Words Fail Me

For almost all of the last fifteen years, I’ve been on antidepressants prescribed by my doctor.  (Briefly Prozac at the start and then Wellbutrin.)  Recently, I reviewed my prescription with a psychiatrist specializing in addiction medicine.  After discussing how I’ve been feeling lately, she asked me several interesting questions:

1. Have you had any seizures?  (Both alcohol and Wellbutrin lower the threshold for seizures, which is one of the reasons alcohol is contraindicated.)
2. Is there a medicine you’ve heard of that sounded interesting?  (Apparently the placebo effect is powerful enough that patience who have their heart’s set on trying a particular prescription often benefit from that prescription.)
3. Is anyone in your family on antidepressants?  (I learned that psychotropic drugs which work on one family member often works on others.)

She tweaked my morning dosage of Wellbutrin and then strongly urged me to look in to A.A., despite my reservations.

As due diligence, I did.  Online, I found a nearby A.A. meeting, but when I showed up it turned out to be a woman’s meeting.  The two kind ladies I met suggested a different nearby meeting which started a half hour later.  That turned up to be a gay & lesbian meeting, but whatever.  I appreciated their obvious camraderie but was still put off by all the things about A.A. that trouble me.

I mentioned my concerns — the idea of the substance as an external & irresistible force, the powerlessness of the individual, the binary definition of alcoholism, the insistence on a higher power — and he mentioned two secular & one Buddhist recovery programs:  SMART Recovery, S.O.S., and Refuge Recovery.

I tried a SMART Recovery meeting in Encino.  Everyone seemed very open & committed and several of them struck me as quite intelligent.  There was also a bit of a life hacking vibe which I appreciated.  I ended up taking a lot of notes and buying their handbook.

I also tried an S.O.S. meeting in Hollywood.  Yeah.  Wow.  It was an older group and very small.  After telling me about her struggles with overeating & hoarding, the leader told me that the group was particularly somber because a couple who were regular attendees had recently relapsed, one after the other.  One guy was celebrating his ten years of sobriety, which was great and we celebrated with Martinelli’s and Perrier, but the rest of the meeting struck me as rather sad.  I asked some pointed questions about what each of them found “enough” to live for, but didn’t hear great answers.

I think about this scene several times a day.  I often feel like Luke does:

“I don’t even know what we’re doing here!  We’re wasting our time!”

I’m reminded of the canard about depression being “anger turned inward.”

I was telling my therapist at Kaiser that I have this tiny ember of hope about life and I keep casting around looking for kindling, hoping that I can keep it burning and making it self-sustaining.

I was mulling over the different approaches different people take to living, but slowly realized that most approaches can be used by both those who see meaning and those who don’t.  Nihilism was the only approach that I could think of which seems exclusively aligned with an unambiguous lack of meaning.

I realize that this is all Philosophy 101 stuff, but I’m trying to work these things out for myself from first principles.