Customer Reviews

Depression Is a Choice: Winning the Battle Without Drugs

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I came to look at this book after reading the Author's review of "The Best Awful" by Carrie Fisher. Fisher's book is about a disasterous trip into mania, followed by a suicidal depression that lands her in the mental hospital... _because she went off of her medication_. The author of this book writes the following in her review: "The remarkable thing is that in a culture where manic depression is encouraged by psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies who have formed an unholy, if unwitting, alliance; here's some one who has escaped. Not unscathed, mind you. But free nevertheless.". This statement captured a level of bias that really frightened me. What kind of "freedom" involves running blindly through alleyways in Tijuana, bleeding, fleeing, high on opiates and a crashing mania? Or crashing into a stupor, spending days at a time staring at the wall while your child cries, wondering where her mother went, until your friends drag you away to a mental hospital? Sure, maybe some people, like the author, feel that life is just fine that way -- but I'm sure a lot of people _don't_.

For me personally, finding medication that stopped my bipolar moodswings WAS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. No amount of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy could "fix" me, until I was in enough control of my moods to actually think reasonably, with a coherent understanding that didn't reverse direction every week. In the author's bio, she speaks of having "left her husband and children for a year to live in an ashram". I couldn't get close to having a husband -- no one ever wanted to stay with me longer than a year; I was too unstable, violent to myself and others. I was not "forced" into taking medication; I went searching for it after years of struggling and failed therapy. It was only after starting medication that I could possibly begin to get back in control of my life.

I am absolutely certain that the techniques mentioned in this book can help cope with depression; cognitive-behavioral therapy is wonderful this way, and I have found it greatly useful _once I started medication_. But 'throw the medicine out the door; it's just being pushed on you by money-grubbing multinational corporations' is a frighteningly biased viewpoint that can be very dangerous (as in Fisher's "The Best Awful"), or even fatal
to people with very real, serious mood disorders, for which there is ample biochemical and genetic evidence that something deeper than behavior has gone wrong.

The choice to be on or to forgo medication is not one to make based on bias. It must be made by knowing what works for you. If taken entirely to heart, this book could save the lives of some people. What I am afraid of is the damage it could cause to others, who are not as strong and capable of controlling the chaos of bipolar disorder as the author is.

I waited over six months after reading Depression Is a Choice to reflect on the book and put its principles into action. I can tell you that for me at least, Curtiss is correct--depression is indeed a choice.

By that I don't mean that if something bad happens--we lose a loved one for example--that we can "choose" whether or not to be happy. What I have found is that I get into habits of what I call "despairing": a knee-jerk reaction to give up, get into despair, and get depressed.

That's when Curtiss' technique of "directed thinking" saves the day. I can get myself out of the depressed mood by choosing different thoughts which then change my mood. That's all depression is, after all--a temporary mood that engulfs me because of some thoughts that I'm generating. I am free to direct my thoughts the same way I direct my cursor to tell my computer what I want it to do.

This is not denial of the painful aspects of life. Rather, it's not adding needless suffering by mental self-torture--something I'm all too good at. It requires a certain vigilance and effort to direct my thinking, but the rewards are worth it. I also find it helpful to "let go" of the thoughts that lead to depression. (For more on letting go, I suggest looking into The Sedona Method.)

In a society where most of us avoid taking responsibility for our feelings, where the medical profession is all too willing to pathologize our behavior and medicate us to make us feel better, Depression Is a Choice is a subversive book. I am grateful that the author had the courage to write it.

I am giving this two stars because I think it merits an extra one for making the radical statement that depression and manic-depression can be managed without drugs. I do agree that many people get trapped in self-defeating cycles of depression and mania, which could probably be broken if they allowed it as a possibility. However, I think that she veers close to Tom Cruise territory, claiming that anyone who resorts to antidepressants is "weak". I've dealt with depression since childhood, but at this point I can't tell if it was genetic or if I just learned the habits and continued to reinforce them in myself into adulthood. It may be a question of the chicken or the egg here. Ultimately I don't think it matters and I tend to agree with the author that cognitive-behavioral therapy can help and that there isn't any proof of such a thing as "chemical imbalance" causing mental illness. There isn't. The fact that brains of depressed people are different than brains of "healthy" people doesn't prove that something organic within the person's body caused the depression. It could just as well be the opposite, that it is the depression that changes the brain.

