Vacation

I still question the usefulness of such a kind of post, given there doesn’t seem to be any regular follower of this blog, but just in case I’m wrong…

I’ll be away for around 4 days starting from tomorrow, for a short vacation in Tuscany (Italy). It saddens me a bit to say it’ll be a eating and fishing-oriented vacation, yeah just like the ones of retired persons. But I’m not ashamed of that: eating and fishing are two of few the things I enjoy in life, though I think only new and interesting fishing locations may justify such a long travel. But it’s sad because if we keep spending our time together like some 50 years old fellows, me and my friends aren’t going to get in touch with girls even in a million years.

Not that I feel an intense urge for romantic relationships, but actually getting laid some times wouldn’t be that bad I guess. I know I don’t have the persuasion skills to convince a girl to have sex with me, and lying about my feelings to get laid is something I strongly refuse to do, but in the right situation, and with the help of alcohol, probably there’s some chance I could get near a girl and talk to her without panicking. My friends seem to be even more interested from the romantic side of things, and are surely more skillful than me in social settings, so I don’t understand why the behave like they don’t give a damn. Maybe they’re just too lazy to even try.

By the way, I hope the first days (the eating-oriented ones) run fast and without troubles, so I can concentrate on the fishing. It’s been almost a year since I had my last serious fishing session, and I badly need to fish: it’s an urge I’ve been feeling more and more in the last weeks, but I’ve been suppressing it because I needed to study. I also hope this time we actually land some nice carps, but it’s not a requirement for enjoying some time immersed in a quiet and relaxing environment, and water just has that magnetic feeling to me I can’t stop watching it.

I’m sure fishermen understand what I mean, just look at these fantastic pictures of the lake I’m going to:

That’s all, if I don’t get a food poisoning, drown, or die on the road, I’ll be back for Thursday or Friday.

The pharmaceutic industry may be evil, but homeopaths are dumb

I still think the pharmaceutic industry, being an industry in a capitalistic system, is evil by definition as every other industry is. The view of capitalism perpetrated by our politicians is one of “money above everything”, and most CEOs seem to take that belief way too literally.

So I used to think that drugs most of the time do more harm than good, and I was determined to avoid them at all cost. But then I realized that if they really did harm me, it was good because if I wasn’t allowed to kill myself, maybe the drugs in the long term could help in reducing my life span. Now I think my opinion about the value of life is screwed up by my depression, so one day I may regret of having destroyed my body in the attempt of slowly killing myself (yes, I always try the extremes before seeing that the good choice lies in the middle).

And by the way, my opinion about this issue is surely influenced by my past experience, because probably vaccines saved my life when I was a child. I was and I am still allergic to mites, though now it’s a lot less serious, when I was a child I had asthma attacks that nearly killed me. Wasn’t for the vaccines now I’d probably be 6 feet underground instead of wasting my time writing these blurbs (accordingly to what my mother says). Even if that was the case, probably because of my low interest in life, I cannot stop asking myself if all or some of my current problems may be the long-lasting side effects of those vaccines. And a lot of people seem to believe vaccines may have some serious long-lasting side effects.

But that doesn’t justify a similar statement:

Q. Hello, I am the mother of an 8-month child. Not aware of any of the problems, I allowed my son to receive his DTP-HIB shots at 3 months. He had a slight cold, but the doctor said that was no problem. After two weeks he started having seizures and is still having them. He is suspected of having the uncontrollable type. He is on all the medications thinkable with little result. I have mentioned my worry of a reaction to his injections, but the neurologists don’t want to hear about it.

With interest and horror I have been reading your site. In Holland we don’t have such information. Something I am missing on this site is what can be done once the vaccination has been given? Can my son be tested to see if his epilepsy was triggered by vaccines, and if so, is there anything known to reverse the vaccination? Thanks for reading this and I hope you can give me some information.

A. As you’ve discovered, children should not receive shots when they are sick, in spite of the doctor’s recommendations. Of course, there is no guarantee that your child wouldn’t react in the same manner even if he did not have a slight cold. Vaccines can cause serious reactions whether the child is healthy or ill. For example, several different vaccines (i.e., DTaP, HPV, Prevnar, etc.), and/or several vaccines administered simultaneously, can cause babies to experience seizures. Read some of our more recent letters to better understand the possibilities.

