When it came time to pick colleges, my sand-baked California high-school peers all stayed in state where they could bask underneath the sun; but not me, I decided to head to the Northwest and come to the University of Oregon. My transition from home appeared to be seamless, little did I know that was far from the case.
After two months of being away from home I still felt a little out of place. Where my roommate and hallmates had adjusted, I hadn’t. I began staying in on weekends and spending time in solitude. My hallmates urged me to come out with them, but I rejected their offers every time with excuses and lies. My social habits weren’t the only things that started changing; my appetite for food was meager at best. To make matters worse, I rarely slept at night. I felt like a walking zombie, I had no passion for anything and I didn’t even care.
It wasn’t until a few months later that I finally chose to confront my depression. An appointment with a doctor at the health center quickly diagnosed me with depression, anxiety and mood disorder and insomnia. I started taking Prozac and a sleeping aid, but I felt no better-if anything, I felt more numb. I was angry at myself for not getting better faster. I didn’t understand why the medication wasn’t fixing anything immediately, or why talking to a therapist just made me feel more and more unhappy.
Walking back from class in a down-pour one evening, I got to my room and made one of the worst decisions of my life. I swallowed handfuls of my medications and fell to my knees crying. If these medications were supposed to be making me better, then I just needed more. Five minutes later I stumbled down the hallway to find someone who would take me to the hospital so I could fix my mistake.
The next thing I remembered was being tucked into a hospital bed and instructed to drink an entire cup of activated charcoal. It was so hard, but what was worse was seeing the look on my scared hallmates’ faces.
After that night I switched to a stronger medication that would boost my energy level. Weekly trips to a therapist and a new medicinal regime seemed to help me find my way back, but it seemed odd that as my depression seemed to wane, so did the stormy weather. My therapist offered the notion that perhaps my depression was not clinical, but seasonal. Being from a state where the sun always shone, I was prone to
seasonal depression, or Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
Now, as I’m sitting here writing my past into publication, I wish that I were reading this for the first time, so I could’ve acted faster. But life is a onetime deal, so now I want to be the voice for those who find themselves in the situation I was in. I urge anyone who feels like perhaps they might be help, suffering from seasonal depression to be proactive and seek whether it be from a friend, family member, therapist or doctor. There are things you can do, and I hope this insight I have given readers into my past lets other sufferers know they are certainly not alone.
Battling the Blues
Daily Emerald
October 24, 2006
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