Got the film Dogs in Space out on video recently. Most people would know it. It is meant to capture the Melbourne punk scene of the early 1980s. Who knows if it is accurate or not? I suspect many people say it is accurate (or not) just so they can appear to have the cultural capital to make such a distinction…
Anyway, one of the things I noticed is that the song ‘Shivers’ is played at least twice in the film. It is a haunting track. Nick Cave does a version. He can flesh out the troubled lyrics with the deep untroubled timbre of his voice. The opening verse goes something like this:
I’ve been contemplating suicide,
But it really doesn’t suit my style,
So I think I’ll just act bored instead
Who can take the blood I would’ve shed?
Paraphrasing what Tom Wolfe wrote many years ago, acting bored is a sure way to look cool. Dogs in Space stars Michael Hutchence who, according to the NSW coroner, took his own life on November 22, 1997 at the Ritz Hotel, Double Bay. It got me thinking about suicide and depression in general. The film acts as a site of intersection for various ways the events of suicide and depression are repeated — in song, film, history, ‘real life’, etc. Depression is one of the great social problems of the contemporary era.
According to the NHPA Report on Mental Health 1998: A Report Focusing on Depression (produced in 1998 and published 1999) suicide is a leading cause of death in Australia, resulting in a total of 2,393 deaths (1,931 males, 462 females) in 1996. Since 1990, suicides have exceeded road injury deaths and have been the leading cause of death due to injury in Australia (pg 21).
People may or may not have had exposure to someone who is depressed, but sometimes it can be somewhat depressing.
* The first funeral I attended of someone I had known personally from my generation (rather than someone of my parents’ or grandparents’ generation) took his own life by jumping off a bridge across a freeway. If the fall didn’t kill him, the cars going at 100km/h certainly bloody did. He had a good job, good mates and a loving family.
* I once went out with someone who had a parent that was clinically depressed. When I was fed up with studying or with my dissertation or paying bills or whatever, I would say something like, “Oh this shit is depressing…” She would reply in perfect deadpan, “No. It isn’t.”
* A few months after moving to Sydney and coming home from uni I pulled someone back over a railway crossing just as a train was passing underneath. I grabbed hold of his belt as it is the strongest point to hold someone drunk or suicidal. He kept on repeating, “You don’t know what you’ve done.” That’s right, I didn’t. I acted without really thinking about it. The silly old bugger then tried to have a swing at me. I was three times his size…
When you try to have an intimate relationship with someone who is depressed it can be very difficult. I don’t just mean a partner, but a friend, co-worker or similar. Beyond Blue, the national depression initiative, has these points to help those helping others with depression:
* Indicate that you have noticed a change in their behaviour;
* Suggest that they visit their family doctor;
* Suggest that they seek help from a health professional;
* Assist the person to make an appointment to see a family doctor or other health professional;
* Accompany the person when they go to see a health professional;
* Make extra efforts to stay in contact;
* Include the person in social and pleasant events;
* Help the person to find information about depression or anxiety;
* Try and have other close friends or family adopt a similar inclusive approach; and,
* Find out what self-help strategies help or eventually do harm.
Basically the points above are saying that depressed people want to have mates, too. Or find out how to get them professional help. The duration of depression can be anywhere between weeks to years. It is a long time to wait until someone gets through it. Often you just have to learn how to live with depression. However, the brutal fact of the matter is that we are not all built to weather relationships with those who are depressed. Sometimes being friendly or intimate with someone depressed is self-destructive; especially if there are substance abuse issues associated with the depression. Quite literally, someone suffering from depression can be like someone drowning. As most people who have learnt rudimentary surf life saving skills are aware sometimes you need to kick the struggling swimmer away lest they pull you down, too. Therefore, I would add another point to this list:
* Know when it is better to walk away than to stay.
I contemplated stealing a line from Kenny Roger’s track The Gambler about knowing when to hold ‘em and knowing when to fold ‘em, but that just would have been crass. Actually, if you are trying to help someone that is depressed or you are feeling blue yourself, then here is another pointer:
* Maintain a healthy sense of humour at all times. Depression doesn’t have to be depressing.