What bothered me most about this book, though, is that I tried reading it twice more than a year apart and both times got extremely bored by about halfway through the book. Reading about the stupid, rude or irresponsible things the author did before she figured out that she could manage her own mania and depression was not helpful to me in the least. The redundant writing style cried out desperately for an editor. The author also sounded tediously self-aggrandizing as well, leading me to believe that she was in one of her admitted fits of mania when she wrote it. In short, if she's trying to convince anyone that they can stabilize their own moods and emotions, her book should seem like she has done so for herself.

I'd love to see a book like this in the hands of an author who didn't feel the need to go on for hundreds of pages about herself, as I think the book contains a good idea. The poor execution here makes me unable to recommend the book to anyone else.

First, the bad news. Arline B. Curtiss could be described as a political reactionary. She's nostalgic for the Good Old Days before "the abandonment of principle in favor of feelings" brought on by the so-called Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. She admires Dr. Laura Schlessinger. She holds the Sixties--and mainstream psychology--responsible for infantilizing us, stripping us of our dignity, turning us into a "Culture Dump society".

I don't share Curtiss' political views. Dr. Laura makes me gag, and I don't believe there ever was a time when America was all about Virtue, Character, and Community--for better or worse, the United States has always been, right from the very start, among the most fiercely competitive and individualistic (and therefore least communal) of modern nations. The "free love" movement and modern psychiatric movement may have *exacerbated* this tendency to self-absorption, but clearly they did not initiate it.

But having said that, I can't help but admire and appreciate certain portions of Curtiss' book. Curtiss at least refuses to see anti-depressants as the *only* solution to depression. There's nothing wrong with interpreting the condition as a biochemical imbalance, but why does the pharmaceutical approach have to be the *only* approach? Isn't there anything else to be said about the matter? Curtiss thinks so, and though I have some strong misgivings about her book, she makes some legitimate points.

Take her quote from Goethe: "Where a man has a passion for meditation without the capacity for thinking, a particular idea fixes itself fast, and soon creates a mental disease." Without taking away from Solomon, Redfield Jamison, Styron, et al., I I do think Curtiss raises a real issue, not a false one. We're living in the Information Age--thus we all, by necessity, must "meditate" upon the world--as castaways afloat upon a buffeting, roiling sea of data--and yet, at the same time, the quality of our liberal arts education couldn't possibly sink any lower than it is now. In other words, we're all forced to be "meditators" now, yet fewer and fewer of us are capable of being "thinkers" in the sense Goethe was a thinker, because of the very real and very drastic decline of liberal arts education all over the western world. Seen in this light, the skyrocketing rates of depression in industrialized nations seem much more explainable. Curtiss' other bugbear is Freud. She writes, "People say Freud's influence is waning. But it is Freud's theory of the unconscious mind that provides the only basis for mental illness as we know it. Without Freud's theory of the unconscious mind, we could not have the 'diseases' of drug addiction, manic depression, social phobia, or frotteurism."

These are some of the reasons Curtiss provides for the rising rates of depression. Her solution is something she calls Directed Thinking, which is based on the premise that we can only think one thought at a time. Modern science shows that the emotions and instincts associated with depression are active in the sub-cortex or "lower brain"--by stimulating our neo-cortex or "higher brain" (which involves the cognitive faculties of reasoning, math, language, etc.) we can direct our attention away from our negative feelings and the pain caused by depression. ("Depression always ends. Not because of Prozac. Not because of psychotherapy. Not because of psychotherapy or shock treatments. Depression always ends because it is in the very nature of depression to end. The only question is, how can we get it to end sooner?")

But isn't The Power of Directed Thinking just The Power of Positive Thinking all over again? Yes and no. Curtiss, unlike Peale, doesn't view "positive" thinking as entirely the right way to go. Instead of willing yourself to be happy (which could easily backfire and remind you with added force just how *unhappy* you presently are, thus compounding your misery), Curtiss suggests you pick a neutral thought, almost anything will do. She also emphasizes process rather than content. Reading a book or memorizing a poem would probably focus one's attention away from the anguish more effectively than channel-surfing the TV, simply because the former activities make more strenuous use of the neo-cortex. Though she obviously dislikes Kay Redfield Jamison's books, Curtiss' notions are quite similar. Jamison has described in detail how "for many artists, writing or painting or composing has provided an escape from their turmoils and melancholy." Thus depression (more specifically manic-depression) and artistic talent are intertwined phenomena. Jamison believes "creative work can act not only as a means of escape from pain, but also as a way of structuring chaotic emotions and thoughts, numbing pain through abstraction and the rigors of disciplined thought, and creating a distance from the source of despair." Despite her dislike of Jamision, Curtiss in fact says much the same thing. But she says it in a different way. It is the neo-cortex, the "higher mind," that enables human beings to "structure chaotic emotions," and to utilize "abtraction" and "disciplined thought." It's the sub-cortex, the instinctive and fearful "lower mind" that is the "source of despair" in the brain. According to Curtiss, everyone can learn to make more precise use of his or her neo-cortex, while at the same time taming the demons unleashed by the sub-cortex. You don't have to be an artist; anyone can learn to do this. Hence, her title: DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE.

