Christian
Active Member, June10MOTM
I found this thread on a private forum i am a member of and i found it interesting...
I know it is alot of information but there maybe something useful for you, no matter how small it may be...
OK, i have spoken with Dat briefly about this. This thread will document my 20 year struggle with depression and my subsequent nearly miraculous recovery. Forget everything you think you know about this disease, there is hope and there is a way to fix it. I will write it in parts which are summarized below. I wanted to get this up here to motivate myself to get started, it is a story that i hope will bring relief to someone out there.
part one - my history ... this will detail my struggle with the disease, it is important because those that did not know my condition often think "no way could you have been as bad as me, you are too happy". My recovery has been so astounding that those suffering have a hard time believing how bad i was.
part two - revelation ... this details my introduction to Dr Ralph Waldo, an expert in orhtomolecular medicine, board certified psychiatrist, nuerologist. i will detail how my desperation led to my discovery of his practice.
part three - my treatment ... i will detail the process including what was added, what was taken away, dietary changes, and all the reasons behind it. This will examine my particular treatment, please note treatment is specifically tailored to the individual.
part four - recovery...i will detail the rise from the darkness and my current situation including how the ongoing health monitoring works.
part five - helpful hints ... i will try to provide useful resources for those that wish to pursue this path
EDIT: THERE WILL BE MORE PARTS THAN ORIGINALLY ANTICIPATED
If i can help just one person beat this hell on Earth than the task will be well worth it.
* a quick note about me in general... i have been bodybuilding for 25 years. I am the VP of a small company and have an engineering background and a masters level business background. But mostly i am just a blue collar guy that likes to work on things, i won't be writing in the high level scientific jargon that dat and the really smart guys use. i will just be telling you the truth...as it happened to me...in my own words. i hope you find it interesting.
Part 1 – the darkness (please note this is somewhat summarized and represents many years, just want you to get a feel for the severity)
My first memories that I might have been a little off go back to childhood. I can remember not being very communicative as a child…very shy. I always had this odd feeling like I was on the outside looking in. I also had a tendency to think about things that a small child should just not worry about like world issues and crap. I would actually get upset watching the news when I was 5-6 years old. My teachers always said I was “wise well beyond my years”…but actually I was somewhat tormented with negative feelings (often referred to as ANTS these days, automatic negative thoughts).
As I went through childhood I didn’t really get a lot worse but just kind of survived. I always excelled academically, but socially I was awkward. I read constantly (still do) and first picked up weights in the third grade. I used these things as an escape, and at the time I thought if I was really big and muscular I would somehow be more popular and would magically develop proper social skills.
In middle school when other had started to “date” and things I was somewhat of an outcast, I could not talk to girls very easily. I wanted to but my topics of interest were books and science and …well…that just isn’t cool when your 13. I also was chosen at this age to be a part of the Midwest talent search for academic achievement. I took the SAT at the age of 12 and scored high enough to qualify for engineering school. My parents were thrilled…I could care less because the thought of leaving home was terrifying.
On to high school, I did a little better socially in certain groups, but I tended to hang around the outcasts I guess. By this time I was fairly muscular, I had never stopped working out since third grade (still haven’t). It did help a bit with my self esteem but the underlying feelings of life just not really meaning much were always present. It was my senior year in high school that I had my first breakdown (or major depressive episode as they call them now). Nothing seemed OK anymore; I just could not see any point in going on at all. I had a great stable family, was smart, had a great future ahead, and all I could see was death. The timing of all this is pretty interesting…the year was 1989 and Eli Lilly had just developed what many were calling a miracle…Prozac. So started the journey into psychiatric drugs…a journey I would eventually understand as the single biggest crime ever committed against humanity.
I stayed on Prozac for several years, mostly through the college years, at the time I thought it had healed me, my depression had lifted, I still wasn’t right but they don’t really care about that as long as you are not suicidal. At some point, I think around 24 years of age I dx’d the Prozac. No real difference, if there is one thing I can say positive about Prozac is at least you can stop it without major problems. So I went along OK for a few years, then for no apparent reason, my mind started to turn against me again. This time it was severe…horrible anxiety, constant worry, suicidal thoughts…I had no idea what was going on but I knew I needed help and fast.
