It's really impossible to describe the pain of seeing a family member or friend suffer terribly from depression. Often, the most clever, creative, funny and kind souls have the bad luck of inheriting or acquiring this disease. And it can be a debilitating, lifelong battle.
Regardless of what the TV ads say, there is no magic pill for many people, no easy combination of drugs and/or therapies that will blessedly make it all better. To make matters worse, the medical and psychiatric communities don't exactly make it easy to find solid answers. For the people who need it most, help is often very hard to find.
I have been hoping to hear more from Jim Carrey ever since a story broke about his use of supplements to treat depression. And if I hear people compare him to Tom Cruise, they will get an earful from me! Jim Carrey, thank you for making the point that supplements can be an effective alternative. The popular drugs from Big Pharma are actually ineffective and even harmful to many people. (Notice that I did not say all people.)
Someone I care about very much is going the supplement route with the Carl Pfeiffer Treatment Center just outside Chicago. He's been taking supplements for six months now. I cannot say that they have cured his depression, or even helped it significantly yet, but we are hanging in there and trying. We've been told it may take a year to see significant results.
The antidepressants my family member took for years gradually became ineffective, or made him feel like he was jumping out of his skin, or caused other serious side effects. They just plain didn't help.
Jim Carrey, it sounds like you've got it together. I am very, very happy for you. I hope you will use your voice to help educate people and open up these new avenues of treatment to those who perhaps haven't heard of them yet.
it does make me happy to see someone like jim carrey out there as a proponent of orthomolecular psychiatry. i think he's doing a great service to all of us by sharing his depression and, as an example, he's exemplifying the fact that many of us (often actor types) can hide our depression quite well at times through overt humor and saturating ourselves, if possible, with positive and fun environments to counteract the personal doom and gloom. i'd love to have a sit down with him, as i heard from a fellow extra in hollywood that he was incredibly nice and loving on set. i hope he writes that book he mentioned writing about it as well, not so much from a "how to" standpoint, but to get his full story.
Posted by: rory sandhage | December 17, 2008 at 09:57 PM