Depression and Addiction, a Double Edged Sword

Hello Everyone,
Hope you're all coping well with all life ups and downs.  I recently got the opportunity to go to Vancouver Island and see some friends and pay my final respects to an amazing friend that helped me early in my recovery. My journey in recovering from binge drinking and occasional drug use has been a breeze compared to my ongoing recovery from depression.

Along the way, alot of people who had never struggled with clinical depression gave me their two cents on the issue.  Even close family members have told me I just need to embrace the power of positive thinking in the midst of an episode. For someone to tell me that is like telling an overweight person they can climb everest.

Active depression feels like a horrible loop in my brain has been activated, a whole separate circuitry in my brain that is pathological and unable to be reset without serious intervention.


I 've often felt frustrated by family doctors, friends and people at meetings.  They would provide simplistic solutions or attitudes towards my condition.  It often made me feel more alone and misunderstood, so I decided breaching the subject wasn't usually to helpful.  Being silent and sad was often better than trying to gain understanding and acceptance from "normal" people.

So I made this video before I went to the Island because I was really upset about losing my friend Jason to addiction and accidental overdose.  He would hang out with me during my darkest hours and I didn't feel like a burden on him because I felt that on some level he understood my suffering.  I didn't talk to him a lot about his issues, but they were obviously serious enough that inspite of having amazing friends, a great job,  and a great family he continued to want to escape from whatever was haunting him in recovery.  Jason was an amazing friend, he was funny and went the extra mile for his friends.

He left behind his family and his family in recovery, including his best friend and her 7 year old son, who saw Jason as a father figure.

The point is that both depression and addiction are serious issues and without getting successful treatment for the depression, its pretty hard to stay sober.

I just hope that we can all be here for one another, online and in person, and find compassion and understanding for those who have a harder path to walk in this lifetime.