It comes at least once a year. This year I feel like it's come more than once. It's a sinking feeling, that contemplative turned hopeless questioning of the purpose of life. The answer? Food. Instead of biking every day like I should be, I've been indulging myself in sweets, snacks, and gluttonous meals. It's a wonder I can still fit into my pants. Looking at myself in the mirror makes me even more depressed. I had an apple with cheese and a banana for breakfast, will have a granola bar for lunch, and some Vitamin C anti-cold remedies in the meantime. It's partly the cold that's going around, and partly the sleep that I've been depriving myself of. I'm ready for this phase of the year to be over with. I'm ready for that St. John's Wort to get here. I'm ready for things to be normal and easy and happy.
I'll stop feeling sorry for myself now...
It's insightful, though. My students are still at the black-and-white answer to everything age. Suicide is stupid and selfish. Depression is far out. People just need to get over it. Right? Maybe I used to think like this. But here I am, depressed, and I find myself researching what is directly affecting me. So what is this whole depression thing? My friend told me that she thinks it's a chemical imbalance triggered by the changes that are happening around me. This would make sense, since the last time I felt this way there were some significant changes taking place in my world.
Even scientists and researchers cannot pinpoint a definitive cause for a chemical imbalance. The closest they have come is the introduction of a stressor. The stressor causes an influx of chemical release - adrenaline, for example - which can usually be balanced out as quickly as the onset of the stress. The medicine or vitamins or whatever you choose to take are meant to help with those chemical imbalances that cannot so easily fix themselves.
The other side of the argument maintains that "the myth of chemical imbalance" has caused our society to lose the natural emotion of sadness. It is perfectly natural and okay for us to feel sad and to go through phases in our lives where we feel sadness. As humans, we need to understand and feel this because without it, we really would be unbalanced. (I don't know if that's what they say, but it seems logical to me.)
Unfortunately, when it's the kind of sadness that doesn't go away, when it's an unprovoked and prolonging sadness, the idea of there being an imbalance that the self and environment cannot control, medication may not be an unfair advantage over the natural human psyche. Americans are gluttonous, though, and often don't know when to control themselves. It's when the medication is overdone and over-prescribed that it becomes a problem.
I think I'll stick to my St. John's Wort for now, and soon enough I'll get over this just-another-day-at-the-office depression. Until then...
[url=http://www.anxiety-and-depression-solutions.com/insight_answers/chemical_]http://www.anxiety-and-depression-solutions.com/insight_answers/chemical_
imbalance.php
[url=http://thehealthyskeptic.org/the-chemical-imbalance-myth/]http://thehealthyskeptic.org/the-chemical-imbalance-myth/
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