Depression in sobriety

[Lilya]

Hi,

I´m a bi-Polar person, recently recovered from a very bad episode of blues. At the moment, as so many times, I´m find my abstinance from drinking, drug-taking, gambling and sexual addiction very hard to live through. For me, abstinance can be a very unhappy state of mind, and I have suffered from it in 22 years since I gave up Cocaine by going cold turkey. I still miss my drinking as well - haven´t touched it since 1986 and haven´t gambled since 1992. The urge to forget and seek false nirvana is constantly with me and I need support almost on a daily basis. I find that the withdrawal symtptoms of practising abstinance is mood changes, depression, hopelessness and sometimes despair.
I go to meetings regularily, see my therapist and visit spiritual temples in Paris and London. I´m trying very hard to fill my life with positive things to make up for my false Nirvana. Can anyone relate and send me a positive thought?

Sincerely,

[Caveman]

Good morning. I have been sober almost as long as you have. About one year ago, I was also diagnosed with depression and also see someone. Now I take effexor. It helps, but I too sometimes feel an emptyness.

Some one once told "Life isn't easy." He was right.

It is easy to take delight in the animal pleasures but those are really only short term fixes. As people who are recovering, we need to learn how to live as humans. Each day presents it's own struggles and challenges.

For me, everything I am and every thing I have stems from my soberity. This is the thought that keeps from from using again.

What about you?

[Lilya]

Hi Caveman,

I take Citalopram (Cipramil) for my depression, work out, swim, walk and work two evenings a week as a SOS suicide counselor. I have pets I really love and try to travel to exotic countries whenever I can. Still, I sometimes feel very much alone as I´m working on my relationships - a disaster area for me that needs hard work. At the moment, I choose to be abstinant and celibate as well.

Buddha said: “The man is not designed to be happy and needs therefore to constantly fill his hunger for happiness. This is the very root of existence.” (Badly translated from French) I try to fill my life with creativity - I´m a writer and a festival director - and that gives me a lot. But it´s not enough. The gap is too wide; the hunger for false Nirvana is too great.

I only know that if I start using again, I cannot write my books and get them published and I would soon be out as a festival director. The ratrace is too hard and the competition is fierce. I also have a daughter and I want to be there for her if and when she decide to leave the sect she´s involved with. There is little else. The daily life is hard and the constant routine can be a real killer. My days of “wine and roses” are over and sometimes I feel sad about it, even though I wouldn´t want to change it. I learned responsability during my recovery and compassion for other people, something I didn´t do while I was using. I guess my big task now is to try to enjoy little things in my daily life. Challenging, because before I had such a rollercoaster life.

I like your quote: “Live free or die.” It reminds me of something I read a while ago. My favorite quote is: “Sleep of reason produces monsters” (Goya: “Quand la raison dort la folie s´éveille.”)

Thank you for your post and all my best wishes. It´s good to know there are others on this journey. I hope to hear from you again.





_

[2stop]

(((LILYA))) Hope you're feeling better today!!

Many hugs and hope too,
Tammie

[Lilya]

Hi Tammy and thank you for your concern.
Yes, today I feel a lot better, I´m facing the tasks of the day with energy and hope - minus a root canal I had yesterday. The sun is shining and the army is cleaning up some of the garbage as the rats have invaded the city because of our multiple strikes. Makes you see how indispensable the sanitary engineers are. Good for them, I hope they get better retirement deal from the government!
Love and light,

[2stop]

So glad you're feeling better!!


Hugz,
Tammie

[Nancy Allegood]

Dear Lilya,

I am so glad you have been brave enough to talk about some very tough issues. We have a lot in common. I quit most of my drinking and drugs about 1983, when I decided I was not going to let them wreck my marriage and my kids. In 2001 I stopped relapsing out of fear of a liver transplant. How brave of you to point out how hard abstinence is. I, too, suffer from manic depression and know how hard it is to abstain from relationships while working on self. I am just learning about the addiciton to adrenalin that mania heightens and the crisis addiction, and since my crisis addiction last time nearly killed me, like the substance abuse, I too have abstained from relationships, It can be very hard. But I find, like you seem, to, that the support gets us through it one day at a time, or even one moment at a time. Thank God the twelve steps can be applied to any form of addiction -- substance abuse, co-dependency, the compulsions of mania like overeating, overtalking, overspending, oversexing, and overdoing in general. I hope you have a good day, and I want to thank you for your honesty and helping me see things more clearly as a result of your honesty. I believe honesty is the key. Denial and lies are the toxins that kill us, if we let them.

Nancy

[Lilya]

Dear Nancy,
Thank you so much for both your replies. I am more and more aware of the fact I´m not alone. You´re so right about lies and denial being worse than continuing to practice our disease. A great weight has been lifted off my shoulder. Simply admitting the truth has been amazing. But now I need a great deal of work because I don´t want this to happen again. You mention medicin for the anger. My pshychiatrist gave me Cipramil and I´ve been taking that with good results - I haven´t hit anyone since I started the treatment, but then I haven´t had much chance, either. I´ve been dating, but I don´t dare to start a new relationship. This is tricky. But as you say: Thank God for the 12 steps. I believe there is a way through this by using them.

My therapist has also suggested a cognitive therapy along with my group work: Using the reason to guide me when I face an emotional issue. I find it very good and I am now trying to take out the words I overuse: I havwe to, I must, I cannot stand this, etc, and replace it with: It would be better, it would be preferable, This is bad, but not the end of the world. Plus constantly ask myself: What can I learn from this?

I feel a lot better doing this, but it´s tricky and the old pattern seem to come back and creep up at me, if I´m not constantly aware.

