Episode 7: Depression is a Drug

that warps reality

Hi friends,

Gaza is still under attack. Palestine encampments around the country (and world) remind me to stay inspired. Hope you do too.

Vivek.

Fog

Depression as depression came known to me in fits and starts, until by the end of 2017, it became undeniable.

After years of attending therapy, and a few months of going to a psychiatrist, I started taking wellbutrin. For anyone that hasn’t taken it, the first few weeks are a roller coaster. The first few hours akin to the aftermath of drinking 5 espressos in a row. Scaring me with its pure energy.

I couldn’t sleep those first few nights. I decided to start taking wellbutrin on the first day of an amazing road trip we had planned out to Eureka, California to see the Redwoods with friends. We split up the driving and hopped up on meds, I took the wheel.

My pride prevented me from asking for help. Thankfully, nothing happened, but I wasn’t in a place then to open up, even though I knew I was supposed to. My partner and I weathered several rough patches back then. The trip was meant to be a panacea, through good times with friends, and maybe by avoiding what ailed us.

My job took me away from home three, four, or sometimes five, days out of the week for 12 hours per day. Our one child, who was only a hair older than 3 then, still had trouble sleeping through the night, and had drop offs and pickups to day care or nanny that I had no presence in. Dinner was ready when I arrived back home. My kid in pajamas when I walked into the door.

Being gone meant I couldn’t witness my partner’s labor. I had no texture of it.

Gnarled

But this memory - this neat and tidy memory - is somewhat manufactured. It’s not completely untrue: the notes of love, struggle, and labor are real. But I started taking wellbutrin much before this trip. Yet for some reason, my memory of the Redwoods is tied to the drug. When I was first prescribed, my partner asked me why I was taking it. And I said, it’s worth trying because all of my self-help, journaling, and hacks, and even talk therapy, wasn’t enough.

This false memory of me popping pills while driving through the Redwoods is just as significant as the memory itself. Because I remember my partners’ questions about if I was ok to drive, and I said yes, I was fine. Because I was so indifferent to her concerns that I kept going. I think that’s why my memory of wellbutrin is tied to the drive - even though I started taking it much before that.

I realized that memory is not a mechanistic log, but springs up to create meaning - even if that means mangling what actually happened.

Mirror

And I think that’s one of the most important realizations I had about depression, that it skews meaning. The mechanism of it that wellbutrin helped me see was that the decisions I made stemmed from grooves in my mind. Tiny comments and moments reified into impressions and beliefs about my life and my loves. And with each ounce of selective perception, grooves formed as I went through my day, my weeks, my years.

So what becomes significant turns on where my depression is at. I hold onto threads of events so tightly, and let others go. Running through the grooves, deepening them. Creating a warped fabric on which I viewed reality.

Over time, it would become a ritual, to take those pills and feel that boost in the morning. Pouring over with optimism, I moved forward with a sense that the world was open for me to dive in and enjoy what was on offer. It was a strange feeling, after so many years moving in a haze.

And then, after some years on wellbutrin, I no longer needed it.

But this is not a victory lap in any sense.

Because when depression happens, it doesn’t just happen. It seeps in and stays. Those grooves: they yearn for activation. Like a slow-moving mud avalanche that you have your back to, I almost never see my depression coming.

When it does come, I manage it through workouts and writing, through surrounding myself with love and family. My depression is of the mild variety, and it is most often the work of their love that tempers my depression, even now.