I have created this blog for the simple purpose of trying to help others. I have suffered from depression for most of my life. However, it was always rather mild and never a debilitating clinical depression. My stepmom suffered from pretty severe depression and had days, weeks and months when she didn't leave her bedroom. I learned some things watching her, one was strength. In hindsight it is amazing to see the strength a person must possess to face everyday while suffering from severe depression where many days your biggest desire is just to lay down and die. Yes I have had days when I prayed for death. Days where I just lay on the floor begging God to take me. Suicide is something has crossed my mind, as it has most people at some point, but it isn't something I considered in any serious manner. That can probably be attributed mostly to my religion.
Secondly, I learned from watching my stepmon that I would never take any of the "Prozac" type drugs EVER! Never, not once did any of those drugs, and I assure there were many different ones she used at different times, help her. Most actually made her worse and even now she has periods of her life she doesn't remember. I am not suggesting that these drugs have never helped anyone, but my experience convinced me pretty early on that these drugs were not the answer, and definitely were not a long term solution.
For most of my life, since my depression was rather mild, I did absolutely nothing about it and just carried on day to day. Then one day something happened, I had a panic attack. I thought I was dying and was in a place where I could call no one for help. I literally laid down, prayed and waited for my spirit to leave my body. It was horrible. While it wasn't constant, it literally lasted for hours. A wave of terror would wash over me and my heart wound so hard it echoed in my head and made my shirt dance wildly over my chest. Then it would subside, but only to be repeated minutes later.
Completely exhausted from wave after wave of adrenaline surging through my body, I eventually passed out in exhaustion and was out for several hours. When my eyes opened everything seemed normal, but my head was definitely very fuzzy. It was as if everything were a daydream. This was a feeling I would become very used to over coming year.
Even though the panic attacks never repeated themselves in the horrible manner they did that first time, they became a constant companion. It literally got to a point where I never wanted to leave the house. At least there I felt "safe". I have travelled the world over and have even lived abroad, but all of a sudden I found myself unable to drive 5 miles away to the store without having to pull the car off to the side of the road to allow myself to calm down enough to be able to drive again. Many times while in a store I would find myself abandoning my full shopping cart and making a bee line for the door as panic and fear swept over me.
After several months of this I had my breaking point. I was so exhausted I couldn't stand it. My panic attacks had even stopped me from sleeping as I would wake in the middle of the night with racing heart and chest pains. The chest pains got so bad that before long I was actually getting cardiac catheterization (sorry if mispelled). The doctor found nothing and even said I had a "young and healthy heart". Regardless I was done, and realized I needed to do something or the rest of my life was going to be miserable. I finally let my doc prescribe one of the "Prozac" drugs (it wasn't Prozac, btw). I quite taking it after the third day when I "woke" up and realized that I had driven to work with no recollection of having left the house. This accompanied by fits of uncontrolled laughing and crying were just to much for me.
This started me on a real quest to learn and figure out a way to "fix" myself and my brain without the need for drugs. I determined that I would be happy and live a "good" life. This started me in my quest to try and find some way of restoring balance to my brain (and life) in a drug free way. Unfortunately this also started me on a spending spree, that literally drained my bank account to almost zero as I bought and tried almost every self help product on the market.
This brings me to the real point of this blog. I wish to share with you my experiences so that hopefully you can save your time and money as you work to better your life. Here is a reality for those suffering for depression, ADHD, OCD, panic/anxiety attack if you change your brain YOU will and can change your life. Sorry to put what seems to be a plug for Dr. Amen in here so early but I don't think that it could be said any better.
That actually isn't intended to be a plug by the way as I have no experience of being treated by Dr. Amen and I have never vistited any of his clinics. I do not want this blog to be a "plug" for any product in particular. I would prefer it to be place where realistic results and expectations can be discussed about products and compared to the many time outlandish promises you see in their ads.