Since reading this book, I've found that Directed Thinking does indeed work for me--not perfectly, but it does help keep the demons at bay. I understand why some people hate the book, but I would still recommend it as an alternative Yang to Jamison's Yin. I don't recommend anyone chuck their Prozac in the garbage, but what's wrong with exploring other techniques for combatting this most horrendous of experiences? Drugs are an answer, but they're not foolproof, they don't work for absolutely everybody, and they'd probably work more effectively in combination with other therapies, like this one.

I wrote my first review of this book in November, 2001, but I wanted to follow up, and since I can only have one review on here, I am consolidating what I had to say. It has now been more than three years since I read _Depression is a Choice_, and I am cured of my depression. It is no longer a factor in my life. This book gave me the tools that I needed, and after awhile, I didn't even need to employ them actively anymore. It became a natural way of being. Once in awhile, I do wake up with a hint of depression, but it is rare, and I make it go away easily. I have also learned to coexist with feelings that can be painful depending on life circumstance but not give into them. I am NOT my depression. My depression is only a feeling, and it can no longer stop me. I learned this, because of this life-saving, amazing book. Best wishes in your journey to feeling better. It is definitely possible. daliahr@yahoo.com.

My original review follows:

I have a chemical imbalance. I put myself into a psychiatric hospital when I was 20. I was there for three months, before they would release me. I have suffered deep depression for the last twelve years, since that time, and prior to that, for as long as I could remember, although not as severe. I am now 32. I can't hold onto a job, because every time I have to work I am miserable, and I fall apart. Most days, I can't do much at all. My family tries to tell me I need medicine, as have doctors in the past. I tried that a couple of times when I was younger, but I have always known that can't be the only answer. Therapy was never-ending. I started blaming my past, my parents, my childhood for my deep pain. I struggled to get myself together on my own. My parents made many mistakes. They still do. There was unwitting mental and emotional abuse that caused me to suffer and doubt myself. I felt like a victim, and I was never sure that I would ever get past it and be able to live a more "normal" life. Then I stumbled upon this book.

Depression Is a Choice_ is a book with guidelines for people like me. I have only known one way of acting. Of feeling the chemical and emotional pain and giving into it. That it wasn't my fault, but I had to ride it out, and that depression would come whenever it wanted, and sometimes when things were going great, out of nowhere.

This book taught me some practical steps I can take to intervene when the pain starts to set in. It takes some effort, but it is doable. Since beginning this book, I have found that sometimes, I would rather be depressed than to direct my thought. Sometimes my depression is comforting; familiar. Other than the torture, hopelessness, and helplessness that it brings when it arrives, it doesn't require me to do anything but to suffer. Now that I know it is even POSSIBLE, I will choose not to let depression take over me, while sometimes still feeling the pain of it.

This is something that should be taught in therapy. Therapists should not feel threatened by it, because most have entered the field wanting to help people. My suggestion is try this method, even if it is only a complement to traditional therapy. Teach these skills, to help patients to learn how to direct focus away from the pain and onto some other directed thoughts or actions. I have had the need to use this every single day since I started reading the book, since I feel depressed at least once a day, and it has worked for me!

I can understand that people who have suffered like I have may be angry at this book. It is painful to realize that what we have learned in therapy and incorporated as a belief system which feels so right could possibly be wrong (that we are victims, and that there are limited solutions, if any, to dealing with our mental illnesses). I started to believe that I would, for the rest of my life, be the victim of my depression whenever it tried to take over. After reading this book, I know better now. Every thing that Ms. Curtiss wrote about, I completely absorbed and related to. The only chapter that didn't really apply to me was Manic Panic, but I learned things from that chapter, also. She speaks of her own experiences, because this has worked for her. She wants to share it with other people in the same situation, because it could take a lifetime to ever discover what she has learned, if at all. Why shouldn't she share it? She understands the pain, paralysis, and danger of it all.

