while for epilepsy), clinical trials, people seemed to have tried
every bit of therapy were seeing marked improvement with this device. That was
by a small medical device company called Cyberonics in Houston.

I started getting more and more curious and spent many hours on the Internet a great after
studies. He approached the FDA approval on several occasions, but the powerful AMA and pharmaceutical
lobbying continues, "criticize" in the studies and maintained.

By then, he was diagnosed with TRD (treatment resistant depression), which tells the story
no results. Cyberonics While lobbyists and heavy hitter anti-vagus nerve stimulation slugging it, I
continued to suffer and I would find about 10 million cases similar to mine were suffering (and dying), and with the same terrible disease called TRD.





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