Antidepressant Use Up Among Journalists

Plausible headline, eh?

While employed NPR journalists yesterday covered the unemployment of so many colleagues in mainstream media, tears poured from my eyes.

I was stacking wood and had the radio on but it wasn't the coverage. I could be driving to the grocery store or cooking dinner or even watching my dogs delightfully playing and it seems the waterworks can just start streaming down my face lately.

I called my doctor and asked to be put on sertraline, the generic variety of Zoloft, because it has the lowest co-pay.

There have been times in the past when I have taken antidepressants, so I know they can work for me. There were a few months 11 years ago right after my dad died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 63. There were a few months a couple of years back when my family was gone and I didn't know if I would get them back. I still had a job, a career and a profession and continued to perform as well as always, while constantly on the verge of tears.

One of the few things it's actually hard to do while weeping as much as possible is to eat well. One of the easiest things is to smoke, but amazingly I have still not smoked since August 24, thank goodness & the transdermal delivery system.

Anyway, the point of sharing this is that while I can recognize depression, and that even if it has an identifiable cause, it's not necessarily going to get better all on its own.

There are plenty of folks a lot worse off than me, and I know it. There's the frckn earthquake in Indonesia for God's sake. I have a partner who has a job that greatly decreases the chances of us losing our home, and includes domestic partner health insurance so that I could even consider getting an antidepressant.

But even though I can tell myself clearly and intelligibly that I need to move on, buck up, count my blessings, don't worry, enjoy today, keep the faith, make myself useful, do the things I need to do, etc., etc., those tears just keep wanting to flow.

I suspect that somebody hiring me to do what I love doing and am really good at would have the same effect that I expect this medication will start having in a few days or weeks. But since the former might not happen anytime soon, I decided I needed some help.

The other day I actually took out the book, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff-- and It's All Small Stuff" from the library and it didn't help. Then, coincidentally I saw this really great Guardian piece, "Welcome to the Bright New World of Positive Thinking" about people-- like me-- trying to make themselves feel better while the world falls apart-- brilliantly engulfed by google ads marketing same.

Asking my doctor for the cheapest generic antidepressant asap is not going to end the current Great Depression. But I did just come across an opening to inquire/obsess about so I am going to go do that, hoping that if I actually get an interview one of these days my eyes won't be leaking all the way there.