I hear you... Don't know what to say... except maybe for:

I hear you and I'm sorry you still feel so depressed...

It's hard to define what's "a healthy response". Does your s/i help you? OK, but... wouldn't you like a better; not painful and longer-lasting help? Yes, you can't see any, but... there surely are other ways to cope. You were able to cope with the f... world for many weeks w/o alcohol or s/i, so you surely are capable of doing it. It's just too hard sometimes... Don't let those worse times to destroy you and thus to "disable" the future good/better times...

Unfortnately, it's almost impossible - or absolutely impossible in many aspects - to change the world, do the only thing we can do is to adapt. Not just adapt, but search for the adaptation that seems to be the most suitable. It that alcohol or s/i for you? I doubt it. But it's always your decision.

The body is just the repository. Here's something I ask myself sometimes. Would I rather have a really debilitating physical condition and be blissfully happy and fulfilling my life's purpose or would I rather have a perfectly functioning body and be miserable my entire life? Well, I'm not going to answer that because I'd really like a perfectly functioning body and be blissfully happy fulfilling my life's purpose:). But the question does change your perspective somewhat. Stephen Hawking comes to mind. Doing the best with what you have.

Sorry I didn't mean to make it sound like I was recently involved in s/i. I have resorted to it before when chemicals weren't around but haven't done it in a while. Ironically the past few times I have cut myself I was drunk past the point of speaking intelligibly. So there is apparently a dark side to me that I keep in check most of the time but comes out at inopportune moments.

Athena if I had to choose one or the other, I'd rather have a functioning body and figure out the mood stuff on my own, which is more or less where I find myself anyway. It's more that my legs are so important to the few things that I still enjoy that if I had a debilitating condition I'd have to work around it somehow.

Athena if I had to choose one or the other' date=' I'd rather have a functioning body and figure out the mood stuff on my own, which is more or less where I find myself anyway. [/quote'] Well then, at least there is one thing you can be thankful for . Apparently gratitude helps the soul. I have a tough time practising it myself.

I think I have a lot to be thankful for. Most of my depression right now is about my internal experience not being sensible compared to what's going on in my life. I see other people with real problems like divorce and whatnot, and think what is wrong with me.

I don't have any particular complications in my life, my boyfriend loves me and I trust him completely, my career is in good shape despite the economy, and I can still use all of my limbs and sight, hearing, etc. I have good friends that accept me despite my neuroses.

So I guess as far as problems go, depression isn't that much to have to deal with. I even lucked out in having a nice enough job that I get benefits and can go to therapy. It's possible that everything is going to be okay, but it takes a decent quantity of recreational drugs to get me to see that. I feel better when I take time to notice the good things in my life, but I also feel better when I think about suicide. That said I like my body and don't want to harm it. At least not any more than I already have.

Wow, that does sound pretty good. Could it be that life has improved for you over the past few years but your brain forgot to stop being depressed? Kind of like a bad habit that's not needed anymore?

Sorry if that sounds too simplistic, but it's just some of the mind games I'm playing on myself right now. I know it won't solve the main problem but even feeling a little better some of the time would help.

I'm surprised that suicidal thinking makes you feel better. It does the opposite for me. Maybe it's the control factor. The knowledge that you have a guaranteed, immediate, irreversible solution to your emotional hell. Unless of course, you end up in a worse hell. A rather big disincentive for me:eek:.

I think even if life is technically ok now, just as Athena said, that doesn't mean that your brain has learned to react in the right way yet. I also think that sometimes, it is when things do finally become stable, that your brain decides it's ok to start purging all the random crap its been storing, sending you into a chaos that feels painfully unjustified.