This doesn’t make me want to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken.

It does slightly make me want to scream something like “JOYFULLY WE WILL WORK TOGETHER TO REALIZE THE NEW SOCIALIST VISION!” though.

…I suppose I’d better get back to my annotated bibliography now.

Cornfed: Bless me, Father.

Priest: Oh, did you sneeze?

Cornfed: No, I sinned.

(Duckman, ‘Noir Gang’)

I thought I’d open up with a Duckman quote, as three separate quacks have, in my lifetime, “diagnosed” me with so-called “depression.” (Quack. Duckman. Get it?) How can I call qualified medical professionals quacks? I reckon I’m justified in this one. Plenty of otherwise intelligent folks have been brainwashed by the pharmaceutical industry into thinking that ordinary human quirks and idiosyncrasies are a disease. Syphilis is a disease. ‘Depression’ is not. In fact, I have never believed that it actually exists in a medical or scientific sense. Should anyone? Let’s take a look at the evidence.
Exhibit A: Selections from a List of ‘Depression’ Symptoms Found Online

1. You feel very anxious sometimes. Indeed: I believe that’s also known as ‘The Human Condition Circa 2006.’ This is because your parents are getting older, you’ll have to look after them, the world is running out of oil, fresh water, and patience, everything you like is being persecuted by a government nanny (unpasteurized cheese, loud music, bacon, and knowledge, for instance), you won’t be able to afford to have kids, and every day you’re reminded of how great the world was back in like the 1700s. You know. Cod in the Grand Banks and what have you.

2. You feel that life is unfair. Life is not and never has been fair. Nature certainly isn’t fair. And where do people get off thinking life should be, if nothing else is? It’s unfair that cormorants and alligators eat rare turtle hatchlings as they scurry out of their shells at midnight, and it’s unfair that I get to go home every night to a warm bed, electricity, running water, both parents, and dinner, whereas most of the world gets, say, cold sand and a handful of dried fish. Moving on…

3. You feel exhausted a lot of the time. So do doctors, EMTs, miners, postal office workers, marathoners, help-line counsellors, forest rangers, sailors, soldiers, slaves, sherpas, sex workers, and students. I’ve come across about two people in my entire life who didn’t profess to be exhausted a lot of the time.

4. You feel like a burden to others. You are a burden to others. Everybody burdens somebody and yes, someone, somewhere, is so inconvenienced by your existence that if they met you they’d hit you in the nose. I feel this way about Fred Phelps, Emeril Lagasse, and Paris Hilton. (Although I suspect that if I hit Emeril Lagasse in the nose he’d clean my clock.)

5. You have physical aches and pains which appear to have no physical cause. Oh Lord, doesn’t everybody? Does waking up with a sore neck mean you’re depressed? “Oh, ooh, oooh me neck, time to shove off this mortal coil, sob.” Doesn’t it look like these guys are just making things up at this point ?

Exhibit B: The Causes of ‘Depression’

1. The Chemical Imbalance Theory. This one states that ‘depressed’ persons have abnormal brain chemistry. What? THAT’S AMAZING! Can it… oh… can it be? Everyone has different chemicals in their brain? Ahem. Yes, I’m pretty sure everyone has abnormal brain chemistry. You are your neurotransmitters and your neurotransmitters are you; and as such, some people are naturally zippy and some people aren’t. You don’t have a disease if you’re not like Fay frickin’ Wray all the time, are you? How can we live in a world that so stifles individuality and personal differences? (Anyway, if this theory were true then antidepressants would fix all ‘depressed’ people and they don’t. The figure I’ve heard is like a third of people are ‘fixed’ and two-thirds aren’t. A little suspicious, no?)

2. The Traumatic Events in Your Past Theory. I don’t doubt that being fucked up by something specific can get you a little down, nor do I doubt that some people bounce back better than others, but I don’t think you can slap a tag on an ordinary human emotion and call it a disease and fix it with drugs. A woman I know with a world-class fucked-up childhood is now the sanest person I’ve ever met, and she didn’t get ‘depression.’ And anyway, nothing terrible has ever happened to me, so how do you explain the diagnosis if that’s the case, and why is the ‘t’ key sticking on this keyboard? I can’t finish the post if I don’t get a working ‘t.’ Hang on while I find a new computer.

