914 you seem to have a very naive view of what depression is. You seem to think it's purely causal. Something must have happened to cause it - Relationship problems, money problems, hardship and adversity. It may come as surprise to you to learn that for many, depression and suicidal thoughts are not linked to anything tangible in their lives, but are purely the products of a chemical imbalance - an under availabilty (so to speak) of the neurotransmitter serotonin. That is where drugs like prozac come in. They inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, making it more available. Serotonin is associated with the brains ability to create a happy, contented state. It is now widely believed in scientific circles that many people who produce low levels of serotonin (depressives) - compensate for it by participating in high risk taking in order to stimulate the brains production of the euphoria inducing adrenaline. Put simply, although many people are unaware of it, they may BASE jump in order to activate their adrenaline response in order to compensate for their lower serotonin levels. This isn't simply - BASE jumping makes them feel happy or euphoric. It is more BASE jumping makes them feel normal again. Human again. Alive again. It lifts the blackness. I am no scientist but this rings so true. I started BASE jumping at a point in my life when I was in my (what i call now) black state. The walls were closing in on me for no reason and as unpalatable as suicide felt, it seemed at the time to be a perfectly good solution to the torment i was in. I'll go further in fact. It was THE perfect solution, the only real solution. Only a person who has been in this mental state will appreciate what I have just written. If you think you can rationalise your way out of it then you really have no understanding of that state. Anyway, I started BASE jumping - not because i wanted to use it to die, but because it was something i wanted to do anyway and at that point i felt if I survived my jumps then that would be great, but if i didn't then that too would be great cos it would offer me release from the blackness. What happened however was it gave me my life back. It gave me myself back (and i know that sounds corny, but i also know that anyone who has been there will understand it). It gave me absolute focus and clarity, and that wasn't just spiritual and emotional, it was chemical. I still take Fluoxetine (prozac) daily. Prozac has helped me redress the chemical balance enormously, and i use it because I need to keep on top of my imbalance and BASE jumping is just too sporadic and intermittent to rely on, but I know that BASE jumping is an amazing supplement. Being white, middle class, american, married, wealthy etc does not rule you out from genuine chemical depression. In fact it could be argued that those factors actually contribute to the inactivity of the adrenaline response and thus make any imbalance in serotonin more noticeable, but then i would be guessing. I've written this because it's important to me that people at least try to understand the nature of depression. It isn't something you can just shake yourself out of. It isn't just feeling sorry for yourself. It isn't feeling a bit glum. You can not rationalise your way out of a genuine depression no more than a diabetic can rationalise themselves out of a attack or a hayfever sufferer can give themselves a good talking to about their streaming red eyes. I hope that is food for thought for some of you who think it's just someone trying to be a bit different and a bit controversial. dr. pepper - so misunderstood.
