Depressives Anonymous?
Up until my thirties, I was blisslessly unaware that I drank alcoholicly and used drugs as an addict, and although I knew something was wrong I couldn't attribute my underlying problem to drink and drugs.
From sixteen, I've seen psychotherapists sporadically but none mentioned alcohol or drugs.
I don't think depression was even mentioned until recently.
Now I'm sober for over two years, I can see that drink and drugs are not the problem. I'm the problem. My head is the problem. The way I think is the problem.
And that all boils down to depression, which was the reason I drank and drugged, to effectively 'get out of my head'.
A high proportion of alcoholics and addicts who go to AA and NA are self-confessed depressives, and many only realised what their underlying problem was once they got sober. Drink and drugs were mere symptoms.
While drink and drugs served as a good way to alleviate the brain-pain of life as a young man, it was alcohol and drugs that led me to AA and a new way of life, but for those who suffer depression and do not have self-destructive isms like addiction and alcoholism, what help is there out there other than anti-depressants and expensive psychotherapy?
By and large, one stops working after a while and the other is sometimes no more than a drip-feed of money with no real answers, which I attribute to the fact that if you were given answers you'd no longer need their services, which would be detrimental to your therapist.
On the other hand, AA's free for those who are skint, a quid or two for those who aren't, and the rewards that fellowship and empathy can bring I see every week. If a newcomer reckons it's shit, we welcome the idea that he do more research (which means going back to it) because without first acknowledging that drink/drugs are a waste of life, AA can't do much apart from keeping us away from the pub/dealer while we're at a meeting.
Unlike psychotherapists, AA members regard helping their fellow sufferers as crucial to their own recovery.
Maybe the worst thing about depression is that it's seen as a weakness, like alcohol and drug-use, so many depressives with or without self-destructive habits often suffer alone, and it is a damning indictment on society that at least one in ten suffer this illness. It is also quite telling, perhaps, that one in ten suffer from addiction of one sort or another, although I believe that both these figures are under-estimated.
What if depressives set up a Depressives Anonymous?
Using the steps and traditions of AA, and replacing alcohol and drugs with mental unrest, I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work just as well for depressives as it does for addicts and alcoholics.
For anyone who hasn't needed help with mental illness, this may be a question worth a comedic punt, but to those who have met other depressives and valued their conversations, do any of you think that this could be a way forward?
Parson Thru
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