Back to the doctor and back on the Prozac…this time no relief. Enter the most evil drug ever created by man…Cymbalta. The doc started me on this new “wonder drug” and thought it would work. Well I think I managed to convince myself that it would work for awhile and stayed on it for about two years. Then the real hell began. The anxiety started again…so of course they have a drug for that…started clonozapam at a small dose .5 mg per day. That kicked the shit out of the anxiety but I could not stay awake. Now I started having unexplained shaking and tremors. And as if that wasn’t good enough I started losing short term memory. So…on to the psychiatrists.
These jackasses really fixed me. Increase the cymbalta to 90mg per day…started having terrible dreams, memory loss, no sexual function whatsoever. Ok you know what that means …we need to add a drug. Over the course of the next year they managed to nearly kill me with cymbalta, abilify, klonipin, lamictal, more prozac, Zoloft. You ****ing name it and these fools tried it…what they didn’t realize it they were CAUSING most of the brain damage (which is exactly what they are doing to you with these drugs). At this point I had the great experience of auditory hallucinations, memory loss, sexual dysfunction, could not stay awake for more than two hours. Thank god I am the VP of my company and was able to somehow maintain my job. I design machinery, and manage the organization. There were literally machines that I had designed and built and I COULD NOT remember how they operated.
I had ****ing had enough…at this point my GF (bless her heart, now my wife) was driving me to my appointments because it was not safe for me to drive. She had read about a new method utilizing nutritional elements and diagnosis of deficiencies combined with balancing all the bodies systems. I had never heard of it but believe me at this point I was already planning my permanent exit. I will tell you this, anyone in this shape that says no I don’t think of suicide is lying…its all I thought about. So the next time I went she went with me, and we asked the following question. “ It seems like all you are doing is just throwing drugs at it and hoping without really knowing what is going to happen, do you have a plan?” Here was their answer, now remember this is the biggest psychiatric organization in the state. “NO, we have no idea…the truth is no one knows if these drugs work at all and if so how they work.” “ if you have a doctor tell you otherwise in reality they are lying”. Straight from the mouth of a psychiatrist that OFTEN speaks for Eli Lilly on their national circuit.
So we asked about this new approach that my wife had read about…and they said…”yes we have a person in our network that does this, would you like to talk to him”? WELL WHAT THE **** DO YOU THINK…NO LETS JUST KEEP DOING WHAT WE ARE DOING IT SEEMS ****ING GREAT!!! So this concludes part one…basically I owe my life to two people first my wife, second to the doctor I will next introduce…
I know it is alot of information but there maybe something useful for you, no matter how small it may be...
OK, i have spoken with Dat briefly about this. This thread will document my 20 year struggle with depression and my subsequent nearly miraculous recovery. Forget everything you think you know about this disease, there is hope and there is a way to fix it. I will write it in parts which are summarized below. I wanted to get this up here to motivate myself to get started, it is a story that i hope will bring relief to someone out there.
part one - my history ... this will detail my struggle with the disease, it is important because those that did not know my condition often think "no way could you have been as bad as me, you are too happy". My recovery has been so astounding that those suffering have a hard time believing how bad i was.
part two - revelation ... this details my introduction to Dr Ralph Waldo, an expert in orhtomolecular medicine, board certified psychiatrist, nuerologist. i will detail how my desperation led to my discovery of his practice.
part three - my treatment ... i will detail the process including what was added, what was taken away, dietary changes, and all the reasons behind it. This will examine my particular treatment, please note treatment is specifically tailored to the individual.
part four - recovery...i will detail the rise from the darkness and my current situation including how the ongoing health monitoring works.
part five - helpful hints ... i will try to provide useful resources for those that wish to pursue this path
EDIT: THERE WILL BE MORE PARTS THAN ORIGINALLY ANTICIPATED
If i can help just one person beat this hell on Earth than the task will be well worth it.
* a quick note about me in general... i have been bodybuilding for 25 years. I am the VP of a small company and have an engineering background and a masters level business background. But mostly i am just a blue collar guy that likes to work on things, i won't be writing in the high level scientific jargon that dat and the really smart guys use. i will just be telling you the truth...as it happened to me...in my own words. i hope you find it interesting.
Part 1 – the darkness (please note this is somewhat summarized and represents many years, just want you to get a feel for the severity)
My first memories that I might have been a little off go back to childhood. I can remember not being very communicative as a child…very shy. I always had this odd feeling like I was on the outside looking in. I also had a tendency to think about things that a small child should just not worry about like world issues and crap. I would actually get upset watching the news when I was 5-6 years old. My teachers always said I was “wise well beyond my years”…but actually I was somewhat tormented with negative feelings (often referred to as ANTS these days, automatic negative thoughts).