Some people believe that homeopathy can alleviate some of the symptoms. However, neurological damage is hard to correct. This is why we try to inform parents about the risks of vaccinating before the damage is done. You may wish to contact a local naturopath or homeopath. We post a small list of organizations and practitioners who may be able to help you reverse vaccine damage. Good luck in your search for a cure.

Now saying “children should not receive shots when they are sick, in spite of the doctor’s recommendations” is like inviting parents to let die their children because vaccines only do harm. While, on the basis of the belief of “some people”, I should entrust the life of a baby to a so-called doctor that thinks all drugs are useless! That’s the message the entire site seems to be sending.

I really hope people do not take that nonsense literally, homeopathy and other natural remedies may be fine for colds and other minor ailments, but when a life is in danger, especially if it’s a child, only a real doctor knows what to do. You may not find Dr. House or <add you favorite fictional doctor here>, but it’s the best we can do. If even the most politically-correct information source in the world describes homeopathy as a pseudoscience, there have to be a reason.

Therapy: is this thing working? (part 2)

I’m mostly satisfied with today’s therapy session. As I thought, the psychologist seems to be taking a more holistic approach than mine, as she tends to speak more about self-consciousness and well-being than specific problems. It’s not a bad perspective, given the way multiple issues interact to create situations specific to each individual, classifying people by means of specific disorders is questionable at least.

As promised, I prepared some questions for her, and here’s what I can remember about the answers:

Q: What are we doing now? Speaking? Analysis? Therapy?
A: Analysis AND therapy. She still think of not knowing enough about me, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been working on my issues.

Q: What are we working on? How long might it take? Is there something we can’t tackle with this therapy?
A: We are working on improving my general well being by tackling undesired beliefs and improving my self-awareness when it comes to feelings and how I (do not) express them. She doesn’t like to do very long therapies, but can’t say about how much it’ll take, not more than 3 years for sure she said (Ouch!). She’s not against medication, but we agreed over the fact that medication is for the symptoms, it doesn’t solve problems, nor teach you how to live without the symptoms. Then she said my physical and mental problems are all symptoms of psychological suffering, but we could make some memory and attention tests in a future sessions if I felt like that would somewhat satisfy my worries, and I readily accepted. I’m confident I’ll perform awfully on those tests.

Q: It looks like my drive to get better psychologically, as for most other things I do, is more a product of my worries about other’s opinions of me and feelings of inferiority instead of a genuine desire to have a better and fuller life. I suppose we’ll work about these feelings too, but if they are my main drive while doing things, what could happen if I lose this drive?
A: Since I’m used to exploit such feelings to fight apathy and depression, it’s normal to be scared of change. In any case, she’s not going to turn me into a cold, unconcerned and “don’t give a fuck about anyone” dude. We’ll work on reducing my current exaggerated worries, without eradicating it all.

After the Q&A, we talked a bit about how I (do not) interact with my family members, even when my dad is a complete asshole to my mother. But we agreed how my mother is mature enough to react to the verbal “abuse”, so it’s not the role of a son to interfere with what may be their established communication “standards”. What I may do is to eventually express my disappointment for their childish behavior, and not just go to my room as I always did since I was I child.

Finally we talked about my Bad night, and how my depression may be linked to memories of better times (nostalgia) and how my pessimistic view of the future makes them very unpleasant, reinforcing my negative thinking. I still think boredom plays a significant factor here, but she has nothing to say every time I mention it, probably because there’s no way to explain it in purely psychological arguments. We’ll see, if I fail the memory and attention tests like I expect to, boredom will surely add weight to a diagnosis of some kind of attention deficit disorder.

As a side note, I’ll soon receive those 6000$ from my car insurance, so I’m definitely going to make some more examinations to rule out any possibility of a non-mental illness.

Therapy prep: is this thing working?

