Dr. Helen has a long and in-depth look at an article from Men’s Health about exercise and depression.. Both are extremely interesting reads, especially considering my own experiences in high school and the first bit of college.
In high school I was a pretty good runner. Not phenomenal, but pretty good. My senior year I clocked a 4:23 mile and on a slightly worse day a 4:13 in the 1500m. I ran a 2:00 800m, and the 400m in about 52.0. I did pretty well in Cross Country, too, posting a 16:29 in the 5k my senior year. I was also in four choirs and wrote for the school newspaper, I slept maybe four or five hours a night.
Unfortunately, all of the physical activity ruined my knees due to an undiagnosed pronation problem. I had to quit running, and going off to college sapped most of my other extracurriculars out of my life. They were eventually replaced, but my first year and a half at school was pretty difficult. After a few life events, there was a great reckoning of a depressive episode. That sort of manifested itself in the way people are used to thinking of depression: withdrawing from life, sleeping a lot and/or on a weird schedule, crying…until the cutting started. That was bad, after a little while doing that I realized I was a bit, shall we say, messed up in the brain mean and should probably seek some kind of professional assistance. Fortunately for me, that was a very positive experience, and I haven’t had an episode that bad since.
I’ve had other depressive episodes, to be sure, that mostly manifested in aggressiveness, overworking, and booze. In college, when I was editor of a particularly wonderful publication I would routinely work for days on end, fueled by stimulants (mostly over-the-counter, legal ones) and alcohol (to take the edge off). I also did the kind of drinking you see in those D.A.R.E. ads about risky behavior. Actually, no, those DARE ads were full of wankers, imagine if you took every Irish stereotype and multiplied it by the stereotypes about German beer drinking. That’s coming pretty close. Most of this makes for good stories, but I’m pretty sure that eating an entire box of No-Doz and then drinking two entire bottles of 100 proof Schnapps (mint) is not a healthy way to live.
Anyway, reading these articles has me doing a lot of “yup, that’s me”, although obviously not to the same sort of degree. I think I got a little lucky that the crashing out happened a little early in life, and that for the most part I can handle bad things happening without losing my mind too much anymore, and without wanting to take out out on myself.
I do, however, reserve the right to keep yelling at traffic. I think that’s an okay outlet.
