Nigel 
July 30th,2009
Be wary when I'm badly depressed. I get prickly.
Everyone feels down from time to time but that isn’t what depression is,and to say depression is bad changes in brain chemistry doesn’t make it any clearer either.
Different people experience depression in very different ways. Some people usually become suicidal and may genuinely attempt to kill themselves. I’ve only felt suicidal once,for a period of weeks. The medics were of no help that time,but a friend called Peter Jolly got me through it. Cheers Pete.
So what is it I experience? Let’s look at some examples.
In the mid seventies I had just arrived at Loughborough for a week long course on how to coach middle distance runners – it was a good course. It was also July,warm and sunny. I decided to go for my usual ten mile run,and to save carrying a map in a strange town I chose to run out along the main road to the motorway and back.
Trouble was that I didn’t seem to be running at all easily,which was odd since days earlier I’d been racing on the track and doing ten mile road runs in an hour.
By three miles I had to stop for a rest. The return journey took much longer. Almost overnight I’d gone from racing fit to pathetic,and for no obvious reason. I was not going down with a cold,and anyway that wouldn’t have had such a dramatic effect.
Later that evening one side of my neck was hurting. It was muscle tension which I couldn’t control. From things my Dad said he experienced the same symptom.
For the rest of the week I enjoyed the course,and passed the coaching exam at the end. It wasn’t until the week after that I began to feel down.
Depression is all sorts of things about the working of your body becoming depressed. For me finding I can’t run properly has been a repeating symptom,but being thick it took me many years to recognise it as such.
On another occasion in the seventies I took some runners on a training holiday in the Mendips. The runs I was handling just fine,but I was feeling increasingly down – so the reverse of the Loughborough experience. As my mental energy began to shut down I felt increasingly bad. The people I was with became more and more irritating,but I fought hard to stay okay with them. On the journey home I couldn’t take their behaviour any more and exploded verbally. Then I realised I was ill again. A few days later my ability to run petered out.
So key early symptoms for me are loss of physical energy,tension in a neck muscle,and becoming very prickly. Sometimes the first obvious symptom has been that I couldn’t take in a text book I’d been reading.
People are different. Your experience,or the experience of someone you know,will probably vary from mine. It is useful if you can learn to spot signs that you or your friend are moving into a serious depressive episode. Then you can modify behaviour,make allowances,stop kicking against the illness,and maybe seek medical advice.
But remember that things will improve. Cope with the illness like other people cope with seasonal flu. Be patient. Some things require time.
