What it’s like to be severely depressed
…even when you comprehend that your life is wonderful

I’d thought I’d forgotten what it felt like to be depressed. I mean truly, consumingly depressed. Since I’ve battled with anxiety and depression my entire life, I assumed I understood how other depressed people felt. And I do, to an extent.
But I had to visit that dark, deep, mucky fetid shit again to really know. And I wish I didn’t. But I’m writing about it because it fucking scares the shit out of me.
I’ve been on 20–40 mg. of Prozac for over 14 years. Prior to that, I’d been on and off the stuff 2 or 3 times. Usually, I’d be on it for a few months, feel better, and be sick of the side effects, so I’d think, “I can just go off this now, since I’m not feeling depressed anymore.”
Going off was always a mistake. I ended up getting depressed again, even if I was “stable” for a few months after having stopped it. I finally went on Prozac again for good in 2004. I’ve been pretty stable since. (I’d been prescribed a slew of medications between 1996 and 2004: Celexa, Wellbutrin, Serzone, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor; none of them worked as well as Prozac). So in 2004, while on one of the aforementioned medications and still very depressed, I went to a new psychiatrist and told him that I needed to go on Prozac. “Please don’t argue with me; I’ve been on a slew of psychotropic meds and I can’t live like this anymore.” I was extremely depressed and I knew it would work for me. He did what I asked.
Within a week of going back on Prozac in 2004, I started to feel like a normal person again. I’ve always hated myself, but I could finally live my life and fake it well enough to the point where once in awhile I could actually enjoy things, like playing soccer and practicing yoga.
Some time during those visits to that psychiatrist, I was prescribed .5 mg/night of Klonopin (generic: Clonazepam) for anxiety and insomnia. It helped. Even though I’d no longer been profoundly depressed, I often shouted slews of profanities at opposing teammates while playing soccer. I’d yell at, roll down my window, and flip off other drivers when they cut me off on the 405 freeway. Rage-filled behaviors like that were becoming my norm.
And I’d stayed on Klonopin since then. Some time within that timeframe — perhaps since I was off Serzone and Seroquel — more sedating medications, and was now (again) on Prozac, a more activating medication, I was having trouble sleeping, he upped my Klonopin dosage to 1 mg./night. I slept better. I wasn’t depressed anymore. I didn’t feel the fury that had again started simmering under (and often out of) my being.
I am almost too depressed to keep writing this. And re-counting all this history with psychiatrists and medications is making me want to jump off a building. So I’ll get to what I intended to write about.
With the growing prescription drug abuse epidemic, doctors are extremely wary of prescribing benzodiazopines (as well as opoids, but I’m not on opioids, so I’m not writing about them). Klonopin is one of those benzos that have been abused. I learned this when my former psychiatrist retired this past May (he gave his patients only a few weeks’ notice).
I phoned a slew of psychiatrists, thinking it’d be easy just to get my 40 mg. of Prozac and 1 mg of Klonopin per day script from a new psych. on a regular basis. Whatever other issues I had I could regularly discuss with my MFT. Easy.
It didn’t turn out to be so easy, though. “I don’t prescribe benzodiazepines,” was the response I got over and over. I phoned a number of psychiatrists who ensured me they’d work with me to wean me off the Klonopin. Most of them weren’t on my health insurance plan, but after going to someone who was, and who told me to go cold turkey after a week, I figured I’d shell out the money and get a second opinion.
So the woman I see now is bright, caring, professional, knowledgable, everything you’d want in a psychiatrist. She and I discussed weaning me off the Klonopin when I’d initially spoken with her on the phone. I could tell by the tone of her voice that I could trust her.
Our game plan was based on the Ashton Manual, a study successfully done at the University of Manchester in England, by a psychiatrist named Heather Ashton: https://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/bzcha02.htm. It’s a protocol for the treatment of benzodiazepine withdrawal, and it’s worked for a lot of people.
Since Valium is longer-acting and easier to wean off of , I was to slowly substitute Valium while lessening the Klonopin, while also checking in with my psychiatrist regularly. I trusted her. I still do. I kept a log of how much of each drug I was taking per day, then started adding how I was feeling, emotionally, because things went South, quickly.
I was fine for about 14 days. I weaned off Klonopin for a week, and took 12–15 mg. of Valium as a substitute. For a couple days there, I actually felt better than my baseline — more motivated to get work done, be creative, set goals. More loving towards my husband.
However, the subsequent 14 days (actual dates August 16 until now, August 30) have been HELL. I have been depressed beyond what I thought depression could feel like. Beyond how I felt even when I was off Prozac or any other psych meds.
