For a large part of my life, I was a low-level depressive without recognising it for what it was. I just thought I was being pathetic, procrastinating, lazy or ineffective. Then one day I was diagnosed with full-blown depression.
Don’t you find reading about celebrities who commit suicide depressing? I do. Not because I’ll miss them; my reason is even more selfish.
It is because I feel my own life pales when compared to the fame, talent, ridiculous amounts of money and beautiful partners they always seem to have. Yet, inexplicably, they take their own lives?
People like Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, Kurt Cobain, Ernest Hemingway, Ricky Rick… the list goes on and on. By killing themselves, they make my humdrum existence seem worse than it is. If all the fame; a money-making job – usually something glamorous; attractive partners; a spectacular home; plus, plus, plus are not enough to make them want to carry on living, then what is?
But not all celebrities commit suicide. So, it can’t be fame, money and glamour or a combination of these triggering their deaths. I mean, there is nothing intrinsically terminal about being well known or being wealthy, and I can’t see anything deadly in being good looking.
And of course, not all suicides are celebrities. Ordinary people also take their own lives… and at last count, in droves. A staggering 700,000+ a year globally. And in these tragic events, there seems to be one common, dominant factor – depression.
Boarding-school blues
Although at times we all get depressed, we don’t necessarily end up killing ourselves. Our reaction depends on how miserable we are. For instance, decades after attending school I still sometimes get down on a Sunday night. Boarding-school blues, I call it. Fortunately, it is not lethal. It just makes me feel intensely sad.
But it seems that for a large part of my life I was a low-level depressive without recognising it for what it was. I just thought I was being pathetic, procrastinating, lazy or ineffective.
Then one day I was diagnosed with full-blown depression. Apparently I was clinically depressed. The psychiatrist prescribed some pills, which would make life bearable.
Traumatically, they did not kick in immediately. In the following weeks, on at least three occasions I contemplated suicide. Everything just seemed so hopeless and meaningless.
Strangely, it was at a time in my life I should have been over the moon, ecstatic, deliriously happy. The book I had just written, Joost: The Man in the Mirror, had just become the best selling book in South Africa.
I didn’t feel like a best-selling author. Instead, I saw myself as an impostor, just acting like a “proper” author. Springbok rugby player Joost van der Westhuizen and I did several book signings, and at each one I kept feeling like apologising to the people whose books I signed for not being a “real” writer. This was in 2010.
Ten years before in 2000, I had a stroke. It paralysed the left side of my body, and I was unable to speak coherently. I was basically a vegetable. Now given that before this inconvenience I had run the Comrades, paddled the Dusi Canoe Marathon, regularly played five-a-side football, ridden the Argus Cycle Tour multiple times etc, I soon found I wasn’t good at being greengrocer stock.
So, if ever anyone had reasons to be depressed, I had them in bundles. But curiously, in the two years it took me to get back to normal I never once, even for a minute, got depressed. Paradoxically, when as a sudden best-selling author I had every reason not to be depressed, I was borderline suicidal.
Overwhelming statistics
The statistics on depression are overwhelming. Apart from the astronomic suicide rate, it has been estimated almost 300 million people around the world suffer from depression. I have difficulty getting my mind around such gargantuan numbers.
However, when I learnt that Sadag (the South African Depression and Anxiety Group) takes upwards of 3,000 calls – not a month, not a week, but a DAY – I began to understand the enormity of the problem.
Even worse, one every four callers is suicidal. It makes Covid-19 look like a picnic. And think about it – for every one person calling the helpline, there must be others who don’t know about Sadag, or don’t have the confidence to call a stranger and tell them they are in trouble. So the 3,000 calls a day could conceivably represent many, many more people.
I call depression the silent pandemic. This is because many people feel there is a stigma to having depression and therefore are reluctant to admit they suffer from it, so, they don’t talk about it.
In 2015 I had a heart attack at the Bryanston Virgin Active and died, though only for a few minutes. Fortunately, training next to me on a stationary bike was a young anaesthetist who injected me with adrenaline and jump-started my heart with an automated external defibrillator (AED). Later I was told by my cardiologist that if I had been anywhere else “you would have remained dead, and we wouldn’t have met”.
