For years, Eva resisted the idea of medication while simultaneously self-medicating her ever-present depression. However, when running, herbal supplements, binge drinking, and all the other tactics that she’s tried still leave her unable to stop crying, she finally takes the plunge. Tune in to hear how Eva comes to accept and find the right treatment for her clinical depression which opens up a whole new world.
For years, Eva resisted the idea of medication while simultaneously self-medicating her ever-present depression. However, when running, herbal supplements, binge drinking, and all the other tactics that she’s tried still leave her unable to stop crying, she finally takes the plunge. Tune in to hear how Eva comes to accept and find the right treatment for her clinical depression which opens up a whole new world.
If you think you have a problem and want help, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
Writing Prompt: Write a true story about a time when you resisted seeking help for a challenge you were facing.
Statistic Sources:
https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2021.10.9
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/mental-health-disorder-statistics
TMI Project Staff
This episode was produced in partnership with Radio Kingston. It was written, edited, and produced by Eva Tenuto, Blake Pfeil, and Raine Grayson.
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EVA
“It’s in my excitement about possibly being normal, that I do what every other mentally ill person has done at least once in their lifetime—I go off my meds just in time for the holidays.”
EVA
It's the TMI Project Story Hour—a series of true stories created in our writing workshops by everyday, unsung heroes. They all divulge the too-much-information parts we usually keep to ourselves for personal liberation, human connection, and freedom, both for themselves and those who listen.
Before we get started, we just want to let you know that as the TMI implies, some content might be too much information for some listeners.
And remember, your support keeps our content free and accessible to everyone who wants to listen. So if you like what you hear and you're able to chip in at tmiproject.org, thank you. Either way, we are glad you're listening.
I'm Eva Tenuto, and I'll be your host for today's episode.
EVA
Hey, fellow TMI lovers. It is so nice to be back with you sharing stories about all the things we don’t usually talk about out there in the world. And, it’s a perfect time to return-–for Mental Health Awareness Month.
As someone treated for clinical depression, I am pretty aware of my mental health every day of the year, and at TMI Project we celebrate it all year long. But this month, we’re going to join the rest of the world with Season 7: Vicarious Resilience. We’re going to highlight some of the brave souls who stepped on stage, stood in their spotlight, and shared the truth about their lived experience with mental health and mental illness.
To get us started, I’m going to practice what I preach and share one of my own stories with you today.
I told this story in 2012, in TMI Project’s early days. We had only been around for a couple of years. It was pre-TikTok, pre #mentalhealthawareness, and mental health was still a year away from being included in the affordable health care act. While it has become much more acceptable to discuss mental health, eradicating stigma is still so important.
In preparing for this episode, I looked up the word stigma, and it was defined as “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.”
Disgrace felt like such a charged word to me and so it started me down a rabbit hole. I looked it up too. “The loss of reputation or respect due to a dishonorable act.” It suggests that mental illness is a dishonorable choice, criminal, a disgrace and public shaming of it is acceptable.
If we look at the history of mental health, it’s no mystery where this attitude comes from:
Now, post-pandemic, we’re experiencing a collective mental health crisis. 26% of adults in the US struggle with mental health and 45% of those people never seek help . Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for people between 14-35, yet roughly half of people who have considered it will deny it if a health care professional asks.
Stigma is not just dangerous. It’s a killer. Can you imagine how many people would die unnecessarily of treatable cancer if cancer was associated with disgrace?
After I shared this story for the first time, so many people came up to me to tell me that they struggled in silence as well, and that they still wouldn’t have the courage to step on stage and talk about it. One woman told me she would rather talk about her sexual disorders (whatever that means) than have her neighbors know she had depression. But, if you can’t talk about mental health, then you can’t get help; and if you can’t get help, you can’t get better.
So, we’re talking about it. I’m talking about it. I’ve struggled over the years to find the right blend of tools that work for me. And as you will hear, medication has been part of my personal wellness journey. But, just to be clear, we’re not promoting any single solution or giving out advice. This season, me and our other storytellers are simply sharing what worked for us. What can make one person feel better can make someone else feel worse. We know recovery is different for everyone. We just want all of you out there to feel comfortable asking for help if you need it to discover what works for you.
I’m glad that the world has become more open since I first told this story and think it is possible that in our corner of the world, TMI Project had a little something to do with it. Stay tuned after the story and I’ll share some of the exciting things we’ve got coming up.
