So...I've kind of had enough. I am so over listening to people debate mental health and substance abuse as if it's some kind of fucking Hollywood created, money induced, pathetic CHOSEN disability. It isn't. It's real and prevelant and taking lives, if not literally, then certainly metaphoriacally taking away anything important. It is a cruel, non-discriminating, son of a cunt, piece of shit disease that ruins lives EVERY DAY. I will maintain through this post, that until you or someone you love or in most cases, BOTH, have gone through it, than you can fuck right off because you have no idea.

Do you know what depression does? Do you know how you get out of bed every day and go to work and something tells you, even when you don't want to do it, that you're doing it for your kids, or your family, or to have a life some day where you don't have to work so hard and can retire? Guess how that is when you're depressed? It isn't that you don't care about your kids, or family or retirement. You care very much. In fact, you stay awake every night worrying about how they're going to be taken care of. You become an insomniac. No matter what you do, you can't sleep. So maybe you try taking a Unisom. But that isn't enough. You feel like garbage in the morning. So you try beer, or liquor or wine, just enough to let you fall asleep peacefully. But then you wake up feeling like just as much garbnage the next day. Hungover. But if the sleeping pills do the same and the wine is cheaper...??? WHY NOT. So there begins the substance abuse used to cure a disease you can't find tresatment for. OR you take the anti depressants. You gain 50 pounds and then people make fun of you, your doctors tell you you need to diet, even though you're only consuming 1200 calories a day. And that doesn't help. None of it. Your husband thinks you're fat and doesn't want you anymore. So you stop the anti depressants that are keeping you sane and work out like a maniac and it STILL isn't enough. So you keep drinking to sleep, keep running to lose weight, start vomiting what little you do eat out of nervous anxiety and what is becoming self hatred for things you can't control.

Sound fun yet? It gets better. Your marriage fails because you're accused of losing weight to be more attractive to other men, even though he doesn't know how severely unhealthy your "weight loss" habits have become. You're sleeping in fitfull spurts from the nightmares you're having that are made worse from the alcohiol you're consuming to try and sleep. And all the while you're wondering what is so wrong with your brain that you cannot function on the same level as every one around you.

Does de[ression sound like Hollywood "fun" yet? You think back to when it first began and chances are, you were a child and didn't recognize it for what it was. My first panic attack happened when I was 11. At least the first one I have vivid memories of. It came on entering junior high with a bunch of kids I didn't know in an environment that was new to me. A routine that has changed. And, for me, this has been my biggest trigger. While I welcome changes, if they're too new, too real, too fast, I panic. I've found