Quote: (05-18-2014 08:54 AM)cardguy Wrote:
Sleep deprivation gives you a buzz. Research has shown it is an effective treatment for depression.
That is absolutely true, and something few people know (not that there is any reason they should). In fact, total sleep deprivation followed by sustained partial sleep deprivation is the
most effective treatment for the (quite rare) major depressions.
Quote: (05-18-2014 08:54 AM)cardguy Wrote:
But sadly it only lasts until the person next gets a good nights sleep.
Almost right -- the key is to interrupt sleep before it enters a REM cycle. But you don't need to sustain total sleep dep forever -- it can be curative if sustained for a limited period of time, followed by an extended period of partial sleep dep.
The flip side of this, cardguy, is that your ability to enjoy sleep deprivation to the extent that you do constitutes
strong evidence that your own depressive burden is a great deal higher than you probably realize. Normal people who do not sustain a quite high depressive burden do
not seek out sleep deprivation in this way and most certainly do
not handle it well. So your ability to handle sleep dep with such relative ease, and your obvious thriving in it, is basically
proof of a fairly significant underlying depressive substrate.
You will probably say something like, "I'm the happiest person I know, so how can that be"? The answer is, pretty easily. One can maintain a good deal of
psychological contentment -- for a while -- even while suffering from a fairly significant depressive load. This is especially true while one's androgen levels remain as high as yours obviously are. In this period, the depressive chemistry manifests itself in somewhat different ways, like extreme diurnal variation -- feeling down and apathetic in the morning, but wide awake and hypomanic at night -- and occasional physical symptoms, mainly digestive (owing to bad depressive/cortisol chemistry in the gut).
However, this phase usually cannot be sustained indefinitely. And if and when the psychological habituation to it breaks, it can get very unpleasant very fast.
In this regard -- and I really hate to dwell on it, but I have to -- the bourbon is not doing you any long-term favors. It allows you to self-medicate in the very near term, but over time it fundamentally abets and deepens the depressive brain chemistry, while depleting the all-important androgens.
Just something to consider. Like most people, you probably will not change certain beloved habits until you've already taken real and
evident damage from them. But I write this just on the chance that you'll have the genius to embody the exception to that rule, since you are an exception to some others.
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