I’m having another psychotherapy session soon, thought I don’t even know if I should call it like that, maybe it’s just counseling. Let’s just call it “therapy” then. Should I ask Ms. psychologist about that?

I have lots to ask in fact, because this time I plan to dictate my own agenda to the psychologist, and I need to be prepared.

First of all, I’m tired of living with my problems: doing things I don’t like to do (almost everything) takes just too much time and energy, and the few things I like to do get boring in no time. That not being enough of a hassle, when I like something it obsesses me so much that doing anything else becomes even more difficult and straining.
And this talk therapy has taken me nowhere in getting better, in fact knowing better my problems just makes me feel more and more the need to get rid of them, so I can’t get out of my mind the urge of doing something actually useful – maybe only temporarily – until we can find a way to address my problems through “talking”.

It’s not that I don’t trust the psychologist, I just don’t understand how this therapy should work, and I need to know how things work to put trust in them. But most of all, I need to know if this is actually therapy or just talk, if she’s still trying to know me and my problems, or if we’re already working on my problems. I think that after 8 hours or more of talk strictly focused on me, she should know me pretty well, I really don’t have much new to say anymore.

So if we are to be working on my problems, I’ll say her that I’d prefer a problem-centric approach, so if she says me that some problems can be addressed while others can’t, I’ll look at alternative strategies to deal with the ones she can’t address. And with a problem-centric attitude it’ll be easier to give at least a rough estimate of the time it’ll take to effectively get better. Because if I can’t get better for the time I graduate, the risk of me getting into alcohol or drugs to make a daily job tolerable is high, and suicide is not totally improbable too.

Whatever she says, I’m going to change GP (my current one sucks) and talk to him about both my mental and physical problems, discussing a possible hormonal imbalance as the origin of everything. I’m still convinced of that – even if my blood thyroid hormone levels are normal – because recently it came back to my mind how I was hit in my balls when I was around 8, and I’ve never been checked out, even though I occasionally feel a bit of pain in one of them. Additionally, I still lack a lot of facial and body hair a man at my age should have, as they’re still growing (very) slowly. In general, my body developed a lot more slowly in comparison to the average boy, my mustaches started to grow when I was 22, for example. So blaming hormones for that is not that weird isn’t? Given my thyroid hormones are fine, and given my balls precedents, I think Hypogonadism might be a serious possibility.

And unlike what I did in the past, giving up after a few negative examinations (mostly because my parents looked at me like I was some sort of attention-seeking hypochondriac), if the hormone theory fails to deliver, I’ll look into something else, because now money aren’t much of a problem! I won’t feel guilty toward my parents for spending money in examinations, now that I’ll probably receive 6000$ as compensation from the car insurance. Who may have thought car accidents could be so profitable?

So right now I’m hopeful, and I wish at least some of my expectations will be met, because right now hope is one of the few things keeping me alive.

Flashback: May 9 to 12, 2008

May 9: The tendency to think about Lucy has faded, but when it happens, I can clearly feel the depression coming, so I’m not going to contact her. But I don’t want to be rude, so I’ll keep behaving normally, should she contact me.

May 10: I’ve begun playing World of Warcraft in a private server, but it’s not the same thing as the original… Still, given my current level of depression, this castrated and low-populated version should be enough for now.

Lucy contacted me in the afternoon, and it wasn’t hard to behave normally, to the point I was able to make jokes and have some honest laughs. But soon after the conversation ended, I seemed to notice a small worsening in my mood so I readily drank some beer at dinner, in one of the rare days my mom drink that instead of wine (practically when we eat pizza). So alcohol could be one of my last-resort aids in coping with my problems until I’ll feel the real need to see a psychiatrist.

Finally, tonight my mind wandered again about those chats I’ve read some days ago (good lord tell me why I’ve done that!), and this still makes me feel depressed. I’ll forget everything soon, I hope, as it has already happened in the past.

May 12: In the morning I was stressed, mainly because I was too obsessed with WoW. In the afternoon I had a lesson to follow so I had to took the train, but Lucy didn’t took that one this time, don’t know if this was a bad or a good thing. Still, during the lesson I got bored and I thought again about her… This is still depressing for me, but it looks like these thoughts are easier to control now.