Most people would’ve had some experience with depression and the odds are that some people reading this are depressed at the very momen.
Note: Glen’s blog can be found here.
Oh, that needed an edit… How depressing… lol…
I forgot to add that I’d welcome any other accounts, first or second hand, on coping with depression or coping with someone else’s depression.
Good work, Glen. My life, and those of family members and friends have been touched with depression and I once had to talk a close friend out of suicidal thoughts.
I also remember the first funeral I attended of someone from my generation - a 22 year old nurse. I think his suicide had a lot to do with his being gay and not being able to deal. A good High School friend hanged himself for the same reason when he was 21, but I couldn’t bring myself to attend the funeral.
I echo Liam’s point about these socially induced tragedies on another thread.
It’s worthwhile remembering also that depression often isn’t just an individual thing.
That’s an outstanding post, Glen. We are not worthy.
“Maintain a healthy sense of humour at all times. Depression doesn‚Äôt have to be depressing.”
Absolutely, perfectly correct.
I think it is often important to press depressed friends to keep active. Too much time dwelling on problems often makes them seem worse than they are, while doing other things is often worthwhile in itself while also keeping depressed minds of whatever it is they believe has caused their problems.
The only time I was ever depressed (as it would be called now - I just thought I was feeling down and pessimistic, but it lasted months) was when my PhD studies were going particularly badly, and PhDs have also been major factors in two friends who have suffered from depression. A long project with little feedback, no group activities, no certainty of any success, and lots of unstructured time for dwelling on things - it is a recipe for problems. It’s one reason I always try to talk people out of doing PhDs.
Yeah thanks for that Naomi. Now I have it stuck in my head. I’ll have to go a few choruses of baa baa black sheep or somthing.
I found it’s amazingly effective just to get out of the house and go for a walk. I didn’t believe it when I first heard it, but it worked quite well, and actually many postnatally depressed women are encouraged to get out and walk with their babies. Of course exercise won’t always work if you are badly depressed, but if you feel it descending it’s a good way to hold it off.
Thanks Glen. Great post.
I have to echo what Naomi and Mindy said. After a brush with the black dog a few years ago (cf what I said about the whole eating disorder in the other thread) I can tell when I’m heading that way. And yeah, I go for walks and try to get outside more and lay off the booze. I’ve also found making things to be very therapuetic — knitting, taking photographs, painting. Gardening is also good.
I also call all my friends and family to tell them how fond I am of them.
Also, don’t ever tell a depressed person to “just get over it”. Encourage them to talk, to get out of the house, to go see a doctor, but never, ever tell them “oh, just suck it up.” Because it makes them feel even more isolated, and that’s precisely the opposite of what they need.
Countdown refused to let The Boys Next Door perform that song on the show specifically because of the S word (they said that was their reason anyhow). It depressed their record company I can tell you.
I imagine the Countdown programmers also would have objected to the M*A*S*H theme.
One significant fact is that the male suicide rate is about four times the female rate.
I think the re are some social factors at least partly responsible for this.
Probably the most important factor is the Family Court/Child Support Agency bias against fathers, which is a major cause of male suicide. Many men just can’t go on after having their children, home and assets taken away by a hostile partner aided by the government, then being forced to hand over a large part of their income to the offender.
I also think the general hatred of men expressed in the media, in education, and elsewhere has a strong effect. It’s certainly contributed to my own depression in some instances (though avoiding the mainstream media provides some relief).
I don’t think there has been enough serious research into the reasons for the higher rate of male suicide, because the results would tend to implicate feminist influence on government, media, law and education.
The words are in the movie, which predated the series. Sorry about the formatting of the comment before. Perhaps some nice administrator might like to come along and add </br> in the right places?
ep, michael moore asked another version of the question implicit in your post, ie regarding the relation between the ‘private event’ of depression and the societal event of the family courts. Moore asked the manager or whatever of the nuclear missle factory if he thought there was a connection between the existence of this factory in the town of Columbine and the suicidal killing spree that two students went on.
