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In Reply to: Now, you may think i'm crazy but ya know what I did? posted by Daniel on February 21, 2006 at 05:10:14:
I've done something similar myself. Religious devotion has a way of kicking up the endorphins, not unlike the therapeutic benefit of a long walk.
Even though I take medication, it isn't like I don't have days when I struggle with a lot of pain--both emotional and physical. The SSRIs don't exactly numb the pain. That's why I pray, because it helps a lot.
Like Rocky, I take meds to balance my brain chemistry. It's not about solace. It's about reducing the number of intrusive suicidal thoughts and keeping my mind clear to think rationally. I've been in a place that was much scarier than the desperation that attends the emotional pain of despair. I've watched my mind bend and warp to the point that I became convinced my young children would be better off if I were dead. A few years ago (during a two-year period when I was off medication), I became so enraged with one of my adult children over a relatively minor communication conflict that I seriously considered disinheriting him and cutting off all contact as though he were dead. Talk about distorted perception! I might have destroyed an important family relationship because I was seriously triggered on an abuse memory that my son knew nothing about.
What other people think about my condition and subsequent health choices is really not important. What matters is the quality of my life, particularly as I age. I am facing the possibility of developing dementia and drooling into my applesauce while wearing diapers. The good thing about that state of being (as I observed in a close family member), is that the memory of pain goes away altogether. Ahhh...the solace of plaque deposits on the dendrites!