3. The Stress Theory. This theory states that modern life is so stressful that our fight-or-flight response is ‘on’ at full throttle all the time, which in susceptible individuals causes permanent burnout of the adrenal glands and the resulting symptoms of ‘depression.’ Interesting, but still not a disease, more a human characteristic not seen in all humans, like how red hair or a loud laugh aren’t considered diseases. And anyway, people do learn coping strategies. Otherwise I’m sure ‘depression’ would have claimed every member of the world’s working class and post-secondary students the world around.

Where this gets personal is my visit to the University Health Center last Thursday. I went in for a fairly routine prescription refill and made the mistake of mentioning to Dr. Mengele (name changed to protect privacy) that my killer insomnia, a part of my life since about 1998, had suddenly changed tack and decided that two hours of sleep a night was enough. (This is true. I’ve tried yoga, meditation, audiobooks, soothing music, chamomile tea, Sleepytime tea, three types of over-the-counter sleeping pill, a new bed, warm milk, a fan, an eye-mask - courtesy of the nice folks on ViaRail - boring books, TV, and prayer. Nothing. Brain too loud, can’t find volume switch. Am passing out in class a lot.)

The dialogue that followed (tightly condensed, of course, since the actual meeting was like half an hour) sounded like a page from ‘Catch-22′:

Mengele: You can’t sleep because you’ve got depression. Insomnia can be a symptom.

Me: I’m not depressed. I would be fine if I could just sleep.

Mengele: I’m not convinced of that. Why don’t I put you on antidepressants, and then when you’re not depressed you’ll be able to sleep?

Me: Why don’t you give me something to let me sleep, which will get rid of the so-called effing depression?

And so on. My usual health-center visit is about ninety seconds, so I have no idea what Mengele’s other patients were thinking. In the end she relented and put me on something called ‘Starnoc.’ Twenty capsules, five milligrams. I’m a suicide risk and they split up my prescription. (That name is so good. Is it a star at knocking me out? Will I see stars when it starts to work nocturnally? Who gets to name these things?) I have yet to use one, because you need eight hours of sleep guaranteed; if you wake up before it’s worn off you apparently will be mostly-paralyzed, won’t remember anything, and will most likely not be very functional if you don’t go back to bed at once. Plus you’re not supposed to take it after a heavy meal, which all my meals seem to be these days.

Anyway, after laughing at the name for a while, I grew very serious and started to wonder about why I’m so adamant about not spending my days doped up on Paxil or Prozac or Zoloft or whatever, whereas I’m apparently signing up for spending a couple of nights each week zonked out on Starnoc. There doesn’t seem to be a very good reason for this mindset, does there? Just a lot of sarcasm and bitterness and ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue,’ as if ‘depression’ were an insult. Which it… is, actually. Maybe that’s where I was going with this.

So if anyone out there has any thoughts on this, I think I’d like to hear them. This is a confessional that works both ways. :-)

“December 6th

“We reached Caylen, called ‘el fin del Cristiandad.’ In the morning we stopped for a few minutes at a house on the northern end of Laylec, which was the extreme point of South American Christendom, and a miserable hovel it was. The latitude is 43 degrees 10 minutes, which is two degrees farther south than the Rio Negro on the Atlantic coast. These extreme Christians were very poor, and, under the plea of their situation, begged for some tobacco. As a proof of the poverty of these Indians, I may mention that shortly before this, we had met a man, who had travelled three days and a half on foot, and had as many to return, for the sake of recovering the value of a small axe and a few fish. How very difficult it must be to buy the smallest article, when such trouble is taken to recover so small a debt.

“In the evening we reached the island of San Pedro, where we found the Beagle at anchor. In doubling the point, two of the officers landed to take a round of angles with the theolodite. A fox (Canis fulvipes), of a kind said to be peculiar to the island, and very rare in it, and which is a new species, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work of the officers, that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer. This fox, more curious or more scientific, but less wise, than the generality of his brethren, is now mounted in the museum of the Zoological Society.”

- Charles Darwin, ‘The Voyage of the Beagle’

Charles Darwin, eminent naturalist and explorer, in a far-off land, finds a very rare and peculiar fox… and bonks it with his rockhammer. I love science.