I am working on a much more philosophical post that deals with the event of depression. One of my favourite philsophers (who also killed himself) Deleuze discusses it in one of his books. He calls it ‘the crack up’. Anyway, one of the points he raises relates to the question of causality and scale.
“Everything is singular, and thus both collective and private, particular and general, neither individual nor universal. Which war, for example, is not a private affair? Conversely, which wound is not inflicted by war and derived as a society as a whole? Which private event does not have all its coordinates, that is, all its impersonal social singularities?” (Logic of Sense, 152)
Feminists made a similar point when they argued the personal is political. The acts of resistance performed on the scale pertaining to an individual are but singular iterations of an event happening on a much larger scale…
Depression is a complex event and isolating factors is very difficult process, especially if the event of depression is understood as straddling different ontological scales. In other words, I don’t think linear causality is appropriate in the case of depression.
It’s certainly difficult, if not impossible, to isolate general factors in depression.
However, it is possible to make fairly good guesses about individual cases where suicide was triggered by specific situations.
Also, it cannot be insignificant that the male:female suicide ratio is 4:1 not only in Australia, but in the UK and probably the US as well.
Yet when I looked at the NHPA report you linked, there was no recommendation for an investigation into men’s suicide, or for specific interventions. There were various recommendations for study and action on depression in Aborigines, post-natal and adolescent women, and rural residents — but not for the single largest group of fatalities.
I also looked at the research programs listed at BeyondBlue. Again, there were projects directed at examining depression amongst women, Aborigines and adolescents, but not at fatalities in men.
It seems to me that there is a large and conspicuous gap in depression research, which excludes the group that actually suffers the most fatalities from depression.
Perhaps these priorities reflect the relative worthlessness of men in our society, which in turn might be a contributing factor in male suicide.
EP I think young rural males currently top the suicide rates, last time I looked anyway. This may have changed. However, I don’t think you can broad brush the whole issue as being the fault of feminists. The reasons for suicide are many and varied.
sorry EP, didn’t see your last comment before writing my comment.
Not to worry, Mindy. You can safely assume I’ll always blame the feminists for anything, except when I’m blaming the Swedes.
EP, there are also patterns in suicide methods where men and women differ. I once had a very disturbing talk about this with a social worker friend.
Men tend to go out more irreversibly, jumping, walking in front of trains, crashing their cars, and so on, while it’s more common for women who attempt suicide to overdose, which may not be fatal if the ambulance arrives in time.
Well, EP, the Aboriginal male suicide rate is much higher per head of capita than the white male suicide rate (at least here in WA and in the NT).
But you’re right, young male suicide is a tragedy (hell, any suicide is a tragedy) and one that isn’t addressed very well in this country, and I do think it is an important issue that needs more discussion in the MSM and everywhere else.
That’s true, Liam.
I’ve also heard that men may be less likely to seek medical treatment when depressed, and this might also contribute.
Still, the consistently higher death rate among males would seem to justify some specific programs researching the reasons in detail and providing targeted intervention. That doesn’t seem to be happening, from the examples I gave above.
Hmm, ep, I was going to suggest that you need to look at the qualitative differences in suicide, as Liam suggests.
The distribution that needs closer scrutiny is not the absolute distribution of suicide across genders, social class, ethnicity or whatever, but the distribution of suicide in relation to occurences of depression. Do the rates of depression within social categories match up with the rates of suicide?
To speak in criminology terms, suicide can be situation-based or pre-planned and so on. However, depression in most cases is structural and has long lead in and lead out times. Exceptions to this include post-traumatic and post-natal.
In other words, suicide and depression may not actually be the same problem or have the same root causes.
Liam, young rural men also have greater access to guns, which is a major factor. All the young men I know of who’ve suicided or attempted it have shot themselves.
