Posted by Chairman_MAO on May 5, 2005, at 19:49:36
In reply to Does MAO-B activity vary from person to person, posted by linkadge on April 25, 2005, at 14:39:47
Yes, it does vary from person to person, and also based upon environmental factors, age, etc. I cannot tell you exactly HOW it varies, but MAO levels can be a marker for various conditions.
Insofar as the "everyone's depressed" thing: You have a valid point. And, as I am an admierer of people like Thomas Szsasz and R.D. Liang, etc., you will find me to be very sympathetic to the idea of mental illness being culturally constructed to pathologize unwanted behavior that is will within the normal human condition, etc. However, there are some people like me who are, for whatever reason, just kinda born depressed. I was not born with major depression (I'm not sure if that is possible, anyway), I was born with dysthymia. I've always had it; some of my earliest memories contain what now I understand to be dysthymic thoughts and behavior. I also was born with my social phobia/agoraphobia, to some degree. There are pictures of me at my first birthday party in the photo album, surrounded by a large, loving family and friends. I mean, my family LOVED me. They praised my existence to the stars; and yet if you look at pictures of me sitting at the cake, I am afraid and tense as all hell. this was at age ONE, before I could develop any such disorders based on experience.
Fast forward to age 21: I'm in college, in existentialism class. I'm surrounded by people that like me, and I'm giving a presentation. I didn't prepare for it well--this was before I got a successful treatment (MAOI) for my dysthymia--because I had a hard time following through with any project or feeling a positive reward in anything--but that's OK, I read the selection from Sartre. Well, most kids in the class handed out busy work after speaking for 10 minutes so they didn't have to talk.
Well, I went up to the front of the room and just said basically whatever came to mind. I didn't face the class for much of the time because I'm scared to death of crowds, although for some reason I always was capable of putting myself into "this is a dream" mode when making oral presentations. Well, I really didn't keep track of the time, and ended up speaking passionately on Sartre's "bad faith" and self-deception for about an hour. When I was done speaking, I looked at the class and I got this raucous applause. I had done such a good job that a bunch of generally disinterested college kids were going NUTS over my presentation.
Well, I felt scared to death of the applause and wanted to leave the room ASAP. A girl came up afterward (in retrospect I think she was hitting on me) and told me, "you know, you're really good at that." I said, "At what, bad faith?" I was no more able to take the good-willed applause from my peers at age 21 than I was able to take it from my family at age 1. It's just who I am. And I'm almost in tears (despite the Nardil + buprenorphine regime) thinking abut it because I've lost so much time to being [metaphorically, as Szasz would say] sick, and blew off so many positive opportunities because of my mental illness.
Syracuse University's professor of psychopharmacology told me privately one day that I was his "protege" and that he wanted to get me into John's Hopkins psychopharm grad program and personally see to it that I succeed. Rather than take him up on it, I stayed sequestered in my room at school, eventually choosing to numb the pain with pot. Now, mind you, in case you haven't been able to tell, I LOVE PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY. I could read about every waking moment (I'm only partly kidding) and hope to make a career out if it, and yet his offering of a career in it seemed "blah" and "gray". If that's not dysthymia, I don't know what is.
So you see, it's unfortunately not as simple as you've been musing it might be. :(
poster:Chairman_MAO
thread:488468
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050414/msgs/494214.html