Decatur Book Festival

I spoke at the Decatur Book Festival today.  (In the video, some strange guy is talking so loudly in the background that you can barely hear my soft spoken Southern drawl. Oh well, I look pretty good.) I was touched and gratified when I was approached after my reading by a woman who had happened upon the event by chance and was drawn to my conversation about inpatient experiences and mental health struggles. She had been diagnosed as bipolar and was in the throes of fighting the good fight with medication. The words “medication resistant” were not new to her. She bought Southern Vapors and I suggested that she contact me here on the blog after she read it.

We talked a bit about an idea that I have been kicking around. My thought is that if you hear from your psychiatrist that you are “medication resistant,” maybe you should take a deep breath and see if the translation is “no diagnosable illness.” Most doctors will not readily tell you that your suffering does not have a physical origin, because they are not in the business of watching you suffer only to stand by,  unable to help you. (My more cynical side says that they are also not in the business of not making money.) The logic is pretty simple–if you have a chemical imbalance that is anywhere along the spectrum of depression, there is a really good chance that one or more of the plethora of drugs out there will make you feel at least a tiny bit better. Maybe not address the manic/anxiety side of things, but no improvement in symptoms of depression? How likely is that? To put it in really plain terms, if the pills don’t work, maybe you aren’t sick.

That doesn’t mean you don’t feel awful, scared, impotent, desperate or hopeless. Those words are separate words from “depression” in the dictionary for a reason. They stem from different places than depression and they are assuaged by different methods. For me, those methods include patience, talk therapy, exercise, watching out for my stressors and seeking the things that soothe me. And more patience.

I hope that woman starts a conversation with me here on the blog after she reads the book.