Suicide and depression may not actually be the same problem or have the same root causes.
Perhaps not — but I think there is a close relationship and considerable overlap between the two.
I would say that in the majority of cases, suicide is a symptom of depression. There would be exceptions such as people suffering painful, fatal diseases — but these should be pretty obvious from medical records or autopsies.
I don’t want to come across as the pedant of punk, but Dogs in Space (released in 1986) is definitely *not* set in the Melbourne punk scene of the early 1980s. It is set in 1978-1979 (Skylab crashed in July 1979).
What‚Äôs the difference? Well, speaking as someone who moved to Melbourne at the start of 1984 (i.e. the early 1980s, at a stretch), the punk scene was by then a pretty stock-standard middle-class (or upper- ) subculture, defined by its consumables (what you wore, the music you listened to, and the clubs (and nights thereto) you went to). Sounds harsh? Sure — and to make it clear, I was a typical prime offender in all of this, although naturally, I thought that I was authentic at the time.
In contrast — although this time I‚Äôm basing my views on what I‚Äôve read, not personal experience-plus-twenty-years — being punk c.1978 was a genuine political statement. I say this *because* of, not despite, the mass-market reach of the Sex Pistols. For a brief period, it was actually possible to buy nihilism on the High Street (instead of an alternative/boutique record store).
Of course, this moment — which coincided with the last boomers turning 18 — didn‚Äôt, and indeed could have, lasted. The Reagan, Thatcher and Khomeini fundamentalist revolutions of 1979-80 were just around the corner. More than these years simply marking the death of political/mass punk, the punk “golden” years immediately preceding them (1977-78), can now be read as a contrapuntal warning sign, like the way a shoreline briefly but dramatically recedes before a tsunami.
This tsunami — of economic and religious fundamentalism (IMO, the “and” here is redundant, because they are really the same thing) — ironically took a long time to even be recognised by my Xer generation. We were too busy paddling in the fantastical shallows mirage of vaguely wanting it to be like 1977-78, to dwell on what the boomers had wrought.
Sure, we noticed that they had swapped safety pins for sharp suits, a little bit too enthusiastically. But the bigger picture — that 1979 marked not only the end of the two-decade long counter-culture, but of the 200 year-old Enlightenment, only started to become plain on 11 September 2001.
Correction to typo in above post. Line should read:
“Of course, this moment — which coincided with the last boomers turning 18 — didn‚Äôt, and indeed *couldn‚Äôt* have, lasted”.
My experience in this matter is pretty hands-on, as my brother committed suicide at the age of 17. Today is the 18th anniversary of his death so he’s now offically been dead longer than alive. Not sure what to do yet, but this is as good an exercise of commemoration as any.
What I want to add to this thread (apart from the fact that I really, really dislike that song, and have done since before his death) is that sometimes, when someone really wants to go, absolutely nothing can hold them back. We had a good nine months run-up (a rather ironic sum) from the moment of a nervous breakdown to his suicide, and we spent the whole time working with his closest friends (the only other people of his social network who knew of his depression, everyone just seeing the sunny side) and psychiatrists, doctors, etc, trying to persuade him that he was loved, wanted, special, not special, clever, average, normal, unique, trying to get him to enjoy his life, giving him permission to drop out of school if it would make a difference, EVERYTHING. Finally, when we thought it had all worked, and he seemed cheerier on a weekly basis, we took him off suicide watch. So he did it. Of course, the story is more complex than that, but there are the bare bones, so to speak. What more could we have done?
I am so glad that there are a lot more support services out there now; there was nothing in 1987 except Lifeline. Being left behind is dreadful, but I feel luckier than someone whose family member has been killed accidentally. At least we had some warning.
Not sure if I’ve made any point in all this, but thanks for bringing up this thread. I seem to be spending a lot of my artistic energy making works about suicide, from the ‘loss’ and angle rather than the ‘doing’ angle. I’m hoping that it can make some positive contribution to this awful epidemic. It certainly helps me!