“I still cannot explain clearly why I was depressed at the time, everytime I think of having a clue, my theories are torn to pieces by seemingly random mood swings. My best guess is based on what seemed to be the trigger: reading my old chats with Lucy. This episode apparently brought up mixed feelings of nostalgia and inferiority, because at the time of those chats our relationship was still fresh and stimulating, and she was single too, so I may have failed in catching any sign of interest from her, if there were any. Now I’m pretty sure how I’ve never been interested in romantic relationships and probably I never will, so I will hardly get depressed again for a girl.”

Playing guitar, With Fire

It’s late and I’m going to bed soon, so I’ll be short. Don’t have that much to say anyway.

Today I mostly wasted my time because every time I looked at my books I couldn’t find a decent reason for studying. So I’ve done more interesting stuff I guess, but I mostly forgot about what I’ve been doing. I remember of playing around with Ruby Mechanize to see if I could use it to post comments on blogs, and indeed it can be done. But I was trying to comment on a blog where comments were disabled so it was a waste of time after all. But it surely made me remember how much my memory suck, because I’ve almost forgot how to code in Ruby. Well, fuck that, I no more get angry because of that, it’s just pointless to get angry at all, it just adds to my mental and physical stress.

Fortunately, my musical memory is reliable to the extent I can still dream one day I’ll be able to play guitar at the Speed of Light (reference for metalheads). I say that because today I’ve started to learn some pieces of “Playing With Fire” by Stratovarius, and I just LOVE that diad-based riff. I’m also playing around with the intro of “Pull Me Under” by Dream Theater, and realized how kick ass of an effect chorus is. One day I will own one, but for now the one embedded in my amp will do.

That’s all for tonight, I’ll try to make up for my laziness tomorrow, maybe with a new Flashback entry.

One hour-long attention span

Nothing relevant happened today, did some more studying, and lost almost a hundred hair, yeah! Like I have so many of them I could sell them to wig makers… It’s so depressing and frustrating, nothing seem to get better in my life, perhaps excluding my university performance, and even if I don’t care for the most part about my life being a complete failure, I have already enough health concerns to think of, I don’t really need other new shit to worry about.

So I started taking some food supplements and applying some kind of lotion in the hope of stopping this sudden hair loss. I might just believe those who say my problems are all psychosomatic, but even if they are what can I do? Doing what I like instead of doing what people expect me to do never helped with my sleep, psoriasis or digestion, so why should it help with hair loss? If it is really situational depression, then the only way I can see to exit this situation is to kill myself, because the situation is the way life works in this fucking society.

But this isn’t what I meant to write tonight, I’m going to analyze in some detail how I live social situations with my friends from a specific point of view: tonight we went out to eat and drink something, and for the first hour or so I was more or less comfortable, the topics of conversation were related to video games or computer science so it was not impossible for me to say something, even if it they were mostly remarks. But then my ability to concentrate started to fade, and I really was having a hard time following the conversations, especially since I wasn’t much interested about the usual WoW-related discussions between my two friends. Unfortunately, my friends sometimes expected me to participate in the conversation and actually understand what they said, so I had to make some serious efforts to follow through their chat.

I don’t know if this drop in my ability to concentrate was somewhat related to the pub getting more crowded, but I don’t think so, I wasn’t much anxious, probably because there were no girls in the near surroundings. What I can say for sure is that one hour is a limit I encounter often while following university lessons, doing psychotherapy or playing guitar, after that hour it looks like I suddenly get bored and need to do something else. Weird, indeed, but the pattern suggests how this ease of boredom is a primary factor that undermines most of my daily activities, and solving that will probably lead me a long way in improving my life. Now if only I could know what’s the cause… I’m not even confident an average psychiatrist will have a clue, and by the way, I fear them. I’m sure they’ll instantly try to medicate me, but I’m not going to take medication until I’ll be fucking sure I really need it, I’m not going to ruin my life even more by becoming addicted to some drug.

