Alcohol, Depression, and Me

We all know the cliché of the alcoholic writer. Sadly, it's not just a cliché.  A Swedish mental health study in 2011 showed that, of people in the creative arts, authors had the highest rate of depression, anxiety syndrome, schizophrenia, substance abuse, and a 50% higher rate of suicide than the general population. (Read the article here.) Although I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl, I never expected to become a cliché.

Self-medication is as common to writers as depression. I didn’t realize that the struggles I had were all signs of depression. I started self-medicating when I was attending the University of Washington in Seattle. I loved everything about college life, but there was always an undercurrent of darkness trying to tow me under.

photo via Flickr/Creative Commons

I had never been able to fall asleep easily, and dorm life only made my problem worse. I started taking generous doses of Nyquil every night before bed to help me sleep. Literal self-medication. Surprisingly, I was still able to function pretty well during the day, but I purposefully only took late morning or afternoon classes. As soon as I got back to my room I would crash, hiding in my bed. Of course I couldn’t sleep properly after a late nap, so I took more Nyquil and the cycle continued.

My self-esteem was pretty low at the time, and as an escape from my self-doubt and negative thoughts I started binge drinking on the weekends with friends. It was easy for me to put on a happy face for others; I was a people-pleaser and always tried to keep my problems to myself. Alcohol is a depressant, of course, so it didn’t help my emotional issues at all. And it put me in some very dangerous situations. These days we know that repeated binge drinking is a form of alcoholism, but at the time no one thought much of it. (Maybe they still don’t.) Even with the weekend drinking (which sometimes carried over onto a weeknight or two) I was still able to make excellent grades.

My second year continued much as the first. I lived in the same dorm, with the same roommate. More Nyquil, more binge drinking. I was an English major with a creative writing emphasis, and wrote lots of dark poetry and short stories during this period. No great surprise. It never occurred to me that the reason I spent most of my alone time hiding in my bed could be depression. I could feel so happy and then the invisible weight would come crushing back down.

University of Washington via Flickr/Creative Commons

The third year I was at the University of Washington was incredibly rough. It started out bumpy, trying to find a new place to live. I ended up commuting from my parents’ house south of Seattle, which was a long drive. In January, with no warning, my family suffered a great tragedy that nearly destroyed us. (That’s another ultimately triumphant story, but it took a long time to turn the bad into good.) I ended up having to drop all my classes the second term but one. It set my graduation date back, but it couldn’t be helped. That summer my immediate family moved to Canada and I was left alone in Seattle. It was also the summer I turned 21.

No longer living at the dorms, I wasn’t tempted to do as much binge drinking, but my social drinking increased dramatically. I could go to bars with my friends, and I did. Often. My classes were definitely starting to suffer during my senior year. I could barely function during the day: not from the drinking, but from exhaustion. The lack of sleep at night meant I fell asleep in classes, or between them in places like the library. I could barely even drag myself to the lectures that were scheduled. 

One Shakespeare class I took with a friend, hoping that it might help me with my motivation to go. He didn’t know my personal issues, and just thought I was slacking off and skipping class. I missed so much that the day I finally came turned out to be the midterm. I sat down, looking on with horror as the professor passed out the exam. After quickly reading it I realized it would be impossible to fake my way through it. I got up, walked out, and never returned. I promptly dropped the class. Somehow I still managed to get good grades in the rest of my classes.

via Flickr/Creative Commons

More alarming than the social drinking was my propensity to drink alone. I stocked a little liquor cabinet and would make myself a drink in the evening while doing my homework, reading, or watching television. Not a glass of wine or a beer, mind you. Hard liquor or a mixed drink. Probably not a good sign. At the time I just thought I was being grown up, although a little voice in my head tried to warn me that something was off about my life.

Things finally changed later that year when I went to a proper doctor. I had only seen the doctors in the health center on campus, and they were quick to deal with whatever your ailment was and send you on your way. This time I went to a low cost women’s clinic that had an amazing staff. The doctor really took time to ask about my mental health and not just my physical health. She was the one who looked at my symptoms and diagnosed me as clinically depressed. 

It was such a huge relief to know that that exhausting drowning feeling wasn’t just my imagination. I didn’t have to just “buck up” or “snap out of it.” The doctor put me on mild anti-depressants and had other suggestions for me (one of which was cutting back on the alcohol.) I did graduate from the University of Washington with honors, only one term behind my four-year goal.

via Flickr/Creative Commons

It’s been a long road, and I’ve struggled off and on with depression since then. I’ve learned more skills to help me cope, but there are still days I want to hide in my bed. Sometimes I do. But just for a little while, because now I know there is hope.

If you have any of these symptoms of depression, there is hope and help for you out there. This is a link to an excellent self-test for depression. (Click here.) If you think you might be suffering, remember that this is an illness and there is no shame in seeking help and treatment.

If you would like to share, I would love to hear about your journey with depression.

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What Lies Beneath?

Photo Credit: jenny downing via Compfight cc

Last week my daughter Emilia had minor surgery on her face. A little piece of gravel that had embedded itself deep in her cheek finally had to be cut out.