“Finally, when we thought it had all worked, and he seemed cheerier on a weekly basis, we took him off suicide watch”
That is the point when I have been most suicidal. Depressives get to a point where they maintain a happy mask and keep the pain covered.
If I didn’t have young children I think it would have been over some time ago.
“”Maintain a healthy sense of humour at all times. Depression doesn‚Äôt have to be depressing.”
Absolutely, perfectly correct.”"
That’s as bad and unhelpful as someone saying, pull your socks up and get on with life. When your whole focus is on the razor blade or pills that advice can be all that’s needed to take that final step.
I would hate to live with me when the ‘black dog’ is in control: it must be hell for my family.
I think that’s the point I was trying to make. It’s very hard to tell when someone’s recovering or at that final point because once they’ve made the absolute decision to go, they relax and look like they’re coping. Everything I’ve read since his death confirms all the stages he went through, but we went through them repeatedly, so it was impossible to tell if he was just peaking or really going. Family and friends are only human, and (thank god) none of us are mindreaders. All we can do is be supportive, and be there.
Cowpat, I’m sure it’s hell, but you’re still around, and they’d be worse without you! My brother, it turns out, only went when he was convinced our lives would be easier without him, or so he said in his note. Well, to tell the truth, it was easier — but I’d rather have him around.
Cowpat, I think the person supposed to be maintaining their humour is the carer.
I was the primary carer for my best friend when she lost the plot a few years ago. If I had not tried to live MY life normally, we would both have been stuffed. Caring for a depressed person for a prolonged period is hard work, and you need to be healthy yourself to do it, including being able to have a giggle or be cross about something.
and Ducky, I’ll be around with some red wine shortly.
cowpat, zoe was right, sorry, i meant for those who have intimate relationships (or try to) with people who are depressed.
For every person depressed there is normally a network (I am hoping) around the person of people who care for them deeply. I have found it is extraordinarily hard to love someone when they do not love life enough to keep on living. What is required is a kind of militant care combining a quiet patience and a will to endure all colours of shit. A sense of humour comes here, because it involves moments that could turn into crying, shouting, silence, leaving, or laughing. I would rather laugh. Of course, others have their own versions of coping, but that is what I meant by that commment.
The best lessons in depression and general life coping have come to me via the daughter of an alcoholic, suicidal depressive [manic and shocked]. There is always, always [a seriously twisted and sick] sense of humour about absolutely everything. There is also unspoken and ever-present acknowledgement of how her mother tries to manipulate her. She has no illusions about her mother - I’ve known her since we were about 13 - and I don’t think she has had in all that time. What I am getting at, albeit inarticulately and rather slowly, is that those in intimate relationships with depressives [and others with mental illnesses] are also in need of support and are so often neglected [not to mention abused etc]. Hmmmmmmm, it’s actually difficult to write about this so I’ll give it up now.
Otherwise -
What are the parasuicide rates like. ie are men both more likely to try and to succeed [sorry], are there many more attempts than completions by women, that kind of thing?
Thanks for the post, Glen - I think you’re doing good work in the world by airing these issues and giving people a forum to talk about them.
Ampersand Duck, thanks for posting that. I am terribly sorry that it happened to your brother, and you and your family.
Thanks Kate! It seems to happen to so many people these days, hence this post, I guess. Scratch the surface and everyone has a depression/suicide story, which is definitely not saying that it’s something to be blase or trite about. I find it very touching when people do open up.
I have to be careful these days when I’m reciting my tale that I don’t just keep trotting out some sort of family legend (it’s been so long!). I make myself try to see it fresh and rethink what happened. I gave you the precis yesterday, but I spent the rest of the day thinking about it over again and in the context of what I read about young people (hate that phrase, but nothing else fits) today. I know there’s lots of other people who commit suicide, but one only has so much energy for this sort of thinking!! Then hopefully I can make a piece of art that reaches out, rather than self-obsesses.
