The Amazing Electric Head
Okay.
On the one hand, this currently-in-testing method of treating depression using electrodes implanted into the brain might bring relief to people suffering from otherwise untreatable depressive states.
On the other hand, even if the initial promising results pan out, it still won't be available in time to help a lot of depressed people who are suffering right now. It will be longer still before it is tried in people who are bipolar, for whom it may not prove effective.
On the third hand, the whole idea of monkeying with people's brains is utterly revolting, no matter how effective it turns out to be, and I'm almost certain I would not agree to have such a thing done to me, even in direst need. Absolutely not while I was awake.
On the fourth hand (stay with me, here), who can say what I'd do if I were offered a solution for something that was crippling me?
I don't know. There are no easy answers, and I'm glad people are still working on expanding the range of options, even if those options are things I would not personally take advantage of.
But I can't help it - whenever I read about someone whose depression is intractable, untreatable, unresponsive, I feel a frisson of terror. Is that going to be me in 20 years? Am I going to be so helpless under the heel of this that I contemplate allowing someone to shock parts of my brain until I feel better?
So many people report this sort of persistent depression setting in while they're in their 30's. So many people report that it initially responded to drugs/therapy/whatever, and that it only became impossible to deal with as time went on. That it started out small, but grew within them until it covered everything: the evil kudzu of despair.
I don't want that to happen to me. And it's not something I can control or protect myself against. I just have to sit here and watch it happen to me. Or not.
I think of growing old with this still lingering inside me. I think of my body breaking down stage by stage, I think of losing my health piecemeal, and over all of it the black halo of depression, denying me even the willful cheerfulness of the debilitated but at-peace.
I think of facing down my own mortality without even the comfort of knowing I "really lived," because this thing that preys on me keeps me from feeling any satisfaction with what I have accomplished.
I think of how difficult my emotional life is now, when I'm comparatively young and healthy and resilient, and I look to the future, and all I can see is a thorny path leading straight down into the pit.
I try to navigate the maze of medication and therapy, all the while hoping that there's a cure for me out there, when in reality I may be one of those people who is doomed never to find relief.
And compared to that, having someone drill holes into my skull while I'm awake so they can plunge needles into my brain seems like a small price to pay for a ticket out. When you put it like that, I'd do it to myself.
This "being human" thing. I don't want it. It's scary. It sucks.
On the one hand, this currently-in-testing method of treating depression using electrodes implanted into the brain might bring relief to people suffering from otherwise untreatable depressive states.
On the other hand, even if the initial promising results pan out, it still won't be available in time to help a lot of depressed people who are suffering right now. It will be longer still before it is tried in people who are bipolar, for whom it may not prove effective.
On the third hand, the whole idea of monkeying with people's brains is utterly revolting, no matter how effective it turns out to be, and I'm almost certain I would not agree to have such a thing done to me, even in direst need. Absolutely not while I was awake.
On the fourth hand (stay with me, here), who can say what I'd do if I were offered a solution for something that was crippling me?
I don't know. There are no easy answers, and I'm glad people are still working on expanding the range of options, even if those options are things I would not personally take advantage of.
But I can't help it - whenever I read about someone whose depression is intractable, untreatable, unresponsive, I feel a frisson of terror. Is that going to be me in 20 years? Am I going to be so helpless under the heel of this that I contemplate allowing someone to shock parts of my brain until I feel better?
So many people report this sort of persistent depression setting in while they're in their 30's. So many people report that it initially responded to drugs/therapy/whatever, and that it only became impossible to deal with as time went on. That it started out small, but grew within them until it covered everything: the evil kudzu of despair.
I don't want that to happen to me. And it's not something I can control or protect myself against. I just have to sit here and watch it happen to me. Or not.
I think of growing old with this still lingering inside me. I think of my body breaking down stage by stage, I think of losing my health piecemeal, and over all of it the black halo of depression, denying me even the willful cheerfulness of the debilitated but at-peace.
I think of facing down my own mortality without even the comfort of knowing I "really lived," because this thing that preys on me keeps me from feeling any satisfaction with what I have accomplished.
I think of how difficult my emotional life is now, when I'm comparatively young and healthy and resilient, and I look to the future, and all I can see is a thorny path leading straight down into the pit.
I try to navigate the maze of medication and therapy, all the while hoping that there's a cure for me out there, when in reality I may be one of those people who is doomed never to find relief.
And compared to that, having someone drill holes into my skull while I'm awake so they can plunge needles into my brain seems like a small price to pay for a ticket out. When you put it like that, I'd do it to myself.
This "being human" thing. I don't want it. It's scary. It sucks.