by Patrick Julius

Created on: June 30, 2007

Depression is extremely complicated; it exists in shades of grey so subtle that even a trained eye often cannot make them out.

Both sides are wrong: depression is not a straightforward illness, like leukemia or influenza; it is not even as clear-cut as mental dissociation or schizoid delusion. But nor is it something completely normal, something we all experience, something one can just "snap out of" naturally or with convincing.

No, depression is something far more troublesome than this, and I should know, having suffered from it for a good quarter of my life and still fighting it today. Depression lies on the boundary between health and sickness, between ordinary and diseased.

What does depression feel like? It is as if the natural flavors of the world were tilted down a notch, so that sweet became sour and sour became bitter, so that joy became boredom and boredom became despair. It is not so much qualitatively different from ordinary experience as quantitatively different: the highs are smaller and the lows are larger, but they are still highs and lows.

And one of the most difficult features of depression to face is the fact that it is so *appealing,* while you're in it; it feels right to be depressed, so much more right than the pills they give you to make you feel happy again. It seems so natural to slip into decay and despair. You have to fight every moment to remind yourself that this is not the way things ought to be, that what you feel is not what you would feel if you knew better. It's all uphill from there.

I do think that depression is in large part the result of our modern lifestyle; we don't exercise enough, we eat poorly, and above all, we stay indoors nearly all the time. This convinces our brains that we are still in winter, still in times of scarcity, danger, and stress. And so our defense mechanisms are put in place; we become ever vigilant, ever fearful. How far can it be from this to what we call depression? I don't have an obvious solution; we can try to exercise, eat right, and get outside more, but it won't be easy to learn, and it may not be enough. I guess we do the best we can.

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