When I think about this topic, I always think about the bar scene in Nadja, when - talking about “the primary pain”, Lucy says in regard to her brother who killed himself:
To which Nadja (the Vampire) replies:
You want your cultural capital? Got it right here baby. I was in Dogs In Space (an extra in one of the gig scenes and the big party scene towards the end) and yep it was pretty damn accurate, especially as a large chunk of it was cast from a cast of characters who were around from the time through to the early-mid 80s (like moi).
“the punk scene was by then a pretty stock-standard middle-class (or upper- ) subculture”
Middle-class (or upper-) subculture yes. Punk no. Partly sprung from that but it rapidly evolved into a very Aus inner city brew of artschool-bratarama cultural cringe, the pub rock scene, classic bohemianism, right-on student activism and general take drugs and fuck the straights attitude -all of which was always around but just crystalised for a new generation by the late seventies punk thang.
And Richard got some details spot on like all the cool inner city groovers rushing for a good couch possie to watch Countdown on a B&W TV or the crappy malfunctioning synths of the time (played a Korg MS-101 m’self).
As to suicide though, since I haven’t killed myself, it would probably be presumptous of me to offer an opinion.
However I knew a couple of people who topped themselves. In one case, the warning signs were all there in retrospect but everyone else was too wrapped up in themselves to notice. In the other case, it came right out of the blue. The last person you expected, etc, etc. I can draw no conclusions from this.
“I think young people know just about everything. It‚Äôs just that they can‚Äôt defend themselves from what they know.”
Not bad, except I’d change “know” to “feel”.
On a slightly different note, I’m starting to think much more kindly of Jeff as time rolls on, not least of what he’s doing with Beyond Blue (Did you see him on Denton? Boy did he roll Andrew).
Soemone mentioned keeping a sense of humour. This should test you.
How many suicidal people does it take to change a lightbulb?
Why bother. The electricity’s been cut off anyway.
Favourite lightbulb joke:
Ouch.
Back on topic. I had a severe depressive episode about twenty years ago. Fortunately it never recurred. But it was terrible, and lasted for months. The panic attacks were the worst. I felt as if I was bleeding all over my brain. Strangely, perhaps, I never felt suicidal, because I knew, at some level, that this wasn’t really ‘me’, so it wouldn’t be ‘my’ death at all. Like many blokes, I was too stupid and too proud to seek help, which prolonged the agony for much longer than needed to be the case.
I still don’t know what triggered it. Just before I became ill, I was doing my Honours year, and researching and writing my thesis in two months instead spreading it out over the academic year. During that time I also had a severe case of Asian flu, which I just ignored, knowing the thesis simply had to get done. I suppose the stress could have brought it on. It took me ages to get fully over it.
Q: How many RWDBs does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: All of ‘em. Shame it was the wrong lightbulb though.
Q: How many bloggers does it take to change a lightblub.
A: None. They just link to someone who did.
Q: How many commentators does it take to change a lightblud?
A: Another ad hominem attack? Stop trying to move the lightsockets, why don’t you.
lightbulb–>lightblub–>lightblud
nabakov, have you been reading derrida?
seriously, if this is the ‘comedy turn’ of the depression thread…
If anyone was to ever make a comedy about killing yourself please have a scene where someone is given a t-shirt featuring that furry puppet sitcom-star ALF giving the ‘thumbs-up’ with his knee-slapping post-joke punchline: “I kill me!”
Rob, I guess you get some slack because Nabs was the first with the bad lightbulb joke, but why under heaven did you think a serious thread on depression and suicide was an opportunity for you to lead off a comment with an anti-feminist joke? Tacky and tasteless. Just sayin…
I mean, seriously, can’t you judge when a thread is serious and when stupid RWDB crap might inhibit people from contributing if it’s going to turn into some sort of tedious RWDB inspired stoush? Just sayin…
Comment withdrawn, per Kim. Apologies for any unintended offence.
Favourite lightbulb joke:
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Eleven. One to change the lightbulb. Ten to make the documentary.
