I am one crazy biatch.

Really.

Some of you might know, I have been diagnosed with clinical depression. I am even on antidepressants. And they are, probably literally for me, a life saver. I am a non-functioning human being without them. Sure, I might have breathed, eaten (far too much), slept (also far too much) and occasionally showered once in a while (far too infrequently), but I could do very little otherwise. I did not perceive that I would be happy again, I simply could not imagine that this was even possible. The rare happy thoughts I had was imagining I was someone else entirely. I was in the proverbial deep end, doggy paddling for my life.

So here is a question that  Peter D. Kramer asks in his book, Against Depression (2005): would you, if you could, cure everyone in the world of clinical depression? I stress that we are talking about clinical depression, not depression. Kramer accepts, and I too agree, that sadness is a crucial part of the human condition. I would even venture to say a productive one at that.

You might be surprised to know that lots of people would not. Kramer states that depression is associated with creativity in this culture, much like how TB was associated with a sort of fatal romanticism in the past. Many of our favourite artists and writers and thinkers have suffered from clinical depression, and some have even succumbed to it in suicide. Especially women writers, like Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde (attempted suicide in this case), and many others besides. They have become tragic heroines, and somehow their deaths have become inexorably linked with their work.

My personal experience tells me that I could not possibly be writing, indeed writing this this very moment (scary thought, yes? ;-)), without the benefit of antidepressants. I believe that these great women writers were only able to write those great works of literature when they had a temporary quiescence from their illness. Illness is an illness, whether it is in the mind or the body. And illness by definition is debilitating. People's experiences of depression may inform their work and compel them to have more compassion, but I maintain that the work itself cannot be a product of depression.

But I also suspect that depression is a product of the social condition, much like how sick building syndrome is a product of a sick building. For many, depression and clinical depression, is a response to social injustice. This is perhaps why there are so many women writers with clinical depression relative to their male counterparts. The little Marxist in me fears that antidepressants are the "opium of the masses", like how Marx thought that religion was for the proletariat class. Depression, then, is perhaps an accurate symptom of a sick society, and something on which the impetus for change can be born.

I think that in reality, depression must be a mixture of these two perspectives. Personally? I would be rid of clinical depression, not just for myself but for all the people in all the worlds, if only I could. And if this is to be possible at all, there must be less injustice and inequality, and we would all be more productive and have more fruitful lives.

What do you think? Would you do the same as me? If not, why? And is anyone offended I called myself crazy? I apologise in advance if I did. I am trying to reclaim the word crazy, but I am not sure yet whether this is a worthy cause at all. La dee dah.