Dear Crazy Nurse Tracy:

I’ve been following your blog for a few days now as a fellow sufferer. I agree with you: drugs aren’t the answer to the depression. They are the floor that you put down so that you won’t be getting sucked up in the mud while you address the life issues that are getting you down. I’ve been on Prozac continously since 1994. Given my family history (the fellows who shot out their brains with shotguns, my grandmother Stella who spent much of her life in bed and lost all her teeth, and the general fatalism of my immediate family following the death of my fatherin 1981), all my psychiatrists have affirmed that I maintain the dose as long as it keeps on working for me.

Prozac hasn’t solved my problems. They are still there, waiting to be worked on, one at a time. I do some of this through my writing, some through counseling, some by allowing my wife to hold me in the dark of the night. I find knowing my peers helps when I am in the black dirt bottomlands with the Slough of Despond rolling over me. There is no instant cure for this disease, but there is a way of life you can follow.

Thank you for your comments and your support for others. I’ve added your blog to my list and have sent a few friends in the dark to you.