I remember in childhood having moments of extremely dark depression.
They were brief moments, rarely lasting more than an hour. But there
were times I contemplated suicide, which is all too common amongst
kids.
As I got older, those moments seemed to go away. I was medicating
myself, first with alcohol, then later with other things, and it's not
surprising that some of my symptoms either went away or were
diminished in intensity.
Recently, the moments of dark depression have been back. Before I went
back on medication, they were dark and lasted sometimes all day. I
call them my "fogs" because it's as if a fog descends and brings with
it the eeriness of fogs in real life. It's a heavy feeling, and was
often accompanied by my apparitions, the three amigos.
Once I started taking the medication, the fogs were much more rare,
but their intensity was multiplied a hundredfold. They lasted for mere
seconds, but the feeling was very bad. They slowly increased in
duration, to sometimes hours, but never as long as they did before
medication.
At present, there are only two things that keep me from functioning
normally, I believe. One is my cognitive impairment, and the other is
the fogs.
On Monday, I had a very bad episode, which brought me to tears. I was
glad that I didn't have medication nearby, as I might have been
tempted to find relief in an unauthorized way. Sometimes music can
help, so I put my headphones on and played what was on my phone. The
set started with R.E.M.'s song "Everybody hurts," which was probably a
mistake. It made things worse.
I don't want to take antidepressants, because they would rob me of the
emotional highs. And I'm not convinced a heavier dose of my current
medication will help. But my apparitions have become more intrusive
recently, and my psychologist has mentioned that I am taking a very
light dose.
