Depression.
Something I've been struggling with for years. Sometimes mild, sometimes utterly crippling.
It riles me when people think of depression as just being miserable, or as something you can simply snap out of by pulling yourself together. You might as well tell a blind man to look harder, or a cancer patient to just stop having cancer.
The condition of sadness and the condition of depression are not the same. I can be depressed but not feel sad. It's more like a clamp that's applied to the mind. I'm not miserable, but restricted. Physically, emotionally, the lot. I can spend days lying in bed staring at the ceiling feeling totally unable to do anything - but without feeling sadness, just emptiness. A void.
I thought I'd come to terms with it a long time ago, and accepted it as part of who I am. Take the rough with the smooth and all that. Then a few years ago, it kicked in strong. Stronger than ever before. Not just the staying in the pit of my own room and dwelling on my own worthlessness, but for the first time thinking darker thoughts than I'd ever thought before.
I quite rationally decided that my wife and children would be far better off without me.
There was no point going on. I would just drag the family down with me into the downward spiral of depression, my wife would leave me, the children would hate me. It would be better for everyone if I wasn't there any more. There was no fear, no sense of impending doom, just a calm acceptance that this was the end period of my life and I ought to consider the best way of bringing it to a close.
I decided that it wouldn't be fair to put the family through the trauma of a suicide, so it would be better if it looked like an accident. I would go for a drive one night and simply drive into something whilst going down the motorway at 80-90 mph. Not another vehicle, but a concrete bridge support or something like that. It would to all intents and purposes look like I'd fallen asleep at the wheel.
Then at just the moment I was thinking about what pretext I could use for going out for a drive that night, I got a text from a friend to tell me that the footballer Gary Speed had been found dead in an apparent suicide. I was surprised, I'd only seen him on Football Focus the day before and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I was interested to read up on it, whether he'd had a history of depression, what else came to light. It didn't make me want to change my plan, rather I thought I'd wait a few days to see what else came out as I was interested to compare his situation to mine.
Maybe the next day, maybe the day after (I can't quite remember now), I saw a post on Twitter by Stan Collymore referring to the Gary Speed suicide. Out of interest I clicked on the link in his tweet.
He'd written an article about Gary's death, and about his own battle with depression. How it is a disease that's often fatal, but it doesn't have to be. How he would find himself in the bleakest depths of despair, but had come to realise that these periods can and do pass, and that things won't always be that bad.
For some reason it struck a chord with me. I'd never before read something written so openly, honestly and eloquently about severe depression. It was an exceptionally brave thing to write. It brought it home to me what a senseless loss Gary's death had been, how Stan could just as easily have become a similar sorry statistic, and that this was the same direction I was heading in. But it didn't have to be so.
The next day I confessed to my wife that my depression was becoming overwhelming and that I had been sparked into doing something about it. She was incredibly understanding. I went to my GP and confessed all. It was a very open and honest conversation, he asked what method I was planning to use and I told him. He advised a two-pronged strategy; to get onto antidepressants immediately, and to see a therapist as soon as possible.
I was sceptical about therapy, I couldn't see how talking about my condition could possibly improve my condition. But, I went to see somebody, sat down, and started talking. And talked, and talked, and talked. To my great surprise I found myself discussing things I'd never spoken to anybody about before. And I came out feeling very odd. Drained, but strangely unburdened. The old cliches about a weight being lifted from your shoulders came to mind. So I went back again. And kept going for some time.
The things that came out were very revealing; things that I'd never really considered before, things I'd forgotten, things I had suppressed for decades. An emotionally abusive father. A detached, unloving and uncaring mother. The cub scout group I went to as a child where I had been subject to sexual abuse. The mental health issues within my family, the breakdowns, the alcoholism, the drug addiction. It became clear that there were many factors that both made me predisposed to depression, and that actively drove me into that state.
It changed my life, quite literally. I turned my back on the job that I wasn't enjoying. I went back to college and studied for a completely different career, something I loved doing but had never considered that I might be able to make a living out of. I loved it. My family life improved immeasurably.
And the antidepressants? Well, they help. A lot. They don't stop the instability and low periods, but they certainly steady the ship and even things out. I stopped taking them after a time, and found myself in something of a relapse during a time of physical illness. So I made the decision to get back on them, and to stay on them. If the cost of a more stable condition is swallowing a tablet once a day, then I'm perfectly happy to meet that cost.
It is not an exaggeration to say that were it not for Stan Collymore's article I would be long in my grave by now. If plan A hadn't worked then there would have been a plan B. At some point one of those plans would succeed. My wife would be a widow, my children would lose their father, and my friends & family would be consumed with grief.
I read another article today by the comedian and presenter Iain Lee who has also been fighting depression. It was another fantastically brave piece of writing. Braver than me, that's for sure, writing this under a false name. But it made me think. At least one person read Stan's article and had their life saved as a direct result of it. I would love to think that the same might happen as a result of Iain's article. And it made me think that I was long overdue to write a few words about depression myself.
Depression is a dangerous and often fatal condition. Battling it can be a war of attrition. But it is not a battle that can't be won.
If you're suffering from depression there is help out there. Help that works. You can get it under control. You are not alone.
Stan Collymore saved my life.
Thank you Stan.