But here’s the thing. I’m still on 40 mg. of Prozac. Something is very, very wrong. I just told my husband a list of people to whom I wanted him to dole out my small savings “if anything were to happen to me.” I don’t want to worry him. But I feel it’s important to be honest. There are people who deserve a bit of help financially, and I’d feel better about killing myself if I knew my savings were going to people who need and deserve it.
I went back to my psychiatrist on Tuesday. I was very worried, and I knew calling 911 wasn’t going to help me in the way I needed. I didn’t really have a plan to kill myself, and some part of me knew there was hope. That something would change.
She and I decided together that I was having a bad reaction to the Valium. This made a ton of sense because I’d recently taken Flexeril, a muscle relaxant for a back injury, and got pretty depressed during the few days I was taking it. So I knew I was sensitive to certain central nervous system depressants.
I stopped taking the Valium on Tuesday. It’s now Thursday. I took .5 mg of Klonopin (half the dosage I was on for 14 years) on Wednesday morning at 2am, because I couldn’t sleep, and that was our strategy: that I’d take ½ (.5mg) of a Klonopin if I woke in the middle of the night. I didn’t take any Klonopin last night, and slept until 4:30am. Not ideal, but I was proud of myself for the possibility that I might not be completely addicted to this very substance that had been keeping me stable for almost 2 decades but that I could no longer get scripts for.
Today I still feel suicidal. But perhaps there’s hope, because I have the desire to write this, and I couldn’t even entertain the thought of writing anything that wasn’t work-related for the past two weeks.
I want to emphasize that this shit is real. As I was telling my husband about my plans to distribute my savings, he answered with, “What you need is a vacation.” He’s right; vacation usually helps a person feel better. But I thought for a minute, and said to him, “But isn’t my life kind of a vacation already?” I surf every day, I work part-time, doing something I love, I have a loving, supportive husband, good friends, and I’m physically healthy. Sure I have problems, but nothing I couldn’t previously handle. It’s not the so-called problems in my life that have been plaguing me. My life is like a vacation, but I still feel like I want to kill myself. My chest hurts every morning when I get out of bed to make coffee. Yes, I still get out of bed before 7am, make coffee, stretch, and go surfing. Not your typical depressive, I know.
To which he answered, “yes, you do! You have a beautiful life and this makes me so sad and it’s so hard to understand.” I ensured him I’d tell him first if I were seriously going to do anything to take my own life. And I will. This piece is not a call for an intervention. I do not have a specific plan and I made that promise to my husband. And he is reliable and sensible.
Didn’t Anthony Bourdain say, in a recent interview with The New Yorker Magazine, “I have the best job in the world,” stating the rather obvious. “If I’m unhappy, it’s a failure of imagination.” (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-08/for-bourdain-food-was-a-storytelling-tool-and-a-passport). He had a girlfriend whom he loved and who loved him. He had it all. I feel like I have it all too. At least objectively.
But I still want to die. My medications are off, my biochemistry is off, and nothing — NOTHING — can fix this at the moment. I thought to myself this morning, after (yes, I know it’s ironic, but it’s the truth) an enjoyable surf session, “What one thing would make you really happy right now?” (If you’re going to die anyway, you might as well fantasize about these things.)
I could not think of anything except what I already have. Again, I know objectively that my life is good like Anthony Bourdain’s (without the fame and fortune). Intellectually, I know this. But something is wrong with me biochemically. I have never felt this numb and thought about dying my entire life, not even when I had no friends in high school, not when I had no money and a shitty job and was completely alone and poor in San Francisco, not when the love of my life broke up with me, not even when I slowly watched both my parents be destroyed by Alzheimer’s demise.
So what’s my point? This shit is real. Anyone who fails to see that mental illness is a medical condition — one that needs to be taken as seriously as heart disease and cancer — needs to live inside my body and mind for one hour. I mention my body because my depression is visceral. My heart and solar plexus hurt. I cringe when someone says “Good Morning” to me. I go through the motions, hoping exercise or reaching out to friends or doctors will help. But this shit is chemical. If my mind were working better I’d be able to articulate this stronger. But here I go: I want to fucking die and I have a great fucking life.
I see my psychiatrist again tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll still be alive, because even though I am depressed as fuck, I am a fighter. And I’ve lived this long. But if I do die, I really want anyone who reads this to advocate for mental health awareness. I have all the resources — good doctors, medications, access to health care. I am still a fucking mess. Most people don’t even have this. No one deserves to live like this.
Mental illness is some serious shit, not something made up in one’s mind, not something people do to attract attention. It is some real fucking shit. And I know it’d affect a lot of people if I died right now. I don’t want to put my loved ones through hell. But I am also frightened that the depression is stronger than I am.
If you read this, please please advocate for more research, spending, less ignorance, regarding mental health. I have a Master’s in Counseling, for fuck’s sake. I know a lot about this subject. If writing this can save even one person, I will have done something right in doing so.