depression and work the 12 steps ????
 

I suffer from depression and lately it’s been getting worse. I see a doctor and am prescribed an antidepressant. I work the 12 steps, go to meeting an am active in AA. I don’t feel like drinking at all. I know alcoholism can be depression. But this isn’t alcoholism this is mental illness I have been sober a while. I need medication. I’ve had a spiritual experience of the result of the 12 steps. Peopel on AA say. I look like a new man and I changed.My question is does anyone ever feel like its useless working the 12 steps because you feel bad from depression? Or do you continue with the 12 steps? I am continuing with meetings and prayer and meditation. Also I feel disconnected from God lately even though I pray. can anyone help help me?

Well, Realest, our experiences into recovery our quite different in how things are happening with us, but I do have major depressive disorder and take medication for it.

How you respond to medication is dependent upon your own genetic and psychological makeup, and for me it took some period of adjustment to see the benefits that I have today. Don't be hesitant to speak to your physician about what you are going through. I saw my psychiatrist every month in the beginning to sort it out.

As you know, depression can generally suppress our interest in what we used to enjoy or interfere with our feelings to the point of general uselessness/hopelessness. I still find it affects me to the extent that I have lost the motivation in some things that used to bring me happiness, but I am making progress on that front in finding new things that engage me and working at former things on a daily basis. The medication doesn't make me feel happy per se but helps me get out of the way of my own self in working toward things that bring me satisfaction.

I also feel for myself that changing all the habits that I associated with negative thinking, particularly drinking, has been a huge adjustment for me to make. I am faced with my emotions on real terms and am developing ways to associate with those in a clean way, and that has meant some degree of apathy and difficulty in coping with those feelings. Recovery itself is difficult, and with depression it can come across as somewhat overwhelming to deal with the changes.

Many people find great therapeutic value in working the twelve steps in AA, my own path has been different from that. I find that I have to also do my own work of my plan of recovery, regardless of how I may be feeling that particular day. Some days I don't want to put in that effort, but I make sure to do at least some part of it every day. Working the steps, as I understand it, is not a path of least resistance as some might think but requires a lot of commitment, too.

I used to argue with my ex about the ability of people to change how they think and feel. Today I believe I was wrong about my position of saying it was not possible to fundamentally alter how we perceive things and therefore react to them. My value system requires as much attention as my abstinence for me to feel that sobriety brings meaning into my life. Gradually that seems to be working on my behalf, and I have plenty more to do to reinforce myself against feeling shaky sometimes.

My experience was that the 12 Steps lifted me up, I had the spiritual experience that comes as a result of working and practicing the 12 Steps in all my daily affairs. I too suffered from depression and anxiety, and at times those still return, but I continue to live a happy and successful life when I follow the principles laid out in my program of recovery. Stay with it!

Thanks for your perspective . I’m working with my doctor and am just going through some changes. I have changed a lot , but I need to keep pushing forward.

Yea I’m gonna keep working the steps. I had a spiritual awakening but now I need to work to continue it .

I just get discouraged with my connection with my higher power because when I get depressed I feel no connection but I gotta keep trying

I have depression and worked the steps. I believe that it was essential for me to stay connected to the program and people in my home group even when I didn't "feel" it. When I was actively in a depressive cycle or before I got to the right level of medications, I couldn't feel its benefits, but the AA program was still helping me mentally. During those times, I focused on service to my home group and going to the more structured meetings like Step meetings or BB readings.

Later/when I wasn't so depressed, I could feel the benefits of the steps.

Psychiatry and working steps in AA are forms of therapy. They may work for some people who are depressed, but not all. Depression used to be seen as something that could be helped by older forms of psychotherapy, but it's now more often recognized as a physical chemical imbalance that can be more effectively treated with drugs. My guess is that milder forms of depression may benefit from psychotherapy, but I've talked to a few patients diagnosed with depression who believe drug therapy is the only possible recourse. Is there a happy medium between the two types of approaches depending on individuals? I don't know. Generally, the medical community is now gravitating towards drug therapy that directly restores a chemical balance, or maybe mimics the balance.

My father suffered from depression. He has long since passed away, but during his lifetime, I watched him through one of his month long stays in a mental ward where he received electroshock treatments with marginal results. At best, it seemed to me like electroshock taught him to stop acting depressed, but he still struggled. After drug therapy became the norm, he went on drugs and apparently he received some relief, but I could never get into my father's head to understand what was actually going on inside him.

I have known other people suffering from depression who were on drugs who seem to be doing very well. There are probably better drugs out there now that could have helped my father much more.

My ex took antidepressants after a long battle with cancer that obviously took a toll on her mental health. I asked her how long she thought she might need antidepressants, and she said, "I don't care. I feel better than I ever have on antidepressants, and I'll take them forever if I have to." I am now prone to believe that drugs are the best approach, at least for most sufferers.

There's nothing wrong with doing the twelve steps or some secular derivatives of them if they are helpful. As a cure for depression, I wouldn't depend on twelve steps or psychotherapy. I've met many diagnosed depressives in AA, and I think depression was a factor in their alcoholism, more than the opposite view that alcohol made them depressed. I view the two conditions, alcoholism and depression, as two distinct illnesses, each making the other worse. I doubt that the same treatment for both of them is the best course of action.

^^^ I totally agree. I also believe treatment for depression wouldn't have helped me as long as I was actively drinking. Different treatments, and some of us need both.

Thanks I’m grateful for your feedback. I’m doing service in my home group and I keep praying and working with my doctor. I just get frustrated. I’m lucky to have a great support group and although they may not fully understand they support me.

Thanks for you perspective. I see apit as a chemical imbalance to. But thank god for AA and the supportive people I met. And thank god for this forum and people like you.