Ouch.
Back on topic. I had a severe depressive episode about twenty years ago. Fortunately it never recurred. But it was terrible, and lasted for months. The panic attacks were the worst. I felt as if I was bleeding all over my brain. Strangely, perhaps, I never felt suicidal, because I knew, at some level, that this wasn‚Äôt really ‘me‚Äô, so it wouldn‚Äôt be ‘my‚Äô death at all. Like many blokes, I was too stupid and too proud to seek help, which prolonged the agony for much longer than needed to be the case.
I still don’t know what triggered it. Just before I became ill, I was doing my Honours year, and researching and writing my thesis in two months instead spreading it out over the academic year. During that time I also had a severe case of Asian flu, which I just ignored, knowing the thesis simply had to get done. I suppose the stress could have brought it on. It took me ages to get fully over it.
Damn, the strikethrough didn’t work. Will try again.
Comment withdrawn, per Kim. Apologies for any unintended offence.
Favourite lightbulb joke:Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Eleven. One to change the lightbulb. Ten to make the documentary.
Ouch.
Back on topic. I had a severe depressive episode about twenty years ago. Fortunately it never recurred. But it was terrible, and lasted for months. The panic attacks were the worst. I felt as if I was bleeding all over my brain. Strangely, perhaps, I never felt suicidal, because I knew, at some level, that this wasn‚Äôt really ‘me‚Äô, so it wouldn‚Äôt be ‘my‚Äô death at all. Like many blokes, I was too stupid and too proud to seek help, which prolonged the agony for much longer than needed to be the case.
I still don’t know what triggered it. Just before I became ill, I was doing my Honours year, and researching and writing my thesis in two months instead spreading it out over the academic year. During that time I also had a severe case of Asian flu, which I just ignored, knowing the thesis simply had to get done. I suppose the stress could have brought it on. It took me ages to get fully over it.
If this didn’t work, I give up.
Well I thought it was funny, Rob. Don’t go poppering any pills over it. There, that’s two of us in the sin bin.
This after midnight stoushing gets ugly sometimes.
Yeah, I didn’t find it offensive (but I can see where Kim is coming from. Libran, me). I do actually believe in the sense of humour comment above, in the sense that Zoe etc described — a sense of keeping your head above the water that someone else is drowning in, while you attempt to rescue them.
BTW, loved Dogs in Space. Just hate the ‘theme’ toon, and Michael H’s crap acting. All hail to you for being in it, Nabakov. I love the way they recorded it so that you could hear the background conversations as clearly as the main dialogue, instead of making everyone ‘rhubarb’. When it came out I went back to the (then very cheap) local cinema with my mates every night for a week to catch another layer of words. Then we’d go home, play the soundtrack, have a bong and laugh about it. Halcyon student days that left very few braincells.
Women are more likely to confide depressive feelings than guys.
This would probably be the singlemost contributing factor to the discrepancies. Obviously the people who talk get help and support sooner and aren’t isolated by their own condition.
Guys are, stereotypically, meant to solve their own problems. Own worst enemy etc
“Don‚Äôt go poppering any pills”
Worst.
Popper pun.
Ever.
10/10
Rob, sorry once again. Late night stoushing = bad. I unreservedly apologise.
Just to correct the record:
The last line is actually:
To contain the blood I would’ve shed
One of my favourite songs.
And I don’t see why jokes (whether about lightbulbs or anything else) don’t have a place in a discussion about depression, or even suicide. Taking everything too seriously doesn’t solve anything - as the original post said
Obviously it’s a serious topic - a close friend killed himself, five years ago now, and I still miss him and am angry with him for doing such a stupid thing. But we always had a laugh together - and laughing at things helps us deal with them and stay sane - so I think some moments of levity have a place on a thread like this.
And since it’s Jewish New Year and I am being forced to attend a family dinner (torture, torture!), here’s my fave lightbulb joke:
Q.How many Jewish mamas does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. None - I’ll just sit here in the dark.