My brother Rick would have been 58 today but he’s not. In 2007, he went to a gun range in San Diego and shot himself in the head. This came after many years of addiction, depression, and thinking he was worthless. Each year on his birthday, I talk about mental health here.
The drugs were to kill the pain from the depression. When he kicked his addiction but couldn’t kick the pain, he killed himself. Rick never sought much help for the depression because he thought it was his fault. That he was weak.
In the last years of his life, Rick volunteered on a Narcotics Anonymous hotline. 30-40 hours a week. He’d drive his delivery truck, volunteer, and sleep. He believed everyone had worth and a life worth living. Except for himself.
In school, Rick was known to teachers as a dumb kid and a bad kid because he was likely dyslexic and had ADHD. He believed that he was dumb and bad so why go to school at all? When he smoked weed, those feelings went away.
He was neither dumb nor bad. He was intellectually ravenous, he was funny as hell, he was kind. When his friends picked on me, they had a choice to stop or get their ass kicked. You can read a lot about Rick in my book.
I started tweeting about Rick once a year many years ago. About him, mental health, depression, suicide. Now it’s the main thing I talk about. Because he didn’t have to die. Because we as a society didn’t have to make mental illness so forbidden.
I almost said we didn’t have to make it so scary. But it is scary. If you’ve gone through something like a full-scale panic attack or a manic episode or a truly deep depressive spell, you know that it’s scary. Because, like, WTF is going on?
These things inside my own brain are trying to destroy me? And they’re invisible? At least when you get hit by a truck there’s a truck, you know? It’s scary. And it’s not unique. Anything happening in your brain has happened to other people before. Anything.
Which makes logical sense, right? So why does something like depression feel so isolating? I’ve come to believe - and I think about this A LOT lately - that depression gets down suuuper deep and rots away your sense of self.
Depression makes you believe that at the deepest level, you are unworthy. You are lesser than other people. The self-hatred, whatever the origin, that comes with depression feeds on the most fundamental idea of you being a person. It’s so insidious!
It’s like when there’s a revolution in some country and they seize the radio and TV stations first. Control the source of the thoughts and information and ideas and you control the mental process. Depression is that revolutionary general.
Depression burrows into the deepest, hardest to reach place like a parasite devouring its host. So then when you feel better about something in your life, you can’t really take it in because depression is deeper than that.
When you get therapy, when you make lifestyle adjustments, whatever you do, depression is deeper. So then you might think, “Oh I’m feeling better” before thinking on some level, “Oh but nope, just remembered I suck.”
Depression is a liar, of course, because that second thought, the I Suck thought, is a lie. Depression whispers in your ear in your own voice and it’s such a good mimic that you think it’s your own belief.
Having a diminished self is, rightly, uncomfortable. Makes you feel too weak to navigate or withstand a sometimes brutal world. So depressed people then have to pivot. They transfer their sense of self to what they see as a stronger vessel.
They get into toxic, one-sided relationships. They become the person more dedicated to their job than anyone else. They find religious zealotry. They attach to a politician or cause and define themselves by what happens to that entity.
Or they become way too into sports and live or die based on how a team of strangers in matching shirts does in a game. Because the depression tells them maybe the Mets will be good but you suck.
You don’t suck.
Let me argue against that voice coming from your core. You are a person. You deserve love and respect and kindness and health care and the right to vote and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These things belong to you automatically.
The depressed person will often think they need to prove their worth by achieving, winning, outdoing. Because depression told them they don’t have those things. Because depression lies. What up my friend @TheBloggess.
Many years ago, my wife asked me to go get my mental health checked at the doctor. I didn’t want to. Believed other patients deserved the doctors time. Our co-pay was $10 at the time and seemed to indulgent. I wasn’t worth a Hamilton to myself.
She said, if you don’t think you’re worth it, do you think the kids and I are worth it? Well, yes.
I went and got diagnosed and suddenly the thing that was a dark, fearful, unique part of me had a name and treatment options. And I started to get better.
I went and got diagnosed and suddenly the thing that was a dark, fearful, unique part of me had a name and treatment options. And I started to get better.
You have a right to not feel horrible. You have a right to try to get better. If the wait is too long at the psychiatrist, go to a family doctor. If you can’t get to one of those, go to a clinic. You have a right to try to get better.
Getting better can take a long time and there’s a lot of trial and error because the mysterious bucket of goo you have for a brain is very weird and complicated. But try. Because you’re worth the effort. I know it about you even if depression says otherwise.
A few years ago, I started a podcast about depression and this summer, APM laid me off and ended their production of the show. It hurt. But not much. Because “John Moe” wasn’t that show at that place. I had rebuilt the formerly diminished self.
Something that people don’t talk about regarding depression much is how much fucking work it all is. Like, we have to work so hard to get the life that the normies can just have. But it’s worth it. We are worth it.
I urge you to not give up. I know you’re tired. Of course you are. Try to catch the lies before they become beliefs. And happy birthday to my brother Rick, who I miss every day.
Thank you, Twitterers, for the response on this thread. Seeing the surprisingly huge response on these inspired me to dedicate my career to this cause and I'll keep talking about it as long as I have fingers to type and breath in my lungs. To yell.