Don't overlook this book, because it's not a clinical text. We all have a "knowing" about us that we can either look to or ignore. It is worth at least the read, to see if you can benefit from it. It doesn't mean you have to give up your traditional therapy. She doesn't tell you to dump your medicine, dump your therapist, and follow her book, she just offers tools that she discovered that have saved her and her patients. You can incorporate this with traditional therapy, if that is what is needed for you, and the day will come when you realize for yourself how to begin living a less painful existence. Isn't that a wonderful and unexpected possibility for us all? Thank you Ms. Curtiss! You have saved my life as I have known it for too long.

I happened upon this book on depression at my local bookstore and since I have battled depression (bipolar & otherwise) for most of my 41 years, I bought it, tho' I'd pretty much taken a blood oath to never buy another book on depression again (otherwise my post-mortem library would consist of diet books and ones on depression, which would depress my heirs.) In this case, I'm glad I bought it, and am mighty uplifted by the possibility that I am not the hopeless victim of a disease beyond my control, doomed to taking antidepressants for the rest of my life. I've practiced a few of the suggestions for Directed Thought already & must say that at this early stage, they've worked wonderfully well, which is nothing short of a miracle. My personal history reads very similarly to the author's and even before I read this book, I had begun to travel down the same paths to self-responsibility, mostly because I'm a fundamentalist Christian, of a stripe that is very suspicious of psychiatry, anyway. In a nutshell, Ms. Curtiss calls on everyone, no matter what their past or chemical leanings, to take responsibility for their own actions & encourages them that with a few simple mental exercises, they can take control of their own thoughts. Though I was skeptical at first, I must say the exercises have worked for me, enough that I'm reducing my antidepressants (with my doctor's permission) and hoping against hope that I might discontinue them completely.

I congratulate Ms. Curtiss for offering up her personal testimony (as we say in the South) and speaking her mind and swimming against the stream. Looking at the editorial reviews posted here, I have to comment that it's a strange world we live in, when writing a book to encourage people to take responsibility for their own actions comes under such fire. I personally didn't find her book rambling or poorly edited, but entertaining and occasionally hilarious, in the tell-all tradition of Annie Lamott.

If you battle depression, I do encourage you to give this method a careful read. The selling price is about an eighth of the price of a professional psych visit & you might find something here to help you change your life.

i have to say that i agree with another reviewer about this book, it was a complete turning point for me. i will comment on the meat of the book, the concept, as i agree some parts of the book were slow and not neccessary, but the point of this review is for the important parts. i read others reviews, and was not surprized at the shock people have felt from reading this book. even when i read it, i could tell a lot of people would miss the greatness of it because of its controversial concepts which will touch a nerve with many who feel helpless to their depression. i have suffered from moderate to severe depression since i was very young. my mother has it, so does my brother and i come from a many generations of people who suffered from depression. i stumbled apon this book in the library when i was doing a research report. i think not everyone who reads this book, as evident by some of the reviews, will be able to handle this. it flys in the face of what society drills into your head about depression and asks you to step up and take responsibility for your life. other commenters who have touched on the idea that the author is blaming people for their own depression are missing the mark. i dont think its about blame, and im pretty sure that the author is just trying to get you to see that your own action is the key to healing it for the future. i never felt once while reading this book that it was 'all my fault' in a negative sense. all it did was bring the big picture together and it made my actions and thoughts and patterns throughout my life make a little more sense.

people who are not ready for this concept will just not be ready for it and will put up a wild defense that they really have nothing to do with being able to effect their depression. i can understand why, its devastingly hard at times to get out of a mood or feeling that takes over and just seems to never go away. the author gives the idea of power back to the reader though. we are taught that we have no choice over depression, it is an 'ilness' and that word in this society often means 'you have no personal power over this part of your life anymore, only external solutions work now'. but that is not true nor is it ever when it comes to real healing. you do have a choice, if you are only willing enough. many people who are convinced they have no choice in depression will be angry at this book because they are under the expectation that depression IS a chemical imbalance. they believe in the science about it being a real imbalance which means they have no power over it. but if you believe in that, why dont believe in the science of changing your brain? i know that my depression has been partly hereditary but also learned, and i can say its been a year since ive read this book and it remains one of my favorites because since then i have decided to take it into my own hands and really look closely at my thought patterns and do the hard, but very satisfying, work. my mom is on meds, as is my brother, i am not. they are not open to this idea. they do not want to think they could do something to make their lives better because that is a really scary thought, and that is okay because that is what works for them, so medication is the best thing for them. similar to the author, i always felt like there must be another way. and there is. if you are open to it. i dont deny some people work much better with medication and i dont think its bad, but for those who are capable of surviving without and willing to do the work, you will not be dissapointed by this book.

