coded for apoptosis

coded for apoptosis

March 9 2006

I wrote a response to some scientific minded people on a site called Psychobabble. It is is like an online support group for people who take psychiatric meds. I am too lazy to re-write specifically for this blog but you should get the drift. Some bits refer to another writer's letter but some confusion is, probably, inevitable anyway.

I may write more at a later date but I thought it might give some insight into a darker aspect that has been with me for twenty years or so.

The article is interesting. A bit over my head and I'm never sure with something as complex and chaotic as a brain and the body and experience.... how science even comes to any conclusions about "normal" in one small area of something as large as the frontal cortex... no saying something as singular as each person's interior life.

I'm lucky, I guess. And, perhaps, emotionally unambitious. If I am not suicidal, I don't count that as being depressed. But it has become predictable... I will stop an SSRI or TCA and in 7 days, suicidal thoughts will start to circulate like moons around my cognition. Within 10 -12 days, the "suicial ideation" is no longer just verbal electrical randomness... it has become something (there is no word in English) total, larger than "me."

At first, "I" am separate from it but it swallows me up.

I feel (again there is no word in English) something I can't call pain, it isn't a sensation, but at the same time "it" is almost unbearable and becomes more so. What is happening and where, I can not say but I can not stand it as days pass.

Luckily, every SSRI and some TCA's work for me and "it" goes away and, then, I no longer desire to commit suicide. By all measures of science, I may still be depressed but if "it" goes away... life is bearable and sometimes okay. I can give metaphors for "it": pain comes closest I suppose but that really refers to something physical.

My perception of existence changes and I see through whatever the opposite of rose colored glasses is... but, really, that is just a side effect of "it." To me, there are two kind of people in the world: those who have been swallowed up by "it", who have felt "it", and those who haven't.

I stopped desipramine three or four days ago. I know my thinking is becoming bleaker but I have hope that... maybe, just maybe... the suicidal thoughts won't start to circle my other thoughts, my other actions, my walking, my eating, my socializing. I can keep them out there and continue in a rational way for three or four more days but then it begins to become dangerous.

Is something leaving my system or entering it? Some ratio of this or that? A joy opiate leaking out some drain or "it" (whatever "it" is) leaking in and poisoning me, some toxic substance telling my entire body to commit suicide.

A cell instructs itself to die, a process called apoptosis. For me, my experience is like my entire body filling up with instructions for apoptosis. I hear some people stop their meds and life goes on more or less in a civil way. I hope that happens that way this time. Stranger things have happened.

If you can shed any light on this experience of "it": this feeling of my entire body being coded for apoptosis against my reason, I'd be happy. Even words, vocabulary... it is all helpful.

Otherwise, thanks. Where else can I ramble on about "it" and not be thought paranoid or possessed by demons? When I was young and tried to get myself off this earth, I recall people telling me it was "a cry for help." It always seemed like a glib dismissal and egocentric (as if my suicide attempt had anything to do with someone else.) Later... I'll be fine (or, if not, I'll go back on one AD or the other.) River.