Acheleus

A question for anyone with depression: did you feel a lift in your depression and negative thoughts when you quit drinking? How about using exercise during sobriety to help ease depression? I feel so sleep deprived and also wondering if lack of sleep makes depression worse? I think my depression was caused by alcohol, or at least it made it a lot worse.

LadyinBC

Lack of sleep definately gave me depression. When I first quit drinking I was depressed and feeling sorry for myself and I had a lot of negativity. I was not a chipper, happy person when I first quit. It just takes some time.

Hooped

Alcoholism and depression seem to feed off each other don't they.
I don't know if I have ever been clinically depressed but I have visited my doctor about it.
When I was feeling very down about things, I would drink more, which just made me feel more down and drink more.
Eventually it all caught up to me and I would just drink all day, every day, just to feel 'normal' in my mind, but I was far from normal.

Dee74

I was still depressed for a little while after I stopped drinking Ach - the cumulative effect of 20 years drinking takes a while to dissipate I think?

D

foolsgold66

I'm naturally dissatisfied and depressed, since my early teens. Prozac fixes most of it, alcohol makes it worse. So yeah, depression and negative thoughts stopped a few days after I quit drinking.

kadidee

Not drinking has helped with my depression. I still have a lot of negative thinking that I need to work on, but the constant, all-consuming depression has lifted.

jaynie04

I started working out a week after I quit drinking and kept it up for 2 weeks and then quit and now I am trying to get back in gear.

I didn't go nuts, I was in AZ at rehab and we got woken up at 5:30, they only served coffee until 7am, so if you wanted it you got your tail out of bed.

All I can say is that those mornings of watching the sun come up over the mountains with a light sweat and endorphins racing through me were the best high I have ever had. I remember thinking who needs booze or drugs when you can feel this good?

Ach, hang in there, it gets better. It's not a straight climb uphill but the days that are tough make the experience like the one I had more precious.

wolfpackfan45

Alcohol is a depressant,so it actually causes it and can make an antidepressant ineffective. Sleep deprivation can also exacerbate depression. Depressed people either have a very difficult time sleeping or sleep too much. Exercise is a great way to help with depression because it causes an increase in the serotonin levels of the brain. But if you exercise too close to bedtime it can cause trouble getting to sleep, so try to do it in the early evening or during the day. Melatonin is a great herbal remedy for sleep disturbances and it's natural. The sublingual form works more quickly. If you continue to feel depressed for awhile or if it gets worse it's best to see your Dr. Depression/anxiety is not something to ignore if it sticks around or worsens.

Eleni58

Sleep deprivation causes all kinds of negative emotions, including depression. I get crabby, inpatient, tearful and depressed if I get less than 5 hours of sleep.

Nuudawn

I have struggled with depression a lot of my life. Although I have had some very difficult days, my emotional state grows more stable and bright with each passing day. Exercise definitely helps alleviate stress/negativity as well as boost dopamine and serotonin. Since I quit smoking again a week ago..I went for my first run again today. It's been months since I have. I went for a run because I was having a pretty powerful "crave" for a smoke. It helped with the crave and I enjoyed the run so much it helped remind me why I don't want to smoke anymore. When I'm smoking..I don't run.

jstar

I was depressed. Alcohol made me more depressed. Tried to stop drinking, still depressed. Stopped taking anti-depressants cause my husband says "sober" is no drugs at all. Now still depressed more than I ever have been and have relapsed a zillion times. I think the depression came then the addiction but who really knows I guess.

Acheleus

Good stuff. I am finding a new doctor tomorrow to see about my mental health. I know I cannot get help with my depression if I keep relapsing. I am in such a dark place right now and I cannot sleep. A story I sent out to a journal months ago came back with a rejection. Maybe in sobriety my writing and hope for the future will improve. Every day I dread teaching and I thought this was what I wanted, but I guess I made a mistake. In the morning I am going to call a small doctors office and I hope one will take my insurance, the student health center I have been going to is too big, and the doctors all have like hundreds of patients--I feel like I am capable of doing something terrible to myself, so I really need something for anxiety. Alcohol has stripped me of my self-confidence. Everywhere I go I feel like people know I am a drunk. I am 28 this month and cannot even talk to girls. I just hate myself for being a coward, for not standing up for myself. I have not slept in two days and I cannot sleep tonight.

I wish I had not thrown my meds away, even though they made me feel foggy and unable to think. I cried earlier today when a song came on. I just wept. But I did go grocery shopping. I want to leave this place and go back home.

