"It gets better" isn't just a cliche. Take it from me.

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8. Week 2 of sobriety here

Last edited Thu Oct 21, 2021, 02:27 AM - Edit history (4)

I am a unipolar depressed alcoholic who was in denial. I have oncogenes from my mother's side and alcoholism from my dad's and unipolar depression from both. The icing on the crap cake is I had a great grandmom who was schizophrenic. I am not particularly paranoid, angry, anxious or schizophrenic and normally do not suffer from thought disorder or delusional thinking. However, my default mode network is fragile enough that I can descend into automatic paranoia, anger, anxiety and apophenic processing. It was superficial relative to the main issue..the unipolar depression. I had mildly paranoid delusions of reference, 2 scary times CapGras delusion and paranoid delusions about surveillance capitalism/mass surveillance. But I am a scientist and relatively immune to targeted individual conspiracies and the Havana syndrome. I lean heavily towards the banality of evil being a strong atheist. But I was undeniably in denial. Strange since I see no stigma in mental illness. I was just unconvinced by the evidence for a decade as I was assumed to be psychotic, manic, bipolar and borderline and none of those fit at all.

I used to drink etc. quite heavily. I was also on amphetamines but them I at least found moderately helpful like natural anti anxiety agents.

I suffered a breakdown due to work and divorce stresses in the fall of 2011, almost 10 years to the day. I was in denial and refused to get help for years choosing to remain unemployed and agoraphobic.

In 2019 (or was it 2017?) I read Moshe Bar's paper, A Cognitive Neuroscience Hypothesis of Depression and for the first time understood what depression feels like. And then I recognized it in me. This August I went on Prozac and it has been life changing.

All my anger, paranoia etc. are gone. I still have some attention deficit but meditation and work can help there. The main problem with nootropics is that they are anxiety inducing and I hate pain killers, benzos etc.

I find it easy to avoid alcohol, pare down internet use and be stable. I could not have done it without Prozac. Fortunately, I never drove much...only got a license in India in 2014. I never drove under the influence but for all that by 2021 my mental state had deteriorated too much for it to be safe for me to get behind the wheel. I have quit driving and all risky activities though I still pet my cats.

My colleagues (especially my postdoc mentors and some scientists I met and a postdoc counsellor), most doctors I dealt with, my friend, ex-husband and family (especially my parents) were very supportive but I was in denial because till I read the Bar paper nothing fit my actual symptoms. I have a bit of a quick temper but it flashes on and off and is gone. Prozac has been life changing and I am going to monitor my vision and bloodwork and screen for cancer. My mother has multiple myeloma.

I used to post here as nam78_two and then CatLady78.
But I cannot remember the new handles I picked during the name change earlier this year. So I am back as my favourite tv show.

I found cognitive science papers on pubmed, cleverbot for therapy, Moshe Bar's/Karl Friston's papers, atheism, Zohar Ringel's debunking of the simulation hypothesis (whatever popularmechanics says) and Sabine Hossenfelder's blog, Nicholar Carr, Shoshana Zuboff, Tim Wu, Anand Giridhardas' The Ink, John Naughton's columns, the Guardian and Philip Agre helpful on my road to recovery.

I am on 40 mg prozac daily now. I had my breakdown at Stanford University in CA in 2011. I posted various profane comments about them here last year and I retract them unreservedly. They tried to help me but both in India and in CA, the first set of medications I was on (anti psychotics like abilify, seroquel and epilepsy/mania meds like Sodium Valproate) were unhelpful though I tried the first two for under a week and the latter for just a day. I respect my current shrink and her personality was a great fit with mine. I was able to get fast results and with minimal talk. I dislike talk therapy with people..strangers or friends. That is why I like chatbots like cleverbot.
My last mentor/labmates in ca were very sympathetic and suggested that I had no serotonin in my synapses. But Bar's paper clinched it for me as I find pop psychiatry unrelatable. Most of the medical professionals I met were helpful but I was just not convinced that I was unwell. I thought it was all bunk and a cliche as I used to see myself as stable and rational under normal circumstances and disproportionately blamed circumstances I brought on myself instead of the illness.

My unwellness was triggered by alcoholism, the stresses of the postdoc path, divorce and eventual insolvency. I had a very supportive ex, parents, a very supportive friend and great postdoc mentors/colleagues. I weathered it because of my weak tie and strong tie friendships. I am sincerely grateful for all the support I received from the community over the years both in the US and in India and in my field generally. And wish I had not posted so many profane rants here and in google search and over email in the last decade :-/. And for screaming at my mom/ex/others. I feel like a real jerk.

What was most helpful was that almost no one was truly pushy, mean or controlling. Coercion might have turned me against parts of the field while I now recognize the field as nuanced, challenging and complex.