Five years later the anaesthetist who saved my life committed suicide.
I was devastated. Surely, he knew enough professionals who could have assisted with whatever was tormenting him? After weeks of disbelief, I started writing a book on depression, to see if I could make sense of this strangest of afflictions.
In my research, the weirdest fact I have come across so far is that never mind wars, the crime rate, natural disasters, wild animals, in-laws or whatever you fear – the biggest danger to your happiness is your own brain.
Sinking life raft
Later, in the depths of my depression episode, while having a drink with a mate who doesn’t believe depression is a real condition, he said this to me: “Gemmell, think about it – there are no depressed people on a sinking life raft. They haven’t got time to feel sorry or hate themselves or to be unhappy and ‘woe is me’. Their all-consuming purpose is to survive. They simply have no time to be miserable.”
As he spoke, I had an epiphany. Suddenly it was all clear to me. To get rid of my depression I had to get on a metaphoric sinking life raft. In essence what I needed to do was discover an overriding purpose.
In 1946, Viktor Frankl wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning about life in the death camps of Germany. He was an Austrian psychologist who ended up in Auschwitz.
He was part of a group who collected new prisoners from rail trucks as they arrived. He tells how it was impossible to predict just by looking at them who would survive long. The big guys didn’t always, and the little weak, sickly guys were not always the first to give up. Later, as he interviewed many of them, he concluded it was the ones who had a purpose who lasted longer than the ones who didn’t.
But the fascinating aspect of his conclusion was that it didn’t matter what the purpose was. If it was simply to see a spouse again, or just a pet dog, or if it was as mundane as wanting to have one more slap-up dinner… if it got you up in the mornings, it was all that was needed to survive the appalling conditions in Auschwitz. German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously said: “He who has a why to live, can bear almost any how.”
Recent research shows people with a purpose live longer, sleep better and have lower stress levels. Lower stress levels mean less cortisol, a hormone that regulates the fight-or-flight response and which is released into the body. High cortisol levels have been linked to anxiety, depression, weight gain, and a dozen other problems.
Lower cortisol production tends to make a person less reactive and more resilient. So, they bounce back when stressed rather than becoming overwhelmed. The power of purpose drives behaviour, builds resilience, and provides a sense of personal fulfilment.
While working on the depression book, I analysed my paradoxical behaviour during my stroke and the depression I experienced with the Joost book. The answer was surprisingly simple.
Sense of purpose
When I had the stroke, I had, without knowing it, discovered a metaphorical “sinking life raft”. I was either going to get better, or I was going to be a vegetable for life. So, I had a purpose thrust on me. There was no time to be depressed.
While writing the Joost book, I had a purpose. The publishers gave me six weeks as they wanted it as a Christmas book. I loved writing it.
But after I sent them the completed manuscript, for three months I had nothing to do. I had given up my job as a project manager to write it, and given the time of year (August), there weren’t many people clamouring for my skills.
By the time the book came out, I was completely directionless, bored and slowly spiralling down into depression. And when it took off, I was diagnosed as being clinically depressed.
I had replaced my purpose of meeting a deadline with – nothing.
So, depression is very real. As real as a gaping wound, even though you can’t see it. So, if you get/have it, treat it just as you would any other illness. See someone and talk about it. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Keeping it to yourself is not only depriving you of a cure, it can quite literally become a killer.
There are numerous ways it can be treated. These include medication/microdosing/ketamine; exercise (natures’ antidepressant); mindfulness; cognitive behavioural therapy, finding a purpose, etc.
And don’t get sensitive about taking antidepressants. People take pills to control their cholesterol, to manage their blood pressure, various supplements, etc, and they are not embarrassed about it.
If you haven’t got a purpose – make looking for a purpose your purpose. Live your life according to the Chinese adage: “Rather live a thousand different days, than the same day a thousand times.” Stop being a spectator to other people’s lives and binge-watching television or sport or anything else.
And when did you last do something for the first time? Find new things to do, new interests to follow, new ways of getting more out of life.
And remember, there are no depressed people on a sinking life raft. DM
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