Psychedelic treatment for severe depression--there will be no cavalry!

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The events of the last 2-3 years have come home to roost.  My physical health is OK, though I'm weak.  But my mental health has collapsed, and I'm not working almost full time to try to get myself out of the trauma-induced depression.

 

I spent a year and a half on Wellbutrin.  In my opinion, this drug is a bandaid.  It may have covered the wound during that period.  It does not appear to have affected any healing, and it may or may not have increased the anxiety that resulted from my initial PTSD.  I do not think I'd be any better or worse now than if I had skipped antidepressants. (Most people experiment with various SSRI treatments before they find the right one…I stuck with my first effort, moving up from 150 mg doses to 350 mg.  I didn't realize how much neural and emotional damage had occurred—so I very well may have made my own situation worse.  Still, I don't think a lifetime on Wellbutrin is a "cure.")

 

The result, in any case, is the male version of PTSD and depression, dominated by the textbook behaviors:

 

  • manic cycling
  • lethargy to the point of immobilization
  • averaging 14-15 hours of sleep a day, yet always exhausted
  • withdrawal from all connections
  • anger about the past and fear of the future, and
  • emotional volatility. 

 

In addition, these patterns let my Inner Critic run amok.  The loudest voices in my head for two years straight—24/7--have been "you piece of shit" and "what the fuck."  Faced with an inability to get anything other than ghosting and judgement from my ex-wife—of finally running into a problem I could not eventually solve—I collapsed.  My protective strategies that had kept me functioning for 67 years failed, and my life stopped.  I am dead in my tracks, unable to get off the couch on demand.

 

More successfully, I've done ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.  Those five sessions dusted off, tested, and relaunched neural pathways that had fallen into dormancy when the single track manic behaviors took over two years ago.  This therapy doesn't make you happy, but the medicine shows you those parts so you have current information about yourself…happy, full of gratitude, connected, fun.   Not depressed.  Not in shock.

 

Along with ongoing talk-therapy, I am also microdosing psilocybin.  I worry about this because, though the dose is sub-psychoactive, I appear to get a slight energized high…which makes the other 20 hours of my day dark and moody.  The goal is to sustain the lift from the ketamine treatments, and to hold depression at bay.  I've gone through three cycles (3 days on, 2 days off, with non-active mushrooms as an additive) and the net effect appears to be contrary to stable, happy living.  I am getting more work done, and reading more…but the lows are as low as ever. 

 

I am still depressed.  I blame my ex-wife for triggering this wellbeing disaster.  But my illness has gone so far beyond her sociopathy that, to some degree, it's finally helping me to forget her affairs, her lies, her cheating, and her emotional parsimony.  She sucks.  I'm sick and hanging on by my fingernails.   No one is coming to help me, and because I have severe depression, no one other than medical professionals can. 

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