I Swear By Happy Pills!

Ok, so last week, well, it didn't go over so well with me. You have your good days and your bad days. Last week was just one bad week.

Bleh.

Well, fortunately, it is over, but not without me going through my first time ever seeing an honest to goodness Psychiatrist. He officially diagnosed me as having character-driven Dysthymic Depression. And I'm now on medication.

All is well with the world now. Ahh. . .

But truthfully, depression is something I've been having difficulty with for a while now and for a long time it was just a fact of life that I was content to ignore.

Really, Depression is not something you should brush off. I learned this the hard way a couple years back. But though I came to grips that I had this problem and I should do something about it, something kept me from actually making any motion to do something about it. I didn't want to cause myself anymore headaches, I knew I had a problem but for some reason I thought if I could try hard enough, I could just get through it and be done on my own.

Last week, with all the little things going on, and dealing with the stress of initially deploying and trying to get into a niche, a routine of sorts, I found myself at a very difficult time, and I was getting sick of being lectured all of the time from people telling me that I had no reason to be the way I was considering this was one of the best deployments I could have gotten.

Believe me, you don't have to tell me that. I know. Besides, I volunteered to come here and despite all of what happened last week, I still want to be here. But at one point I got really scared that I was just screwed up in the head enough that they would send me home and I don't want that. At first I didn't want to say anything for fear of what would happen if I did.

The Psychologist here kind of eased my mind a bit and let me talk, trying to reassure to me that it was ok, I wasn't a complete nut job and what I was going through was actually normal.

You know, for the first time, hearing that made me feel better about it. He did notice that I seemed depressed and then referred me to the Psychiatrist, whom I saw today.

And I discovered one benefit of being in the army.

Back home, it takes about 4 weeks to six months to see a Psychiatrist. Here, it took the Psychologist 30 minutes to refer me to one.

And if nothing else, now I know the difference between the two.

I'm not perfect, I've never claimed to be perfect, I got some pretty hefty faults and I guess I've finally taken a step to get through them. Once I get onto a normal routine, I can get on with my deployment, actually enjoy myself, and come back a better person for it.

Even if I have to admit to seeing a Shrink regularly.