As I went through childhood I didn’t really get a lot worse but just kind of survived. I always excelled academically, but socially I was awkward. I read constantly (still do) and first picked up weights in the third grade. I used these things as an escape, and at the time I thought if I was really big and muscular I would somehow be more popular and would magically develop proper social skills.
In middle school when other had started to “date” and things I was somewhat of an outcast, I could not talk to girls very easily. I wanted to but my topics of interest were books and science and …well…that just isn’t cool when your 13. I also was chosen at this age to be a part of the Midwest talent search for academic achievement. I took the SAT at the age of 12 and scored high enough to qualify for engineering school. My parents were thrilled…I could care less because the thought of leaving home was terrifying.
On to high school, I did a little better socially in certain groups, but I tended to hang around the outcasts I guess. By this time I was fairly muscular, I had never stopped working out since third grade (still haven’t). It did help a bit with my self esteem but the underlying feelings of life just not really meaning much were always present. It was my senior year in high school that I had my first breakdown (or major depressive episode as they call them now). Nothing seemed OK anymore; I just could not see any point in going on at all. I had a great stable family, was smart, had a great future ahead, and all I could see was death. The timing of all this is pretty interesting…the year was 1989 and Eli Lilly had just developed what many were calling a miracle…Prozac. So started the journey into psychiatric drugs…a journey I would eventually understand as the single biggest crime ever committed against humanity.
I stayed on Prozac for several years, mostly through the college years, at the time I thought it had healed me, my depression had lifted, I still wasn’t right but they don’t really care about that as long as you are not suicidal. At some point, I think around 24 years of age I dx’d the Prozac. No real difference, if there is one thing I can say positive about Prozac is at least you can stop it without major problems. So I went along OK for a few years, then for no apparent reason, my mind started to turn against me again. This time it was severe…horrible anxiety, constant worry, suicidal thoughts…I had no idea what was going on but I knew I needed help and fast.
Back to the doctor and back on the Prozac…this time no relief. Enter the most evil drug ever created by man…Cymbalta. The doc started me on this new “wonder drug” and thought it would work. Well I think I managed to convince myself that it would work for awhile and stayed on it for about two years. Then the real hell began. The anxiety started again…so of course they have a drug for that…started clonozapam at a small dose .5 mg per day. That kicked the shit out of the anxiety but I could not stay awake. Now I started having unexplained shaking and tremors. And as if that wasn’t good enough I started losing short term memory. So…on to the psychiatrists.
These jackasses really fixed me. Increase the cymbalta to 90mg per day…started having terrible dreams, memory loss, no sexual function whatsoever. Ok you know what that means …we need to add a drug. Over the course of the next year they managed to nearly kill me with cymbalta, abilify, klonipin, lamictal, more prozac, Zoloft. You ****ing name it and these fools tried it…what they didn’t realize it they were CAUSING most of the brain damage (which is exactly what they are doing to you with these drugs). At this point I had the great experience of auditory hallucinations, memory loss, sexual dysfunction, could not stay awake for more than two hours. Thank god I am the VP of my company and was able to somehow maintain my job. I design machinery, and manage the organization. There were literally machines that I had designed and built and I COULD NOT remember how they operated.
I had ****ing had enough…at this point my GF (bless her heart, now my wife) was driving me to my appointments because it was not safe for me to drive. She had read about a new method utilizing nutritional elements and diagnosis of deficiencies combined with balancing all the bodies systems. I had never heard of it but believe me at this point I was already planning my permanent exit. I will tell you this, anyone in this shape that says no I don’t think of suicide is lying…its all I thought about. So the next time I went she went with me, and we asked the following question. “ It seems like all you are doing is just throwing drugs at it and hoping without really knowing what is going to happen, do you have a plan?” Here was their answer, now remember this is the biggest psychiatric organization in the state. “NO, we have no idea…the truth is no one knows if these drugs work at all and if so how they work.” “ if you have a doctor tell you otherwise in reality they are lying”. Straight from the mouth of a psychiatrist that OFTEN speaks for Eli Lilly on their national circuit.
So we asked about this new approach that my wife had read about…and they said…”yes we have a person in our network that does this, would you like to talk to him”? WELL WHAT THE **** DO YOU THINK…NO LETS JUST KEEP DOING WHAT WE ARE DOING IT SEEMS ****ING GREAT!!! So this concludes part one…basically I owe my life to two people first my wife, second to the doctor I will next introduce…