The tiny rock had been there since Emilia was three or four. One minute she was swinging delightedly, Grandma pushing her. The next minute she just let go, and dropped face-first onto the gravel. Grandma was horrified. (To be fair, Emilia has always had a love-hate relationship with swings: she loves them and they hate her.)

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Accidents like these happen often in childhood, and after we cleaned up the scrapes there didn’t seem to be any lasting harm done (other than Grandma’s poor conscience.) No one noticed that little piece of rock beginning to burrow its way into my sweet girl’s soft cheek.

Years passed and the only sign of the foreign object was the littlest hole to the right of Emilia’s mouth. Not a deep hole, but the kind that looked like a chicken pox scar. For the longest time that’s what I thought it was.

When Emilia got old enough to start wearing makeup, she noticed the mark and it bothered her. Sometimes she would pick at it, and push on it, finally discovering that she could feel something deep inside. We asked our doctor about it, but he wanted to leave it alone, figuring the scar to remove it would be worse than the little hole.

Being an impulsive teenage girl, one day she decided to try and remove the object herself with a needle. That attempt ended up with a swollen, infected bump on her face and a trip to the emergency room. The doctor said she should see a plastic surgeon to get the gravel removed properly. That led us to last week’s surgery.

Finally we were taking it seriously and removing that long embedded foreign body from Emilia’s face. It had been there for so many years, neglected and unnoticed. A small wound that had become a part of her, never really healing. It reminded me of all the things that we like to cover over in our lives.

Sometimes our offenses and bitterness or the little things that upset us seem small enough that we don’t bother to deal with them. Instead of removing them from our hearts and minds, we just cover over them, letting them burrow deeper into our being. There they become a part of us that we can’t even feel.

Cutting out the piece of gravel was much more painful for Emilia than leaving it where it was. The surgeon had to dig much deeper than expected, and the piece was larger than anyone thought. When it came out, it took some flesh with it. 

Truth be told, the scar will be bigger than the hole. But leaving a foreign body under her skin could lead to much more damage in the future than we could imagine. Now she is recovering, which is a painful process. But she looks forward to smooth skin with no imperfection under the surface that she knows is hiding and could cause untold problems down the road.

Digging out those bitter feelings, offenses, and hurts is painful, and harder than you might expect. Leaving them hiding underneath the surface lets them become a part of you. It is a wound that looks nearly invisible on the outside but never completely heals. Who knows the damage that could be caused if you leave those things to fester? If you take the time to carefully work your way down to the root and tear out those negative things, that wound will finally heal and be as clear and fresh as a baby’s cheek.

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Honest and Broken

Can I be brutally honest with you? I don’t feel like writing pretty stories today. Sometimes you just have to speak from your heart.

The past two weeks have been a time of tremendous change for me. I’ve started my own blog, helped launch ReadWriteMuse, and started a new job. How do I feel? Battered. Crushed. Completely worn out. I feel like I’ve been sucker-punched in the gut.

The exhilaration I felt ten days ago has been replaced by exhaustion. Exciting challenges seem like insurmountable obstacles.

I’m used to shouldering everyone’s burdens and being the strong one. I’ve faced more in the past few years than I’d ever imagined. Somewhere along the line I forgot to lean on Jesus. I forgot how to cast all my cares on Him.

It’s common to perfectionists. We know how to perform well and achieve results. It’s easy to rely on yourself to cope with what comes your way. But I’ve discovered (the hard way) that leaning only on yourself when the big obstacles come along is choosing the most difficult road to travel.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve to ask God for help. I know I don’t read my Bible enough, don’t go to church enough, don’t pray enough. It was drilled into my head that to have a relationship with God you have to read your Bible every day and go to church every time the doors are open. As a perfectionist and people pleaser I have always worried that my performance is lacking and God will find me unacceptable.

My logical mind tells me that God must not really feel that way. If He loved me when I was still a sinner then He must understand when I’m struggling. He must know that in my heart I still love Him and have never turned my back on Him. But somewhere in the crevasses of my mind a little voice tells me that I’m not living up to the standards of a good Christian, so I should just give up and leave God alone.

Last night when I crawled into bed feeling tired and emotionally drained, I was thinking about giving up. Thinking about how broken and spent I felt. And a snippet of a Bible verse floated into my mind…something about being pressed on all sides. So I looked it up.

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Cor. 4:8-9 (NIV)

Back when I was more confident spiritually, God used to give me verses for myself and others for encouragement or help. Part of me wants to think this verse is just a coincidence, a random memory. But I choose to believe that it's a message just for me. Maybe it's for someone else out there, too.

Last night I really was feeling crushed, destroyed and in despair. It's good to be reminded that if I turn to God for help in shouldering my burdens, He is there to help me through. I don't have to walk through the fire alone. I will still have situations where I am perplexed, hard pressed, and struck down but I will prevail. Things will always get better again.

I know I can't do all this on my own. I've tried and my strength is failing. It's reassuring to know that even when I feel inadequate and think I'm nothing but a wayward child, God can still whisper quietly in my ear and I can still hear Him.