Posted: Jun 14, 2010 8:07 am
I was never diagnosed, but I do suspect that I've suffered one form of depression in the past (a mildish one - I didn't top myself after all, but then that could be down to it seeming an utterly fucking pointless exercise). This depression (if it was depression) occurred at the time I was trying desperately to make sense of the world and my place in it... in other words, trying to work out why the fuck I'd been taught utter fucking nonsense about supernatural boogie-men, and how to establish some way of telling what was actual from what was utter shite.
In short, I suspect I was clinically depressed as a result of being raised religious. I still get bummed out every so often, but nowhere near significant on-going depression... and what alleviated it seems to have been realising that I'm an evolved organism, a bipedal relatively-hairless ape with all the evolutionary baggage that comes with that, including the ability to grasp that fact. This, combined with the understanding that it is possible for shit to actually make fucking sense - for one thing to follow from another in a way that religion almost never embraces intelligently - gives me a great big emotional/intellectual hardon for life.
Gotta go make dinner, but I think I'll come back to this thread.
In short, I suspect I was clinically depressed as a result of being raised religious. I still get bummed out every so often, but nowhere near significant on-going depression... and what alleviated it seems to have been realising that I'm an evolved organism, a bipedal relatively-hairless ape with all the evolutionary baggage that comes with that, including the ability to grasp that fact. This, combined with the understanding that it is possible for shit to actually make fucking sense - for one thing to follow from another in a way that religion almost never embraces intelligently - gives me a great big emotional/intellectual hardon for life.
Gotta go make dinner, but I think I'll come back to this thread.