Louise82

I've had depression since before I started drinking. Alcohol definitely made my depression worse as it's a depressant. It gives you a buzz to start with but then the depressant properties kick in. In the 2 months since I've stopped drinking my depression has been up and down but trying to eat healthily and exercising is certainly helping to keep it at bay for now. I find reading posts on SR, going to a meeting or just being around other people so I can focus on them and listen to/help with their own problems helps take me out of my own head.

Acheleus

I just feel like I have nothing to live for and I feel incapable of trusting other people. Maybe I am just crazy and delusional, wasting my life with worry. Nothing makes sense any more and I do not want to give up on myself. I think about hurting myself everyday and I have for years, but I am afraid to tell a doctor because I do not want to be committed or something. So I am seeing the health center doctor Thurs. Looking for a new doctor tomorrow. Going to a meeting. Cleaning my place tomorrow and organizing junk.


It is so sad I have lived here a year and have not had a single visitor. I do not know how to make friends. I really do not have any close family and nothing to live for. And I CANNOT see any light. As hard as I try to change my thinking I cannot. So please do not yell at me, I am going to see a doctor. I just do not enjoy living. I would rather experience nothingness because I am a failure and a loser. I think I am heading for some kind of breakdown.


Why cant I just sleep?

Kaneda8888

I did think that I suffered from depression. For years, I took a mixture of anti-depressants which I downed with copious amounts of alcohol. Then in a session with my psychiatrist, he was convinced that it was the alcohol causing my depression. I went off the meds and noted that my mood didnt lift but neither did I feel as depressed. Now that I have reduced my alcohol intake and am dry (for the moment, pls pls be longer), my mood seems to have stabilized.

Exercise plays a big part in it as well. I work out 5-6 times a week and recently did a race (whilst still off the wagon ). Running improves my mood in a huuuge way. Its also I think a proven fact that exercise is important for recovering from depression.

DayTrader

For me, what I thought and what sure as heck seemed like depression was really just my same old alcoholism. It was helpful to learn that for some alcoholics, their alcoholism continues to affect them whether they're drinking or not. That seemed to make sense because I almost always felt better while I was drinking.

Anti-depressants, for me, just seemed like a band-aid on a bullet hole. They covered it up but didn't fix the damage inside. The did help though....but only for a month or so. I knew though that I'd eventually have to get something going on all the damage inside. Once I started that body of work, things (internally) started getting better quickly.

As for the sleep....it got better but 6+ years later now I still don't sleep like I think "normal" people do or like I used to - before OR while I was drinking. I'm ok with that though and it's totally cool. Early in sobriety I had this vision of how my sleep should be...and when reality didn't match up with that vision, I'd get frustrated and/or angry. That anger and frustration would further mess up my sleep so it became this endless round-robin. When I finally surrendered to "ok, so maybe I'm just going to have to accept this as my NEW sleep pattern" things started getting better. So I stay up late.....so what. So I vacuum my place at 2AM...so what. So I still pull all-nighters once and a while even on weekdays when I have to work.....so what. For me, that's my new "normal." The fact that most other ppl don't do that doesn't bother me any longer.

llastchance8

Alcohol is a major depressant causing havoc in the brain chemistry function. It interacts directly with receptors of key chemicals.. As other SR friends have mentioned, it takes time.. After years of use of alcohol, the brain chemistry takes time to revert to original state. No doubt, once we stop alcohol, the overall mental health improves for sure.

Mentium

I am taking low dose anti-depressants which were prescribed for me when I was drinking (more than I admitted to my doctor of course!). It is early days for me (17 days today) and I am just getting over some of the withdrawal stuff and expecting to experience what is sometimes called 'PAWS' symptoms off and on for a while. In the past I have felt even more depressed after quitting, but I am pretty sure this was because I felt I was giving up a 'friend' in alcohol. On this, I hope permanent occasional, I feel very much that I am dumping an enemy, not giving up a pleasure and that has resulted in a much more positive outlook. I am hopeful I can wean myslf off the anti-depressants when I am confident in my abstinence.

So I think the issue is complicated. Alcohol addicts use it to mask depression very often, but in turn alcohol causes depression. Picking the two apart isn't always easy.

jaynie04

Please talk to your doctor. I take Wellbutrin, I don't take it to get high, I take it because if I don't the walls seem to close in among me. It is no different than having diabetes....

Bruce292

For me, at first, my depression got worse after I stopped drinking/using. After about a month I started to see movement in a positive direction. I just felt more grounded and capable of dealing with some of the root causes (negative mental chatter mostly). I also got some help from a medical professional who got me into a meditation program. As the months have passed (5 so far) it's clearly getting better without alcohol and chemicals scouring the natural happy chemicals out of my head.

As for exercise. For me, YES! It's huge! After I exercise the colors are brighter, problems more distant, and in general I just feel well.

Hang in there. Don't forget to smile.