Electroconvulsive Therapy & Me

The first time I heard of ECT(1) was under circumstances I can’t really talk about. Suffice it to say that someone I knew, who I very much identified with, was choosing to undergo treatments. I can’t really say more than that about the circumstances. But the circumstances, while important to me, are not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about was my response.

I was flabbergasted. Gobsmacked. Pick a ridiculous word that means “extremely surprised”; I was that. I couldn’t get my head around it. (2) It was profoundly nonsensical to me that someone would expose themselves to that. Even as she explained that it was no longer the barbaric practice depicted in old movies, I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would ever choose – choose!! – to have electricity run through their brain, so they could trigger a seizure, so, what? It’s supposed to shock your brain into working right? Okay, maybe I buy that, but like – electricity. To your brain. No. Just. No. My life to that point had been deeply damaged by my own mental illness, but I still couldn’t imagine being willing to get on a table and let yourself be – forgive me – shocked in the head.

I want to be more charitable to myself than to chalk this up to simple naivete. Or maybe naivete would be the more charitable explanation. Because I hadn’t had it as bad as her, for as long as her, at that point, so I couldn’t understand. That’s more charitable than the simple hubris of thinking I could understand, and then disqualifying her decision, for whatever reason. Yeah, that’s not cool. So I guess I’ll take naivete. Or simple ignorance. Call it what you want.

The thing is, I arrived at the place where she was this year. I don’t know if the circumstances were the same for both of us. I don’t know if, like me, she was just exhausted from the seemingly unceasing struggle to just exist without a deep, nagging existential pain. Maybe, like me, she was finding meds increasingly useless as the periods of their efficacy got shorter and shorter. I don’t know.

Personally, I arrived at a point where I had begun to think of antidepressants as a game of Russian Roulette. Yeah, every new med I tried worked – for a while. But, like I said, their periods of efficacy were getting shorter and shorter. Every new med I tried worked a shorter amount of time than the one before. So my periods of functionality were getting smaller and smaller. Two years became a year, became six months, when I’m lucky. And it takes weeks for new meds to have any kind of effect. So while you’re starting out on a new one, and you’re already at a level of serious despair, it feels like – ugh, I’m never getting out of this mire. This will be my life for the rest of my life. It’s really the most dangerous time for me, as a person with Major Depressive Disorder. That point where the despair just seems endless. And every time I’m at that point with a new med (3), I feel like I’ve got that gun to my head, and the chamber’s spinning. Will this be the time I actually have to end the despair myself?

So once you’re at that point, you get pretty desperate. Or at least, I do. I guess I can’t speak for you. I get desperate. What will help, even for a few moments? Drugs? Booze? Sleeping all day? This box of Little Debbie brownies? Fucking a stranger? Anything, anything, anything. Just get me out of the black muck that is my own head. And this year, for me, “anything” became, yes, voluntarily having my brain shocked. Spoilers: it does induce a seizure, and it can sort of “shock” your brain into functioning more like a “normal” brain. That’s the best I can explain it to you without having specialized in whatever niche branch of psychiatry or neurosurgery (or both) the doctor who first prescribed and then (mostly) administered my treatments.

Now, it wasn’t just that I had one time been exposed to someone that had ECT that led me to consider it. No, I never would have considered it if not for the most traumatic experience of my life.(4) But that’s a story for another time.

What I want to say, for now, is that the best thing you can do for your mental health – especially when you encounter people with experiences that differ from your own – is to keep an open mind about treatment options. Because what seems absolutely wild to you might just turn out to be a worthwhile option. Who knows where I would be today if I had considered ECT the first time I learned about it. I honestly can’t even speculate. But I do wish I had kept an open mind a little sooner. Cause that was a decade ago.

What would you give to have a do-over of an entire decade? (5)

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***ENDNOTES***

1. Out in the “wild,” I mean. I had of course been exposed to the notion of “shock therapy”. I watch horror movies, okay? I saw the season of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” where Vincent D’Onofrio’s character winds up at the psych ward and undergoes treatments against his will. I’m not talking about that. Here I’m talking about the first time I heard that it was still being used, and that people voluntarily agreed to do it.
2. Are you a reader of classic sci-fi? I couldn’t grok it.
3. When I say “new” I don’t just mean “new to me”. I mean I have been on so many meds, I’m trying out stuff that’s so new to market, there aren’t even ads for it yet.
4. Foreshadowing much? LOL. Seriously, though, I say “most traumatic” even speaking as a rape survivor.
5. A brief note for formatting nerds like myself: I had this formatted with traditional, superscript, footnote numbers, but they didn't transer when I cut & pasted the text, and there doesn't appear to be a way to properly footnote within the story editor. So I did my best. Still, I offer my apologies.