Gumshoe’s Guide to Getting off the Couch (Introduction)

About four years ago I went through a period I like to call “that year where I sat on my couch, eating cake and watching Murder She Wrote reruns.”

Okay, I admit that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. I mean, the true fans among you (…anyone?) know that Murder She Wrote aired weekly for twelve years (1984-1996), with a total of only 264 episodes produced. So there’s no way that watching those alone could have occupied me for an entire year! I also watched some Magnum P.I. reruns (what can I say? I like detective stories.)

The whole experience is kind of funny in retrospect and I can joke about it now, but wasn’t funny at all at the time.

At the time it  seemed like everyone around me had some magical enthusiasm and passion for something (anything) that I lacked. I felt broken, as if some essential piece was missing from me. The more horrible I felt, the more horrible I felt about feeling horrible. It was a perfect-storm,  downward-spiral cocktail (oh, did I mention there were cocktails too?).

Yes, I was depressed. That particular year was an extreme case, but the feeling (or lack of feeling, to be more accurate) had always been there on a deep level. I can point to some pretty horrible events that sent me to my couch that year, but I’d had a low-level depression most of my life. I tried (many, many) different antidepressants in the past and they sometimes made me feel better, sometimes made me feel worse.

There are some people who might say that if I was able to cure myself without medication then I wasn’t truly depressed. To this I would say that every one of the many (many, many) therapists and psychiatrists I went to diagnosed me with severe depression and prescribed super-intense medications to me, and at one point I was very close to going inpatient.

I’m not going to tell anyone who needs medication to function that they shouldn’t be on it. I don’t think we can compare our individual human minds and bodies against one another’s as if there is some sort of objective measurement. But I also don’t think we can draw the line that easily between the physical and the emotional. Because our thoughts actually impact our brain chemistry, I think the line between chemical depression and non-chemical depression is blurry at best.

I spent a year on my couch, hating myself for being there. And then I spent at least another year getting off the couch. So I’m going to write a bit about how that happened. I don’t think I can prescribe anything to anyone, so calling this a “guide” is sort of tongue-in-cheek. And while I think I have a unique perspective as someone who has overcome depression without medication, I think these methods could benefit whether you choose medication or not. I’m not ever going to criticize that choice, I just want to talk about things that can be done on your own.

(Oh, and don’t worry I’m never going to say all it took was exercise or willpower or any patronizing crap like that.)

It’s a lot to write about, so this will probably be a series.

More to come…

[ETA: Click here for Part 2]

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