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Often when depression is diagnosed in someone, some doctors don't seem to take into account whether the person actually has a reason for being depressed or not: which is surely the most important thing.
The most depressed I’ve been in my life is when my granddad died, and then later when my uncle's horse died (childhood memories, etc). But I wasn't depressed at all (in the sense of having a mental illness). Feeling down was just a natural reaction in all of these cases... if someone you love dies then you should be depressed. Having pills which make you happy would be abnormal! And surely bad for your mind in the long-term, confusing and imbalancing it, training it to react unnaturally to things. Whereas just letting yourself be sad is eventually cathartic, healing.
If people want they can take loads of pills and walk around with a big grin on their face, pointing at dustbins and giggling; but I expect to feel down (or at-least not 'up') quite often in my day-to-day life. For balance.
If you ever feel guilty or pathetic when you take drugs (for succumbing to temptation, being their plaything), like I have done, then you will feel depressed because you keep doing something which makes you feel guilty and pathetic. It's not irrational (and depression is irrational).
'staying in the chelsea hotel'... 'completely reduced to browsing the internet on iphone or watching bad tv/dvds and sitting up in bed chain smoking': it all sounds a bit Lost In Translation to me. Are you sure you just don't need a good night's sleep?
I hope that doesn't sound patronising.
Comments like 'I believe that the vast majority of people with mental/emotional issues are usually intelligent people' are true in a way; but in the same way that saying only intelligent people go mad because madness is a sign of unbridled creativity and imagination (all that crazy stuff they come up with!). It makes it sound kind of cool; and it's responsible for too many people (or posers) saying that they're depressed when they're not (from 'emo' plebs to Sylvia Plath fans), and subsequently for me finding it hard to take people who say they're depressed seriously unless they're cutting their wrists in front of me and squirting blood in my face.
One of my favourite quotes is from Philippe Dijan's 37.5 Le Matin (or Betty Blue) (paraphrased):
'happiness doesn't exist, paradise doesn't exist, there's nothing to win or lose, and essentially you can't change anything. But if you think despair is all that's left, then you're wrong again, because despair, like happiness, is an illusion too.
All you can do is go to bed at night and get up in the morning with a smile on your face. Just ‘be'. And thinking about it all the time only complicates matters and doesn't change anything'.
The irony is it's a book about someone who is insane.
I like the sound of that Life Is Grand too. I'm going to illegally download it now.
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