I used to drink on antidepressants and it was a nightmare so I’m grateful to be sober. I get resentful when certain people (very few people ) say that antidepressants block you from your higher power I heard that at a meeting and I was going to say something but I don’t listen to those people how ridiculous to say something like that .. God gave me doctors to use, .

is there a possibility that there actually is a connection but not the connection ya want?
ive had times i felt there was no connection. those were the times God was carrying me.

Yes that’s a possibility. And a good way to put it. I’ve gotten through many difficult times in sobriety. I just didn’t like that comment made by that person who said antidepressants block your higher power. What an incredibly ignorant statement to make.

very ignorant for someone to say that.
i could be brutal if i heard someone say that ADs block your HP and say ,"so does ignorance."

I didn’t want to confront the person I try not to argue ipwith idiots in meetings. But thanks for your response. I know several old timers on AD who are strong in their faith for God, thanks to Steve you helped me so much with your comment.

I didn't get help for my anxiety and depression until I had been sober for 11 years, but that was only because I was fearful that AD's would jeopardize my sobriety.

But, after 11 years of getting clobbered with anxiety on a daily basis and depression on a periodic basis, the same doctor I went to for help with my drinking years earlier (who had become a close friend and a recovery mentor) gave me the name of a psychiatrist who he insisted would not give me something which would put my sobriety at risk.

I went to see that doctor and he and the meds he prescribed haven given me a staggering amount of relief for almost 20 years now.

I wish that I had gotten help earlier.

If any old-timers or others speak badly of taking AD's, they don't have to take them.

They don't know anything about AD's.

And you can be assured they still take their blood pressure meds and Viagra.

I'd just like to thank both the OP and everyone else who has posted in this thread. I am currently being prescribed medication by my doctor for depression. I've read AA and NA literature about taking prescribed medication and as I'm planning on going back to 12-step meetings it's a topic I've been researching this topic quite thoroughly.

I take my anti-depressants daily and also go to therapy once a week. I've found this thread very helpful.

Thanks,

Natom

First of all, that's great you don't feel like drinking.

My experience was that I suffered from non-diagnosed and untreated clinical depression and anxiety since a young age. I have my personal theories about nature vs nurture, but that's not for this thread. My drinking and other coping mechanisms were to self-treat it.

My experience in AA, was that I was told being depressed was selfish and self-centered (I have also had a good friend who is a counselor tell me this too and it's a harmful thing to say to someone who wants to be anything BUT depressed and anxious). In AA I was also told that anxiety was my fault, because I was living in the future, I wasn't trusting God and I was trying to play God.

I was told in AA that you're depressed because you're addicted to alcohol, and that once you have a spiritual awakening, you won't be depressed anymore. And that basically if you're still depressed, either you didn't have a true spiritual awakening, or that you're back living in "ego".

My sponsor said if I was still depressed, that meant I was living in the past and not living in the present moment. I wasn't trusting and relying on God. It was MY fault I was depressed.

Some people do get better when they stop drinking, because alcohol is a depressant. Or their depression was situational and when they stop drinking, their lives get better.

There are people like me who just need something more than the 12 steps to treat their depression. It's been said here on SR before: the 12 steps don't treat depression. They treat ALCOHOLISM. (Thank you to those folks who explained that me in the past).

It's not your fault.

My former home group leader and his sponsors used to also say that if a person was on a lot of medications, it will block them from a spiritual awakening and from a God connection.

I have major depression- plus c-PTSD, anxiety and more stuff besides. This means if I took the 12 steps literally, I would morally assassinate myself everyday. That I did not say the right thing, that I SHOULD have done this or that. Very low self esteem triggers this.

The step stuff is, IMO- NOT there for me to critically change my soul....but to act as a guide of behavior. We are dictated by thoughts- that feed into emotions, and are shown by our actions. All 3 have to be worked on- hopefully gently, not like a crash course in being human.

The step in the AA program can be applied to many parts of life- but I also remind myself my sponsor, the steps in AA and meetings are there to support me in remaining sober- today, tomorrow and for life. Daily support- daily action. I do not seek advice to my depression or PTSD from meeting members. I get support, understanding and I learn from sharing and listening.

I leave the depression advice to my psychologist and GP- which means I have to be proactive- and very honest.

Support to you.

I have depression too and I have been getting help with that for about a year and half but I used to hide my drinking so let's just say all the help I was getting really wasn't working too well. Alcohol and depression don't mix well I have found.

I am working the 12 steps now. I still have those days where nothing I do feels anything but numb. I do them anyway. And I don't pay much attention to opinions that may differ from what my heart knows to be true for me. I believe that unless you have experienced a full blown medical depression you really don't know what it feels like.

The best way I can describe it to people who haven't lived it is that everyone knows what it feels like to fall in a black hole but depression feels like you are the black hole. There is no escaping yourself.

So with that, folks can have opinions on what my experience should be with medication or no medication and working the steps but I just say "well that's an interesting way of looking at it". I don't understand how anyone can tell anyone what their experience with their higher power should or should not be. Honestly, I haven't had anyone treat me with anything less than respectful so it hasn't been any problem.

Sometimes the steps feel just like when my therapist says going to the gym helps depression. Yes, we all know that in theory. Let's just start with getting out of bed and taking a shower shall we??

The steps aren't going anywhere. I can do what I can on them right now and always revisit them on another day. I think it just helps me to keep working on them and me. I don't think they are something I am just going to do once. I think it's doing them for the rest of my life. They sound like a good way to live in my opinion.

I wouldn't wish depression on my worst enemy if I had one...sending xoxo to all of you who suffer from it. Don't give up.