just a generic personality

JUST THE FACTS

What is a depressive disorder?

A depressive disorder is a disease that affects mood, thoughts and behavior. Without treatment, symptoms can last for weeks, months, or years. The greatest obstacle to treating depression is lack of recognition. When a “bad day” turns into a bad week, month, or more, there may be a medical explanation for this change in behavior or feelings of hopelessness. Fortunately, appropriate treatment can help more than 90% of those who suffer from depression.

Depression and teens

Experts estimate that 5% of all teenagers will suffer from depression. Unfortunately, only 20% of depressed teens are appropriately diagnosed and treated. When diagnosing a mood disorder, adolescents can be at a disadvantage. The symptoms of depression and bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness) in young people can differ from adults. Symptoms can be missed if you don’t know what to look for. Read on to learn more.

Well meaning parents or teachers may think that a young person is unhappy or moody because it’s a natural part of being young. This is especially true for adolescents, who are expected to be “hormonal” and rebellious. Persistent unhappiness or moodiness is not normal for anyone.

Depression is a medical illness

Depression is a medical illness caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. In the brain, neurons send messages from one nerve ending to another across synapses. Neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, are chemicals that help transfer information. In depression, these neurons do not function normally, which leads to changes in a person’s thoughts, feelings and behavior. Antidepressant medications work to restore proper chemical balance in the brain.

So, been having a hard time sleeping lately… until I found this imovane. It really works good for me, but it’s meant for, quote “short-term treatment of insomnia characterized by difficulty in falling asleep”. There’s also a bunch of other insomnia drugs You can try… good luck! Or you could just a fat hit of Lowryder in the evening to mellow out .

I have lost some weight which has set off a strange wave of paranoia among people that I have either had my stomach stapled or shut off with a rubber band, or am on some freaky raw food diet or whatever.

What happened was that I was fucking sick and tired of dieting and working out. I fucking was sick and tired of buying clothes that were too small for me so I could ‘thin into them.’ I was fucking sick and tired of eating 5 to 7 small meals a day. I was sick and tired of no carbs. I was fucking sick and tired of thinking about food and not thinking about food. I was fucking sick and tired of my trainer and any type of exercise. I went to a nutritionist and I lost a lot - of money. I never left his office without dropping at least a grand on bullshit. Shakes, pills, supplements, food substitutes, exercise programs. I said “FUCKING FUCK THIS FUCK IT FUCK IT SERIOUSLY FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK FUCK FUCK IT!!!!”

I stopped going to Fred Segal and getting the one thing in the whole store that fit me. I started buying clothes that fucking fit me, like now. I put away all notions of what diets meant to me, what I was supposed to eat and not supposed to eat. I altogether lost the thought process that carried me through my life - my dieting and exercise regimen - and started thinking about the people I loved, hated, tolerated, laughed at, laughed with. There was a lot of time to read. I wanted to watch old movies. I ate a lot of shitty food. I gained some weight and it was scary. But it didn’t really make a difference. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. I stopped exercising, and started writing. I played with my dogs. I looked at shit on Ebay. I started to eat what I wanted - and kept doing it. Not a food vacation - not a respite between diets. I just was going to eat eat eat eat eat eat and fucking eat some more.

Then, I kind of started to get weirdly thinner. I get it now. Because I don’t care about food, it is there when I want it, I don’t crave it and want it and think about it. Since I can have everything, nothing is that important. I don’t need to eat a whole cake because I can eat a whole cake every day every meal if I want and I don’t care. I don’t prepare to eat because I might be hungry later and ‘they’ won’t have what I have to eat. When I am hungry, I eat. You know, that is what the weird diet is.

Here is what I usually eat every day. In the morning I have a bowl of cereal with two kinds mixed, granola and LIFE. If I am in a hotel, I have granola and yogurt, croissants, one chocolate and one regular and then a big cranberry juice. I drink a lot of water, and a lot of lemonade, regular COKE - no diet anything ever. After that, I usually eat a peanut butter cup or something like that. Then I get to work, which is writing usually, recording sometimes, interviews, etc.. I get hungry later around early afternoon, and so I eat what I think is a good thing at the moment, which could be mac and cheese, or pizza. I eat as much as I want, but it is usually too rich to eat all of it and since I am not dieting and I don’t need to cram the forbidden food in before the diet starts up again, I eat as much as I feel good eating and leave the rest. I leave a lot on the plate because I need not clean my plate. Why? I don’t have to. And the value of not having to finish all my food, probably has been the biggest contributor to my healing around food. I used to feel like I needed to eat all of it, all and then some, but actually, it doesn’t feel good to do that. It doesn’t taste good. I can have more when I am hungry again. I eat dinner late, usually with friends. I like appetizers. I will order 3-4 types, so I can have a variety of edible treats, instead of an entrée. If I order entrees, it would be more than one, because I deserve to eat what I like. I never eat leftovers. I never take anything home. I never eat anything that doesn’t taste heavenly. I never eat when I am not hungry. I never let myself get too hungry. I never deny myself a fucking thing because I have denied myself enough for 1000 lifetimes and there is no more denial for me in the way that I live. I deserve all the mozzarella sticks, all the fucking chocolate, all the fucking pizza, all the chicken a’la king, and I deserve to leave what I don’t finish on the plate.

So there you go. Big secret diet. Love. Love and the audacity to actually waste food.

Depression is one of the human body’s normal and natural responses to crisis, transition, or change. Most people are depressed at some point following the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, even at the birth of a child! These depressions tend to be short-term, lasting for a period of days, or in extreme cases, weeks. However, the individual who is depressed often acquires or develops coping mechanisms to deal with the crisis or change, and the depression lifts as they develop more and more ability in the new situation.

However, there are other people for whom depression is not a one time or passing thing - they live with it day in and day out. This is called clinical depression. Right now, science is trying to determine definitively whether depression is the result of genetic factors, environmental triggers, physical crisis or a combination of factors.

It seems fairly clear that much of depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. In addition to being the center of thought, the brain is like a large chemical factory - it produces an incredible number of chemical substances which are sent through the body to maintain or change the human body. Sometimes, when the brain develops a “glitch” from a depressive trigger, it thwarts the body’s ability to manufacture or use these chemicals. The result is often that a person is left without a sense of well being, confidence, or pleasure - in other words, they are depressed.

There are many forms of depression. Some are marked by wide mood swings from despair to euphoria, others display themselves by behavior that goes from bad to worse. Some of these chemical imbalances are the source of constant, nail-biting anxiety, others the likely cause of violent anger.

One good way to understand depression is to look at diabetes. When an individual contracts diabetes, their body stops using the insulin produced by the pancreas. Insulin is a natural body chemical which allows food to be used as fuel. When this occurs, the only way for a diabetic to survive is to use medication, exercise, and a careful diet. Notice that talking doesn’t do any good - you can talk to a diabetic until you are blue in the face, and they can intellectually understand how their disease works, but unless they get the proper medication, diet, and exercise, talking won’t help.=/