So the pharmaceutic industry is evil indeed…

Here’s what I found looking up the SSRI my mom suggested me to try 3 years ago, during one of my first episodes of depression:

For 10 years, GlaxoSmithKline’s marketing of the drug stated falsely that it was not habit forming. In 2001, the BBC reported the World Health Organization had found paroxetine to have the hardest withdrawal problems of any antidepressant. In 2002, the Food and Drug Administration of the United States published a new product warning about the drug, and the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations found GSK guilty of misleading the public about paroxetine and breaching two of the Federation’s codes of practice. The British Medical Journal quoted Charles Medawar, head of Social Audit: “This drug has been promoted for years as safe and easy to discontinue…. The fact that it can cause intolerable withdrawal symptoms of the kind that could lead to dependence is enormously important to patients, doctors, investors, and the company. GlaxoSmithKline has evaded the issue since it was granted a license for paroxetine over 10 years ago, and the drug has become a blockbuster for them, generating about a tenth of their entire revenue. The company has been promoting paroxetine directly to consumers as ‘non-habit forming’ for far too long.” Paroxetine prescribing information posted at GlaxoSmithKline now acknowledges the occurrence of a discontinuation syndrome, including serious discontinuation symptoms.

A British Government parliamentary inquiry into a number of prescription and over the counter drugs noted problems with SSRI antidepressants including withdrawal, suicidal thoughts and other adverse effects. The inquiry found that paroxetine (Paxil, Seroxat) has, more commonly than other SSRI antidepressants, a very devastating impact on some users’ lives. Since the FDA approved paroxetine in 1992, approximately 5,000 U.S. citizens have sued GSK. Most of these people feel they were not sufficiently warned in advance of the drug’s side effects—particularly the withdrawal syndrome discussed above, after GSK had specifically advertised the drug as non-habit forming

In the UK since 2001 lawsuits have been filed representing people who have been prescribed Seroxat. They allege that the drug has serious side effects, which GlaxoSmithKline downplayed in patient information.

In early 2004, GSK agreed to settle charges of consumer fraud for $2.5 million (a tiny fraction of the over $2.7 billion in yearly Paxil sales at that time). The legal discovery process also uncovered evidence of deliberate, systematic suppression of unfavorable Paxil research results. One of GSK’s internal documents had said, “It would be commercially unacceptable to include a statement that efficacy [in children] had not been demonstrated, as this would undermine the profile of paroxetine”.

On January 29, 2007, the BBC broadcast a fourth documentary in its Panorama series about the drug Seroxat. This programme, entitled Secrets of the Drug Trials, focused on three GSK paediatric clinical trials on depressed children and adolescents. Data from the trials show that Seroxat could not be proven to work for teenagers. Also, one clinical trial indicated that adolescents were six times more likely to become suicidal after taking it.

I confirm the withdrawal problems, when I forgot to take the pills I felt so bad I wished I was dead even more. Then I asked myself why, and took the damn pills. In retrospective, deciding to stop taking Paroxetine after a few weeks of treatment (slowly decreasing the intake to reduce withdrawal symptoms) was a wise decision. People struggling to get off this drug have all my support and respect.

I know this is capitalism and the other systems have failed and shit like that, but hell, we’re talking about children and suicides here!
And while an unlucky man could be sentenced to death because he’s supposedly a murdered, the people working on that company are still there and they’re still making billions. So someone tell me what’s the difference? They’re both murderers. No, wait, the former might even be innocent!
I know, this is only a simple example of the twistedness of this world, but the point I’m trying to make is: are depressed people really sick? Refusing in participating to this massacre we call life is really a sign of insanity? Or do I see things this way because I’m depressed?
Damn, I wish I could know what’s wrong and right without even thinking, as religious people do, but most of the time I’ll be lying myself.

The way politics and economics are exploited to drain money from the poor and bring even more wealth to the rich really drives me mad, so this will not be the first time I’ll complain about that.

