I’m sure I will never “get better”.
I’ve been battling depression, PTSD, anxiety, cult life, and a society that hates me for my entire life. I have been to various forms of therapy, including group and one on one counseling with licensed therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. My best results, though by far not anything like “recovery”, whatever that means, have been with individuals who I think of as “junior practitioners”. Licensed therapists, counselors, these people definitely seem more human than psychologists and psychiatrists. They have exhibited varying levels of caring and empathy. I think many of the people I’ve seen in this capacity have had trauma of their own, enabling them to empathize with others who have had similar experiences.
Psychologists have, in my experience dealing with three of them at various junctures in my life, exhibited a desire to be psychiatrists by recommended medications to me that they cannot prescribe, but telling me to ask my doctor to prescribe for me instead. To me, this feels like a loophole workaround for psychologists to avoid their limitation of not being legally allowed to prescribe medication. This is to say that, in my experience, all 3 psychologists have attempted to navigate around their legal restrictions to recommended something that they are not qualified or permitted to recommend. In addition to this violation, all three psychologists I saw over the course of my life have recommended Christianity to me in the form of books written by christian authors such as C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, the introduction of which states that the work’s intent is to convince non-christians that Christianity is the best path to take. In my mind, these are egregious violations of trust and ethics that cannot be overlooked or forgiven.
My psychiatrist of 4 years or so never once challenged me to change in any way. He prescribed lots of pills, which never helped. He listened to me complain a lot. The end. I finally left in a huff after explaining his shortcomings to him and at this point he finally said, “Well, if you’re ready to do the work, let’s start!”. Right. After four years and me blowing up at you, now it’s time to start? Yeah, sure.
Medications have, in my estimation, never helped. I have used various SSRIs and anti-psychotics, bipolar meds like lithium, idk, I can’t remember everything I’ve been on. I have no clear diagnosis. I’m just a childhood victim of various abuses for whom no medications seem effective. No amount of talking about what happened to me or the various ways I’ve tried and failed to “recover” has made a difference in how I feel. In fact, after everything, I’m more resolute in my belief that there is no help available for me.
I have no physical issues. No limitations of any kind other than nearsightedness. I’m intelligent. I have a family that seems to think I’m ok as long as I don’t exhibit the one emotion I’m most comfortable with and which dominates my mental landscape, anger. I grew up with anger as a defining characteristic of human existence. Anger does not faze me. I understand anger. I do not understand the mental and emotional anguish others seem to experience when confronted with anger. I can see that my behavior is affecting people negatively, but I can’t understand why and I tend to try to diminish the validity of those fearful reactions by expressing my belief that my anger is valid and that as a human emotion, I am allowed to experience it, especially since I do not degrade anybody or hurt anybody physically. This does not seem to be the position of anybody else in the world, which I find frustrating. I also find the fearful reactions to my anger to be even more angering, since I know I’m safe. I know I will not hurt someone who does not deserve it, which is to say that I will never instigate violence against another person unless they instigate it against me or another innocent person first. Apparently, I view myself as a protector, but everyone else views me as a threat. This confounds me.
My plan is to fulfill my obligations to my kids as best I can and then at some point, once they have demonstrated self sufficiency, I expect to end my life.
In the meantime, I attempt to self medicate using marijuana, primarily. I had a job recently that disallowed the use of controlled substances and so I drank alcohol for three years to numb the pain. It worked ok for a while. I was drinking everyday. Now, I cannot catch a buzz without consuming lots of alcohol and it is no fun. Eventually, that contract ended and I found a job that allows marijuana use, which has been better. I’ve been smoking marijuana since I was 11. I’m 53 this year. It used to feel good. Physically and mentally. Now, it’s just keeping an emotional baseline as steady as possible. I don’t get high. It’s just medicine at this point. I really enjoy psychedelics. Acid and mushrooms are wonderful. Unfortunately, for me anyway and anecdotally online, shrooms and LSD are rendered less effective to completely ineffective when used in conjunction with SSRIs. The illicit drugs work on the same serotonin receptors as the prescribed meds, which effectively disallow any sensation from the street drugs. I keep taking the SSRIs and other meds because what else am I going to do? I discovered a new way to experience a childhood favorite: Robotussin. The ingredient of effect is dextromorphan and as a teen I found this drug in cough syrup and it was unpleasant to consume and all the other cold ingredients combined to risk toxicity. Now, it is available as a single ingredient. When taken in high doses, dextromorphan causes, in me, intense euphoria and a physical sensation that I believe must rival how opiates make their users feel, but which have never been an instrument of intoxication for me. I can’t get high on opiate pills. Never tried heroin. Anyway, I ruined myself for DXM by tripping too frequently and without any downtime in between. Now, I can take massive amounts of DXM with zero effect beyond vomiting. Disappointing. No mental health provider that I’ve ever seen has been willing to prescribe me benzodiazepines or other potentially enjoyable drugs. Also disappointing. Because standard issue mental health medications have zero effect on me, my M.O. is recreational drug use to get high. Unfortunately, there are not many acceptable options. Even more disappointing still.
I have explored religion extensively throughout my life and have been left with nothing but the taste of murder and hatred in my mouth. Organized religion is nothing but a tool used to control the poor, wretched masses. There is one outlier, though. Buddhism, when used on a personal level has offered some assistance in the form of understanding suffering in general, but adherence to the principles of Buddhism has proven difficult to accomplish without errors and setbacks, and so I use that lifestyle framework as a guide for how to approach life, most specifically as it applies to interactions with others. I don’t believe in reincarnation or an afterlife of any kind. This is the most comforting aspect of everything involved in life and death for me. The presumed knowledge that eventually I will experience an end to my suffering carries me through each day. I fantasize that there will be a brief moment of understanding and clarity at the moments of our deaths that show us “the truth” and that this moment will be the culmination of everything I’ve ever worked toward and will be a moment of understanding for everyone who believes in foolish miracles.
Until that day, I languish in misery, forever longing for release.
Anyone else feel anything similar?
severely depressed can’t get out
feeling lost
Getting Worse Help me Please 
Disclosing MDD
What should a person live for other than family?
