by fellowniusmonk | 2025-05-22 15:39:19+00:00
Ok, yeah, my underlying cause was everything. I had a bad case of everything bad that can happen happening at the same time (except personal death). Both my parents had previously died in my twenties and yet this period of time in my life was 10x harder than that in terms of grief and turmoil, I reverted to a child like state and had constant intrusive wishes that I could just lay my head on my moms lap and cry but of course I couldn't.

My cognitive capacity dropped so low that even my speech became nearly monosyllabic. The feeling of being depressed switched to the point where I was in a constant fog and I really felt like I was a passenger to the depression, like I no longer had depression but depression had me.

I was going to a therapist at the time who was very good and very expensive and he was quite clear about the need for intervention and to take things seriously. I had also recently stumbled across this paper: https://www.jcdr.net/articles/PDF/6186/13392_CE%28RA1%29_F%2... so even though I had depression my primary concern was the severity that had led to my cognitive decline.

I really didn't want to go on anti-depressants but I was willing to do so, I made a deal with my therapist that I would commit to biking every single day for the 3 weeks between sessions and if I didn't stick to that commitment I would start a prescription.

My dad had a terrible bout with depression when I was a teenager, caused by some very serious betrayal in business dealings by a close friend, for a time he didn't get out of bed, that short period of time spiraled our family life out of control and materially destroyed my life trajectory which took me decades of hard work to crawl out of because I started supporting our family full time at 15 out of necessity, because this was pre ACA and we had a lapse in coverage during which my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I won't go into the details here but basically I loved my dad but always felt a deep anger/rage at this period of not getting out of bed. So no matter what I would get out of bed.

I got on my road bike and biked twenty miles a day every day as hard as I could, I took a route that was ten miles and I left nothing for the ride back, then I would ride back, this was in the Texas August heat, I would drink 2 gallons of water and had to keep an ice bottle to keep my head cool, I rode like some sort of doomed machine trying to tear my own limbs apart.

For two weeks I did this, with no improvement, no incremental change, nothing. On my bike I would cry and sing (because of that pdf) like some kind of psycho barreling towards hell, because I have heart defects I am on medication that blocks adrenaline so there wasn't even a runners high and the first 30 minutes of riding I always felt like lead as my heart took time to keep up with the exertion (that is still and will always be the case for me). On the 16th day, after my ride, my mental fog lifted for one hour as i flipped back into the driver seat, i was still depressed but _I_ was depressed.

I never went on anti-depressants, the facts of my life were still what they were and everything fell apart and my whole life changed radically and permanently and I lost so much of everything a person can lose. But after 45 days of continuing to just get out of bed and step on my bike every single day, and singing and raging and just absolutely sounding nuts on this 20 mile ride in 90+ degree heat I finally had my first FULL day where I was depressed but my mind was working and the depression was no longer in the driver seat, I had ownership for the entire day.

And the whole thing felt impossible at each step, but really all it was was mechanically getting out of bed, getting my feet on my bike pedals and biking far enough away that I was finished but I still had to bike back.

I couldn't have done it on a treadmill, I couldn't have done it in a pool, I had to push myself as hard as I could. Fortunately on a bike 20 miles was two hours at first and later an hour.