Coming out of the closet

So, you all know that I'm gay--that's not what this post is about.  It's about the little thing that goes on in my life that people tend to tiptoe around me about, because it's somehow more taboo than the sex of the person I share my life with.  Since I was a kid, I've always dealt with some level of sadness, to the point that my family and friends didn't think it was normal.  And while mood swings are typical of teenagers, what occurred during my college years was clearly not the norm.

I had my first significant episode of what was classified as clinical depression during college, shortly after I quit swimming, during the summer following a semester that began with binge drinking and wrapped up with a case of mono and scarlet fever (yes, scarlet fever--that thing you read about in Little House on the Prairie).   Being the first time I'd ever experienced depression, I thought there was something physically wrong with me, and going to doctors at the Student Health Center, and then the medical center at the Air Force base near my school didn't help to speed along the diagnosis, until I blurted out this litany of frustration to one of my docs--and all he said was "Do you think you might be depressed?"

I was a 20-year-old-typical-pig-headed male at the time and denied this without missing a beat, and then went home and thought about it for several days, and called him back and told him he was right.  I was put on an ancient antidepressant (because military doctors prescribe the cheap stuff first), which eventually landed me in the emergency room.    I went on to try some other antidepressants, finding that either Zoloft or Wellbutrin tended to work well for me.  Over the years that followed, I would either medicate with these drugs, or bury myself in training, either swimming or pursuing triathlon, as a natural fix to this issue.

Exercise has been studied as being as effective as medication in the treatment of depression.  These medical studies run in seeming opposition to the knowledge that excessive exercise can cause depression.   It's a delicate balance, and sometimes things get thrown out whack a little bit.  I've recently stumbled across this article that mostly focuses on the need to identify incidences of depression in athletes (http://www.endurancecorner.com/Mimi_Winsberg/depression).   The sentence that jumped out at me is:

"The main pattern to worry about in the endurance athlete is the athlete who seeks to manage his mood swings and self-esteem with endurance exercise and then gets drawn into a destructive cycle of needing more and more exercise to feel good, while at the same time experiencing increased fatigue, diminishing performance, and a diminishing sense of self-worth."

Beyond this, post-Ironman depression is a well known, if not documented, fact of life of doing triathlon.  The level of demand on your body for racing for an entire day like you do during an Ironman places you into a physical state of extreme disrepair.  Most people take off training following an Ironman for a long period of time as well, which likely adds to the problems.   Additionally, people doing an Ironman have created a significant goal for themselves, and when they achieve that goal, they're often left bewildered--wondering what to do next with their lives.  

I've had many episodes of depression in the past 18 years.   Some of them have been more significant than others, and some were precipitated by a particular event, and some were not.    Some of those events are things you wouldn't argue with being hard to handle:   the first time I dated someone who was HIV-positive (I remain negative to this day, so please don't worry about that), my "divorce" from my ex-partner many years ago,  and times when I've changed jobs and landed in places that really didn't work out for me.

The symptom of medically relevant depression that stands out the most to me, to set it apart from just being sad, is when I don't recover in a normal way from that sadness.  There's a catastrophic spiral down where one event feeds on another to seemingly overcome my world on a daily basis.

Currently, I don't doubt for an instant that I've had a rough year.  I spent a total of 8 weeks on business travel to the east coast at the beginning of this year, and followed that up with a foot injury, a race that I caused more damage to my foot, and then the death of my cat.   I got married, happily, but that event creates a lot of stress in anyone's life.   Without changing companies, I've changed jobs, and I'm having some level of difficulty settling into a routine.  So, I've started medicating.  

I began with dealing with anxiety recently by just taking Klonopin, and found myself taking it every night to go to sleep for the better part of a month.   It took a while for me to recognize this as a depressive crash, but my interest in training, in my every day life, and in the feelings of accomplishment I usually get from doing a good job at work just slowly dwindled away for me.   I met with my doctor and started on Zoloft, which seems to have not done the job by itself, so I've added in Wellbutrin.   Zoloft seems to be a good choice for me because of the obsessive thought processes that I actually have, so I'm a little surprised I haven't already turned the corner.   

Last week, I was instructed to begin tapering off the Klonopin, which left me with about 3 nights in a row that I didn't get much sleep at all.  That lack of sleep knocked me down enough that I've now come down with a nice little head cold.  (Nice way to kick me when I'm down, huh?)

In any case, I think the combination of Zoloft and Wellbutrin will have me feeling better fairly soon.   Just hangin' in there for now...