I looked at some RR forums on the Internet plus a web page called SMART, but both are too pragmatic for me. I won´t come near RR because they knock AA, and I find it a bit childish. The reading tools SMART suggest are very good, but again I take what I like and leave the rest. I once worked on an article on holocauste survivers, because my great-aunt survived both the camps in Germany and the camp in Paris in the Winter Circus during the German occupation. I cannot see how a Rational Recovery can even begin to address the emotional pain I know these people suffered. The people who didn´t die in the camps had something stronger then them to guide them, although they had to rely on their inner strenght to survive.

Have you - or anyone interested enough to read this - tried the other webs such as Rational therapy with AA?

Warmest thoughts to you Nancy, and thanks again. I really appreciate your kind reply.


:shades:

[Nancy Allegood]

Dear Lilya,

You are so welcome, thank you for replying. I just love that I get to break the rules and use run-on sentences now that I am out of college. Keep up the good work! Rah-Rah!

Nancy

[Juls]

Hi Lilya,

I am not a bi-polar person, but I have struggled all my life with depression and anxiety. Most likely, at least partly due to the physical, mental and emotional abuse I had to endure as a child growing up.

Being me can be a very strange experience. One day I can feel happy and good, and the next day it's as though someone else has come to inhabit my body. I don't quite know how to describe it. It's not like I hear voices or hallucinate, but I feel very strange. My house which the day before felt so familiar, now feels as though I've never lived there before. I have a hard time focusing and concentrating. My anxiety level will be high. I don't think anyone who hasn't experienced this sort of thing could begin to understand it.

I think that there must be something missing at my core being that I was constantly trying to fill with not only drug use, but sex, crisis scenarios, or some other drama. I know that living what could be called a "normal" life is very difficult for me.

However, I do have days where I feel good, when I know that my life is good, when I can feel love for others, and I can feel the love that others have for me.

I don't believe that being here on this earth is a guarantee for happiness, and that suffering is part of what most of us have to learn to deal with. I think that how we live with our suffering is what distinguishes us. I try to take my suffering and turn it into something else. A painting, a poem, an experience shared that might help someone else to feel less alone.

I hope these thoughts are helpful to you.

Juls

[Nancy Allegood]

Dear Juls,

Thank you for letting me know that, once again, I am not alone with the feelings. Also, thanks for pointing out how useful turning energy, even negative energy, into art can be. Good to hear from you.

Nancy

[Caveman]

"Being me can be a very strange experience."

"I don't believe that being here on this earth is a guarantee for happiness"

I don't know much, but I know wisdom when I see it. Those are two great thoughts. It was very difficult for me to understand that my brain did not work like everyone else's and that I will never have any concept of what it is to think like a "normal" (please excuse the use of the word) person. It was a very good day when it finally sunk into my thick skull that I am different. I beleive that acceptance is very important in our recovery. And first we must accept ourselves. It takes work every day for me.

And speaking of work. Happiness. Oh yeah. That is another thing that takes work on a daily basis. I think that it takes alot of introspection to be happy for us. It is easy to live as an animial, but it is hard to be alive as a human.

Happiness for "normal" people takes work. For us, it is a daily struggle. (I have found that a Harley helps!)

I would like to thank those of you who have written on this subject, you have made me think.

Have a great day!

[Nancy Allegood]

Thanks, caveman.

It is true that we must accept ourselves. That is really hard when some of the so called normal people want to label us things like "not all there" and so such.

Your post helped affirm how I don't have to aceept that kind of garbage, but I can accept myself.

Nancy

[Lilya]

Hi Juls,
Thank you very much for replying. Your thoughts helped me a lot and I felt much better reading your post. Same to all of you who replied.

I do know what you mean, when you talk about anxiety and depression and I know the struggle of not being like most people, only too well. When I was using I thought I was so “cool” by not being “normal”. In sobriety I struggled to become “normal” but found out that I don´t seem to follow the “norm”. Being a writer and film festival director by profession has brought me even farther from the “norm” of having a family and 4 kids, a summer house or a caravan. In fact I would scream if I had all that. When I was married I did have the summerhouse and it didn´t bring much marital bliss. It´s so true when you say it´s how we live with the suffering (or any circumstances, happiness as well) that distinguishes us.

Recently on a trip to a country in the Far East, I met with people who didn´t seem to struggle with all these demons, and I felt they were almost sleepwalking through life. Their feet didn´t seem to touch the ground. Maybe they are truly happy, because their lives are less complicated. But I know I could never be them. This was hard to accept but I also felt serenity. I accepted my “oddness” and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. Have you had that experience?

I do believe as well that human beings are not destined to be happy. I like to talk with buddist monks from Tibet who live near the outskirts of Paris. They tell me the same thing: We search for happiness, but it´s an illusion because the state of happiness does not last long. We move on, constantly trying to fill the gap. You mention writing and creating. I´m blessed because I do that for a living. I know that without my work I would be in a lot worse shape.

Caveman, you mentioned a Harley. My lame attempts at motorcycling have been vespas. We have them in the Latin countries. Definately not cool, no? But the freedom I experienced was amazing, although it scared the living daylights out of me. Parachuting is great as well and not as scary!

I´m going on a short trip to Berlin tomorrow, a trip I´m uneasy about, but all your good thoughts will be with me. My warmest thoughts to all of you and hoping to see you soon.

Love and light,

P.S. Nancy, those images are a treat.

"Sleep of reason produces monsters" - Goya

[Nancy Allegood]

Dear Lilya,

Sounds like you are going to have a fun trip. Take care and we will see you when you come back. I went to my ACA meeting tonight, and it was so good. They truly are like a healthy family. I feel so much more grounded when I go. They remind me that when anyone has the power to upset me (usually some sort of rejection akin to what you describe), it is because I give them that power. I have the power to triumph instead, like you said.

Thanks again,
Nancy