Anyway, today I feel somewhat better than yesterday, the depressive thoughts are still here, but they’re easier to suppress. The lack of something interesting and challenging for my mind to wonder about clearly leads to boredom, and boredom leads to depressive thoughts. So I need a new obsession, even though I’m not dropping my previous one, guitar: I always loved rock and metal music and someday I might be able to play in a band. But given my current problems with mood, memory and social anxiety, it’ll be all pointless. You can’t just be in a band and keep forgetting your songs and panic when you’re on the stage…

Hopefully my new obsession will come soon, as always. I tried to make this blog my new obsession, but it worked for about 10 hours, as I should have expected, I’ve never been much passionate about writing. Though lately I started to suspect how my “ability” to get bored might be growing exponentially with time; I just hope this isn’t true, because if that’s what’s really happening, I’m screwed.
So if I’m going to be screwed, I need to be prepared for that, and even if I hate to say this, I’m tempted to take some of that Paroxetin. I still have a couple dozen of pills here at home. But you can’t take that fucking stuff as it was a serotonin candy, it’s fucking addictive and you got to be prepared for the whithdrawal when you stop taking it. If only I could afford some weed or such…

Bad night

Tonight I’ve been feeling like shit. Insisting and repeated negative thoughts started to permeate my mind like it didn’t happen in a week or more. My ordinary ways of coping were of little help. But surely little is better than nothing so I sticked to one of my favorite things I like to do while I study: watching porn or, more often, hentai. It wasn’t enough though, and I needed to study so, without much altenatives at hand, I drank a pint of beer.
I know for most people it’s nothing special, but for me it’s not normal, I rarely drink alone, so if I’ve done that it was because I really needed to numb my senses for a while. Not that I like much this feeling of numbness, my ability to concentrate is lower and I feel more lethargic too, but I really didn’t have any other way to stop those disturbing thoughts. What is incredible about those thoughts is that they’re not disturbing in content, they’re pretty normal thoughts, but the feelings they evoke can range from pleasing nostalgia to deep depression. And most of the time they’re feelings I can’t explain…
Don’t really know what the hell is wrong with me, I hope I’ll soon find some clue, I’m thinking there might be some correlation with my sleep quality, and the stress I’ve been subjecting my mind and body in the last months surely isn’t helping.
Anyway, while almost drunk I’ve managed to do some study, although I don’t know if tomorrow I’ll remember something about what I’ve been studying. But surely, if I had let my thoughts free to depress and distract me, I wouldn’t have done any studying. I just hope this is not becoming a habit, I don’ want to become a alcoholic. Being drunk is not that fun, but surely it’s better than being constantly oscillating between anguish and depression…

Flashback: May 8, 2008

“This is the first entry in the Flashback series. In this series I’m going to post, more or less untouched (translation skills apart), the more interesting bits of a diary I started sometime ago to track my mood changes. “

Morning’s been hard, as has always been in the past few days but, luckily, the laboratory lesson helped in keeping me distracted.
The thoughts were the same I have when I’m depressed, but lately I think a lot about Lucy (especially after I’ve been reading our old chats). Honestly, I don’t know what my brain is thinking of, but I don’t think it’s love, because love should brings happiness and joy, not depression.
However, I can’t exclude I’m feeling depressed because she have a boyfriend.
In the afternoon I went fishing by cycling, while listening to some crappy, but relaxing, country music, trying to reproduce the feelings of “well being” I felt yesterday while walking the dog whilst listening and singing to Elio e le Storie Tese. It worked. As a bonus, I’ve realized how my depression might be a consequence of the (forced) withdrawal from World of Warcraft, by which I was, and I’m still, obsessed. Then I decided to start this diary for better analyzing my changes in mood over time.
The thoughts about the obsession are mostly hypothesis, but having noticed how other video games are of little help in drowning out the depression, it’s not a completely made up one.
So I think it’ll be worthwhile to look for alternatives to this shitty dial-up connection, like UMTS or HSDPA, even if they’re not that promising, and in the meantime I’ll resume playing WoW in private servers.

“So that’s basically how I feel when I’m departed from my obsessions. Lucy was an obsession too, that fortunately didn’t last for long. As a side note, I originally used the term “mania” to refer to my obsessions… apparently I wasn’t that much informed about Bipolar Disorder at the time.”