I began talk therapy in 1970 - intense freudian 4x a week, lie on the couch and talk - well, I was so frozen emotionally it took 3 years to get me up to depressed - and every day, I self-medicated with port wine, white wine, beer... Something every day. So any beginning of insight was numbed after each day's session by my drinking. I didn't know that then. I needed my liquid "meds", it gave me a break from my constant anxiety and uneasiness (this is hindsight - I had no idea at the time). I went to therapy because I thought I was crazy, especially when I'd have a panic attack.

In 1980 I moved to Atlanta, and began my nightly bar routine, took a couple of hostages (who of course drank more than I did, so I could avoid facing my own drunkenness). Was a smart computer trainer by day, and a sad, lonely drunk by night. A few months before I got sober in March 1984, I watched myself stumble home one night from the bar across from my apartment, sticking my key into the neighbors' doors until I finally found mine - couldn't even read the number on the door, I was so toasted. And a few months later, I was working late, and having trouble concentrating - my brain was fuzzy, I was lonely, and I thought "All I have is my job," and the bar a block away, where I "had fun" with all the other drunks - not a very high class place, I must say. I always came home smelling of old grease from the kitchen near the bar - I ate a lot of chicken fingers (no knife and fork required, much easier when you're drunk). And I knew, finally, that alcohol wasn't working - I was a daily drunk just like my mother, and it was time. So off to AA I went, and here we are in 2009, I just passed my 25-year marker.

And in the past 25 years, I have continued to work toward my goal of emotional sobriety. With a crazy husband for a while, while I slowly defrosted emotionally from my frightening childhood, and the frozen self that I had been for the first 32 years of my life. At 7 years sober, divorced and finally feeling my feelings (and it wasn't pleasant), I started family-of-origin therapy, along with individual talk therapy.

All this time I thought I was crazy. It wasn't until 1995, after being layed off and succombing to feeling useless - that I realized I was .... depressed! I saw a TV ad about depression one night, and I had all the symptoms. I suggested medication to my talk therapist, he sent me to a psychiatrist, and wala - the beginning of the mending of my brain. After another 13 years of playing around with antidepressants, it took adding Wellbutrin (which affects dopamine and therefore motivation and energy) to finally get me up to actually feeling good. Along with cutting through a bunch of denial about the real loneliness of my childhood, and accepting that I was permanently damaged by my parents' narcissism. I was a piece of furniture for them - and they only touched me if I was sick, and needed a thermometer.

Depression isn't always temporary. Chronic daily neglect gave me an empty space where experiences with safe, warm caring people should have been. And it's only now, at age 57, that I've started trying to create my own life, instead of waiting for that emptiness to be filled by a reinvention of my past.

Don't give up. Don't give in to your ego's whining. Be of service to others, always question your doctors (they don't know everything, especially in mental health). Live one day at a time. Make sure you have something to look forward to. And most of all, keep breathing. You are your own hope.