depression

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I've never had depression, ever.

I've always had fear as far back as I can remember, but I've never been depressed, even when given a reason for it. :/

ECT is always something to look at; I remember people with bad depression getting it done at the mental hostel. They say it helps in many cases.

Okay, about hugs, and the possibility that your friend might get annoyed . . .

what I learned playing poker is that it's not about picking up on the subtlities. It's about letting the obvious be obvious (very zen in that fashion!) It was about not burying my head so deeply in my own cards that I miss what is patently obvious right there in front of me. Socially, it means slightly backing up from my mode of all-sending, no-receiving.

(With considerable math skills, including teaching high school math for one year, I broke even with poker. I do not recommend it other than the social skills)

About school . . . here are two potential openings:

Run one semester ahead. If you can spend one third of your time on current classes, one third on classes you're probably going to take next semester, and one third on intellectual projects of your own choosing, that gives you enormous flexibility and buffer. If you hit a rough patch, you're already ahead of the game. The one-third, one-third, one-third is perhaps the theoretical ideal, but if you can do this even partially, you're more allowing yourself to learn at a natural pace, and not the school's pace.

If you can experiment and find what are your up-energy times of the day, you can ride with them and maybe ease into the more challenging projects slightly before an up period.

Other people might be able to provide suggestions for other possible openings.

I found college very disappointing because it was not really an intellectual environment. It was not about drawing you out what you're good at. It was more about being superficial and being adequate in a whole range of fields.

For example, philosophy . . it wasn't really about doing philosophy, it was about memorizing how other people have done philosophy. And because there are literally no jobs, until someone holding a position retires, it lead to oneupsmanship, at least the program where I took classes.

And writing papers in English . . . it took me a long time to figure out, no, the professor doesn't want me to say what I think about the piece and, no, the professor doesn't want me to summarize the piece. Primarily, he or she wants me to summarize what various critics have said about the piece, with perhaps a little bit of summarizing the piece itself, and maybe just the smallest tidbit of what I think.

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If you laid out a semester, you might get too isolated socially. But maybe if you took a light load, you might then be able to implement the one semester ahead strategy (if that appeals to you). You might also ask a professor if you can visit him or her every couple of weeks, perhaps showing something in progress and thus kind of get some informal coaching (please have modest expectations regarding this, you know as well as I do what kind of time pressures professors have)


Joke: What caused the demise of the dinosaurs? Oh, no, no, and it wasn't the impact at Chicxulub. The reason for the dinosaurs' demise---well, the dinosaurs didn't publish any papers and that is the reason they went extinct!

ECT is usually very hard to get. I tried discussing it with my psych years ago & she told me that I'd have to be a sever case; like extremely suicidal or catatoni (like not eating, not moving & being completely unresponsive to everything). I've chatted with some people online who've had it done a few times & they said it kind of messed-up their thought processes some. But I think the meds caused a lot of long-term side-effects for me because I can not concentrate like I used to; my typing is slower & I have more errors, & I feel like I make mush less sense than I used to when I type post. My minds in a fog that it was not in before all that

I used to know a guy who was given ECT back in the Sixties. Back then, things were less regulated and less scrupulous and he was given it as a sort of punishment because he wasn't conforming to norms. He was caught naked in public a few times (a deserted mansion that the local young people used to go hang out at, smoke dope, play with sparklers, run around naked, etc.) and had been arrested for political protests a few times and he ended up being ordered to a mental institution by a judge where he was given ECT to "straighten him up."

He said he couldn't speak properly and couldn't straighten his arms more than half-way for an entire year afterwards. It "straightened him up" but mostly because he became too non-functional to hang out with the other hippies and run wild any more. He had been a poet before and it took him years before he was able to write poetry again and he said that he had never been able to write poetry as well as before. He showed me some things he had written from before the ECT and some things he had written the year I knew him -- a couple of decades after the ECT -- and he was right, the new stuff wasn't anywhere as good as the old stuff.

I'm sure ECT helps some people. I've read first-hand accounts from people who swear it saved their life. But it can really mess someone up, too.

If stopping the medication worked for you, more power to you brother. And maybe you tailed off rather than stopping abruptly. But still, to me, seems like a somewhat risky strategy. And if a person has a doctor he or she can halfway talk to, also seems like an unnecessary strategy.

I'm all with you on efforts, projects, endeavors, experiments to help others. Feeling useful is a very good thing, and can spill over into other life areas (or not). These days, I'm learning skills of medium planning, to accept and even somewhat embrace the random aspects of life. To ride the zen waves as it were. And that all of us, Aspie, 'Normal,' Different in Different Ways, all of us, are pretty doggone complex, and that's actually kind of a good thing

And I'm also all with you on having people who will hear you out, and who do not feel the need for some reason to put you in a box.

I did NOT suddenly quite & I would highly recommend NOT suddenly stopping meds unless directed by a doc. I did it very gradually. I was on a few meds at the time so I slowly reduced the dosage of the one that I felt I needed the least & it was a very low dosage to begin with. After being off it for a couple weeks; I started with a different med. I was very watchful of side-effets & when I started feeling really bad or having a problem; I quit reducing dosage for a bit & gave things a chances to stabilize.
I had talked to my psych about wanting to stop meds before but she had kept insisting that I needed to be on em so she just kept changing things around instead. She did not seem to understand that the meds wer causing me the emotional/mental & other problems I was having till I had quit em & she said I did not have to go back. I am NOT perfect & i still have some issues/problems but I am not the same person who slashed myself & was having crying spells every single nite. I'm more aware of what to watch for & I have better strategies on how to deal with things than I did. The problem with the psychs is that they push meds instead of trying to help people address the other issues. By the time I quit the meds; they wer hurting me more than helping

Nick, I'm with you and it sounds like you did it just right. And I'm sorry that doctor didn't do a better job of listening to you when you tried to tell her the pills weren't working.

(the only silver-lining is that she wasn't such a "be-righter" that she insisted you go back on the pills because she couldn't stand to acknowledge a mistake. Instead from that point, sounds like she kind of played an okay game, let's move forward in a positive way, that kind of thing. Sounds like she has a good B game, similar to a baseball pitcher being able to win even when he doesn't bring his best stuff)

We should not shy away from talking about difficult issues, but neither should we do it exclusively. For example, if I can find an Aspie support group from my town, I don't want us to only sit in a room and only talk, and only do that exclusively.

I'd want us to, for example . . . to take bike trips, see how far we can branch out, explore the city from different differents

to try and do some volunteer work together, bring companion animals into a senior center (frankly, I don't even get motivated to do these kind of things, and not so depressed these days), I'd go along with it, more for the adventure and the outing with other people

one thing that motivates me is very feisty journalism (not everyone's cup of tea, certainly not everyone with Asperger's)

I wish there was something I could do to help. I'm glad you're expressing your sadness though - that's a good thing to do. You can always talk to me.