"The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
-- Horace Walpole
i was depressed and lonely big time (on a saturday night), so i watched this epic woody allen/diane keaton rom-com: best antidepressant in the world! plus no nasty side effects to suffer gladly. right on.
how do you cope with depression?
Good to see another post from you. Once I dreamed that Bob Dylan and Woody Allen were the same person.
ReplyDeleteThe world is both a comedy and a tragedy to those who love.
It is occurring to me that Robin Williams gave us both tragedy and comedy and that he was one of us. I wonder how much his suicide was related to his relapse. I stopped drinking because it was making me suicidal. If I were to drink again, that would be suicide. I can understand both wanting to die and wanting to live. I just noticed the quote on your sidebar that looks like it is from a fortune cookie:
"Before you can see the light, you have to deal with the darkness."
I've dealt with a great deal of darkness in sobriety, but I've found even more light."
Looking forward to your posts. One day at a time. Because of my past, I'm in the process of being retrained so that I can work again. I don't have as much free time as I have had for the many years I have been unemployed. I don't have as much time for blogging as I used to have, but I keep posting and commenting when I can.
Thank you for visiting my blog and commenting. Hope that you will post some of your paintings on your blog sometime.
hey, thanks for stopping by! yeah, it was a totally sad day for me when i first heard about robin williams' suicide. he seemed like a really cool dude (and great actor). i didn't know about his depression. may he rest in peace.
Deletei'm really glad you are living a sober life. it will be 3 weeks for me on tuesday. i'm totally glad i've been given a second chance. i wrote a long post about it, but it somehow got deleted! so i hurried up and came up with the annie hall post - and felt less upset about the much longer post that was lost forever. staying positive is a good thing.
good luck w/the job training! hope it goes well for you. i appreciate your comments big time, and look forward to reading more of your awesome blog.
Everybody is different. This is only my experience. The depressions I have are closely related to foods that I am allergic to and environmental allergies. While I was drinking, I experienced severe depressions.
ReplyDeleteThis past summer I had a bout of depression that turned out to be a dust allergy. I was exposed to an unusual amount of dust from an air-conditioner which needed its filter cleaned. When the filter was cleaned, the depression lifted.
Another major cause of depression for me is sugar. I haven't been eating sugar for almost as long as I haven't been drinking. Twice I went back to eating sugar and experienced severe depression as well as other health problems. This time, I haven't had sugar since 2008. If I'm experiencing craving, I eat protein.
From my experiences during the Vietnam War, I am susceptible to PTSD-related depression. Walking and yoga helps me with that.
Good to know that watching comedy helps you! Have you seen Sherman Alexie's "Smoke Signals"? That's a good mix of comedy and drama.
I'm doing more commenting than usual today. Got to get back to working on getting that job that I need.
yeah, drinking only made me feel better for the first few hours (i used to drink all night long). then i would start to get totally depressed, and that's when it seemed like the only way to find any kind of peace was to welcome death.
Deletea long solitary walk is good for the soul! i prefer to walk way early in the morning when there are lots of seagulls out and about, but very few people.
i just read a review of "smoke signals" and it seems like the kind of comedy i like big time - so i put the dvd on hold at the library. thanks for the awesome suggestion!
my therapist told me that lots of vitamin b is a good thing when it comes to depression. so i'm taking a multivitamin every day, plus zoloft (an antidepressant). i'm really hoping the depression will start to lift in a few more weeks. there's so much to do, but i'm totally wiped out most days. at least all the bottles are gone. what a relief! thanks for the really cool support (as always)...
I cope with depression by not only taking anti-depressants, but striving to alter/change whatever in my life is making me depressed. Like, if I'm lonely, I round up friends to hang out with. If my house is a disaster, I clean it. If a relationship or a friend is driving me crazy, I talk to them and either work it out or evict them from my life. A lot of early sobriety is house-cleaning, so your mission is clear!
ReplyDeletehey, a poet is in the house :-) so do you mean "house-cleaning" in a totally literal sense - or are you suggesting it's best to get rid of all the emotional clutter? Maybe both? :-)
ReplyDeleteFor me, house-cleaning was working AA's twelve steps - but you can use whatever method works for you.Basically, cleaning up the wreckage of my past, acknowledging my behavior and the harms I had done, and cleaning it up by making amends.
ReplyDeletere: susanne lee's comment about aa/12 steps - yeah, that's what my next post's gonna be all about. thanks for the friendly reminder :-)
DeleteGood question. Gee,
ReplyDeleteI guess my answer to this is: "Not very well" :)
But little things do tend to help a bit....going for a walk, writing my feelings down....telling (the all too rarely available) someone else how I'm feeling.
Nothing terribly novel, I know, but they help a bit.
Nice blog you got here!
hey jason, thanks for the really cool comment. yeah, the little things add up big time: walking, writing/blogging, talking w/someone about your thoughts and feelings - it's all good. isolation is a killer, so every time you reach out to somebody, it's like giving depression (the middle) finger.
Deleteglad you like my blog - the feeling's mutual :-)
I've been pretty much a loner since my teen years, so ART (literature, movies, painting) has always played a part in my life, helping me feel connected. Woody Allen is PERFECT! :) Have you seen "Crimes and Misdemeanors"? On the one hand, it features terrible (and terribly depressing) themes of betrayals, large and small, but... it's so profound! My little mind, at least, was blown away by all that he was offering onscreen for me to think about, the variety of relations between humans, their moral decisions... The movie was, for me, simultaneously dark and extremely uplifting (same with Plath's poetry, for instance---there's a great "purity" and exhilaration in being able to express difficult things as well as either Plath or Woody Allen, for instance, do; and I get to see/read/listen to what these people have to offer!).
ReplyDeleteOn a less lofty note: Now that I'm in my 40s, when depression comes around, I can recognize the pattern and be more blasé about it... Whereas, when I was in my 20s, I felt, incorrectly: "This is ALL I will EVER feel!" As time passes, you do start to see the cycles, the ebbs and flows of life, and realize that, yes, ebbs are going to occur again and again... Not as a "curse" on yourself in particular, but because they just happen to EVERYONE. Some clichés help me out: "Life is like poker--you play the hand you're dealt." Sounds shallow, but... it's really a much deeper concept! :) (I also like the surfer mentality of "riding the wave"---sometimes you're wiped out, sometimes you experience nirvana!) :)
hey beth, yeah i've been a book/art/music/movie freak since the age of 15 (when depression became really bad). since i was a loner big time, i had to find something to occupy my troubled mind.
ReplyDeletei'll check out the woody allen movie you mentioned. i like most of his work big time. not too many movies can make me laugh out loud - except for his.
you've mentioned plath before. i'm now reading anne sexton (my therapist suggested i do this). there's a poem in sexton's Complete Poems about the death of sylvia plath. now i'm totally curious - will have to check out Ariel (thank you google).
i'll be sure and let you know what i think :-)