Depression Is a Choice is like a mosquito-infested swamp with a few golden nuggets hidden in it. When you emerge from reading it, you're happy to have the crude golden nuggets, but you're frustrated to be covered in mud and mosquito bites. A.B. Curtiss makes several interesting and insightful points in Depression Is a Choice, most notably her views on blame. Generally, however, her views and her arguments are overly simplistic. She rails against the "Culture Dump" society which has emerged after America threw out its values in the 1960s. One of the proofs she presents for her view is that "we no longer celebrate ourselves as Americans with a national tradition and a universal ethical base...we have divided ourselves in Native Americans, African Americans, or Asian Americans" (338). Ms. Curtiss seems to forget that prior to the 1960s, Asians, Natives, and Blacks were not considered to be true Americans. She blames the switch from respecting principles (pre-1960s) to respecting feelings (post-1960s) for the "fainthearted" to acquire drugs for their depression. She accuses those "fainthearted" persons of laziness.
Ms. Curtiss' tone of moral condescension permeates the entire text, and the reader is left with a feeling that she is constantly being lectured. Furthermore, not only is the text repetitive and wordy, the writing is very poor--to the point where sentences are not gramatically correct. It reads as if it were never revised, and one knows not whether the responsibility for this poor writing should lie with the author for writing it, or with the editor for allowing it to be published! The ideas in this 440 page tome could be more effectively expressed in a 10 page pamphlet. As I mentioned before, there are some golden nugget ideas hidden in that sea of mud. Unfortunately, those few ideas are not enough to warrant purchasing the book.

This book is poorly written and even more poorly organized. But, I came out of a moderately severe depression the day I read it. So, it's worth its weight in gold.

I've been through it all - drugs, drugs, drugs, more drugs, therapy, drugs, more therapy, group therapy, workbooks, books, drugs, and drugs. After 30 years of depression, this book HELPED. And that's all I have to say.

I've reached the half-way point, again! This time in my own copy and I am constantly amazed at this book! Ms. Curtiss has put so many many things into words that I knew and felt but couldn't express myself. I have been singing praises for DIAC around my office - and my world - but there is not too much interest, which amazes me. It's like people would rather stay depressed than listen to me. What they can't discount, though, is how much my life has changed!!

And it has been almost 4 months now since I put away the Prozac. I have put away the Prozac before, but without backup procedures in place. When the black cloud appeared on the horizon, I began trying to figure out why. What am I doing that is causing this? Must be the chemicals again, must be I'm just not strong, must be because I fell on my head as a child, blah blah blah. Then when the cloud began to overtake me, I just rolled over and allowed it to engulf me for however many days, weeks, or months it took until I got scared and ran to the doctor for more Prozac. Well, I have spotted black clouds on the horizon within the past 4 months, but guess what!? I have been able to give them only cursory notice, turn my back, and get walking, or reading, or cleaning, or SOMETHING OTHER THAN BEING SAD OR SCARED!!! It's like I hear this knock on the door of my mind, I open it, and Depression is standing there with its suitcase ready to come right in and stay. Now, I don't even give it the benefit of notice. I don't bother to stand there arguing or reasoning or being scared. I simply say, "You can't come in here. I've got better things to do." Then I just slam the door and get going! And it works!!! Oh, the blueness may push through for awhile - maybe off and on for a day or even a few days - but it stops "huffing and puffing" when it realizes the house isn't coming down!

The difference is, I know what's going on now, and I have a choice to give into depression or not. And with the Grace of God, I have been making the choice to just not be depressed. This sounds simplistic, I know. I felt the same way at first. Why do we think that something has to be difficult or complicated to work?? I had another test in the relationship category. These are killers, when one is proned to being depressed, you know? But, again, I turned my thinking in a different direction and chose not to be worried, sad, guilty, shameful - you know how it is. I just kept moving and doing tasks that needed to be done and before I realized it, the house was clean, the errands were done, and the sun was shining!! A miracle!!!

I can't sing enough praises for Depression is a Choice . Any of you who are tired of depression stealing your life, read this book! I guarantee that you will be as successful as I have been. If the title throws you off, then change it to say: Staying Depressed is a Choice. And as you read, you will find this to be true. We dont have to stay that way. Some of the techniques may seem just too simple to work, but believe me, theyre not! THEY DO WORK!! Some of the technical neuroscience stuff is a bit difficult for me to understand, but for those of you who need the complicated stuff, that is there too! Something for everyone!!

I dont understand all about why the techniques in the book work, but "this one thing I do know. I was blind. And now I see!!" Praise God for leading me to this book!