I lost a week to depression. It also effected my work in terrible ways. I was appalled and more than a little embarrassed at the critiques I got on Monday. I'm guessing now I wasn't quite myself when I wrote it. The depression wiped out a week of my life.
Two nights ago, I went back on my Trazadone. It's the one anti-depressant whose side effects I hate, but its very effective. Immediately slept 11 hours that night, with pleasant dreams and got up in a good mood, if a little stiff and with a painful muscle spasm in my shoulder (side effects). I hadn't been able to sleep, and at this rate, I should be caught up within a week.
Besides catching me up on sleep, it's the one anti-depressant that does prevent the heavy, downward swing, when combined with Buproprion.
People point out that we're over-medicated in the US, where doctors are wined-and-dined, and otherwise encouraged to prescribe medications. That all might be true, but if nobody has noticed (and there's a lot of people who haven't) things are very depressing now. Our economy is wrecked; our political process is corrupt; the citizenry is mis-educated and misled; the environment is being destroyed, and the world is overpopulated and full misery that will only get worse.
I realize there's a lot of good news out there. Crime is down. Teen pregnancy is at record lows. Automotive fatalities are as low now as they were in the 1950s. Those are things we had pipe dreams about in the '70s. New transmissions and mortality rate for HIV are down. The Mexican Gulf seems to have recovered from the Deepwater Horizon spill (though I'm still skeptical about this one).
Still, the bad news is overwhelming, and I'm not the only one who finds the bad news both sobering and a reason to get drunk. It may be true that doctors prescribe a lot of anti-depressants, but it's also true that most people willingly take them. They at least feel that there's something wrong.
Additionally, we wouldn't need so much escapism, so much media committed to SF and Fantasy, unless people really needed to remove themselves from the world. Look at any top ten list of box office movies in the 1930s-50s. There was not one SF or high concept movie on the list. In the early '60s, eight of the top ten shows on TV were Westerns.
The 1930s, remember, was the time of the Great Depression. The 1940s was a freaking World War. Yet, the movies were set in the real world. It appears that something in this world is somehow more stressful than the Great Depression and a World War.
SF geeks have received such a bad name recently (being called Fanboys or Fangirls). Not that they've ever been too well regarded, except now, people who actually make movies aimed at them admit to holding them in contempt (see Zach Snyder talking about his movie Sucker Punch). Not to mention the fact that those who see SF and Fantasy movies hold them in contempt. That's a bizarre case of self-hatred.
Nevertheless, they're people who feel alienated from the real world. Some are very intelligent. However, they have little or no power to effect what's happening now. To be accurate, in a culture that worships athletes and physical prowess, they aren't asked. They feel a disgust with what those in power are doing. Totally out of power, of course they find the real world boring. That's what I see in their personalities.
So, the geek looks to the future, after everything that's presently happening in the world becomes insignificant. They either escape there, or completely into a different reality, like fantasy. Or movements like “Goth” which celebrated the power of being dead. In some cases, however, they read or watch “cautionary tales.” Like the little girl in Pan's Labyrinth, sometimes fantasy doesn't let you escape your fear. Sometimes your terror enters your fantasy and it's no longer an escape. Usually, though, it's sublimed into a form you can fight in a way you can't in the real world.
Then there's also horror, my current genre. At it's lightest, it's an escape. At it's heaviest, though, it shows you a fantasy more frightening than reality. If anything, it makes the real world look better by comparison. It's also a way to ask disturbing questions that are real. A way, perhaps, to wake people up.
SF and Fantasy only became hot since the 1960s. I think it's from alienation. What else has changed in this culture that would explain such a great change?
So, now we have SF and fantasy and we have video games. Like religion, I'd call them the opium of the people. Or maybe religion is the opium while SF and fantasy is the crack and video games are the crystal meth of the people.
With me, that opium doesn't always work. For one thing, I know it's supposed to be opium. A layer of denial would probably make these far more effective.
Though, use of this metaphor does make me note that people do get high just to escape. The tendency to use drugs and get addicted to them, however, is set by biology.
I don't really escape from reality, though. I take medications to prevent it from getting me down. I used to have manics, too, a few were life-changing experiences, but those don't happen so much anymore.
So, now that I'm not down, I'm going to be working on my various projects. I'm going to submit my short story Wil o' Wisp this weekend. I'm keeping to who a secret. Let's just say, I'm starting at the top of the market and I'm working down. Thank you, Writers' Market!
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