******
EVA
So since I've been sharing TMI stories since 2010, I've already told dozens of painful or embarrassing stories to the general public. It gets harder each time. I wonder if I'm going to be able to find another story and then quickly discover that with just a little digging, I can tap into a never ending well of shame and humiliation. As you know, this show is the result of a TMI workshop Sari and I taught at the Mental Health Association.
As soon as we walk in the door, I feel like I have found my people. It is so refreshing, so nice to be in a room full of people who know they have mental illness. Rather than being in one of our regular workshops where everybody's still trying so hard to deny it. More than half of our work is done right up front.
I feel the immediate sense of relief that comes with true kinship and camaraderie. I have had depression for a long time. Depression of the clinical variety. My mother used to say to me, oh, are you feeling blue again? Her use of the word blue was enough to make me want to end it all. What? You think when you feel blue? It's worse than when other people feel blue. It's not my mom's fault. She's never experienced depression. I know my blue is the same as other people's blue.
But I also know that clinical depression is not the same thing as being blue. I remember seeing an episode of Oprah of the inspirational variety, about a guy with no legs running a marathon. I lied there watching and thought, why don't you do a show about somebody with clinical depression getting up off the couch? That would actually inspire me. Just once I would like to know what it's like to do laundry, and as soon as it's dry, take it out, fold it, and put it away. My laundry becomes like a third person in the house. Sometimes it sleeps with us in bed or sits with us at the dinner table. Sometimes it lies on the couch and watches movies with us. It rarely takes a quick and efficient trip right into the drawer.
During my drinking days, I was morally opposed to taking medication. I'd sit at the bar thinking pharmaceutical companies are trying to take over the world, trying to control us over prescribing so we become complacent so they can own us. I will not be a slave to a drug. Yes, I'll have another.
I'm not okay taking antidepressants, but I'm fine guzzling bottle upon bottle of what may as well be labeled depressant. Perhaps the conspiracy theories are true, but in my experience. It's also true that if there's a chemical imbalance and it doesn't get balanced, nothing else seems to work. I try other things before I give in.
I discover St. John's wart, when chased with shots of tequila, is really ineffective. It's a total waste of money. I start jogging. It's supposed to be physically impossible to feel depressed with all these endorphins, right? I mean, every day I jog around Prospect park, and for all three and a half miles, I cry. I'm defying laws of nature. I cry everywhere. I can't control it.
In the laundromat, restaurants, bodegas, you name it, I cry there. It's particularly bad when I'm teaching preschool and cry more than the kids in my class. I hide in the corner of the playground, hoping none of them will notice. But one little kiss ass always has to say something. ‘Miss Eva, are you okay? Maybe try using your words if you can.’
I hit my low at the apartment right under the BQE between Williamsburg and Dumbo. We call our neighborhood Dumsburg. We live in a four story atrocity.
My friend Claire and I went to look at it with a realtor from Avalanche Realty. That should tell you something. During what resembles a haunted house tour, we notice that everything in this brownstone is held together with caulk. The banister, door frames, the dreaded dark wood paneling, all of it reinforced with caulk. It isn't until after we sign the lease and send in our deposit that we realize that all of the windows have been framed in old lady diapers to keep out the breeze. I suppose it's no wonder that this is the building that I break down in. I wake up one morning crying, and I can feel it, the depression coursing through my blood. I feel contaminated, defective.
My mom calls. I answer the phone, crying, and I can't stop. She doesn't know what to do for me. ‘Oh, I hate to think of you by yourself when you're like this. Why don't you go see if you can go talk to a neighbor?’
I sit on the phone in silence, imagining all the options. Do I A: go next door to the drug dealer's apartment where it's quite possible that I could get killed? B: the abandoned building where the homeless grunkage are squatting, or C: go to the skater boys brownstone for a nice, soothing hot mug of bong water? Like what? I will never understand how she came up with that prized piece of advice. She knew where I lived.
But in a strange way, her advice is helpful. I hang up the phone with my mother, and I know I have to come up with a more promising solution. I finally give medication a try. I can't believe what happens. After a few weeks, I feel a sense of myself, that I haven’t experienced since I was five years old, an inner peace and contentment. I have energy freed up from not fighting for my life every single day. I always thought meds would rob me of my emotions, but all of a sudden, I can feel all of them. Anger, sadness, hurt, fear, and joy.
I have an array of feelings instead of just that one, that dreaded depression that I was always trying to get away from. I don't know what I would have done if the medication didn't work, but it did, which confirms something that I had resisted accepting. I do, in fact, have a mental illness. After years of being on medication, I become well enough to realize that in addition to clinical depression, I'm also an alcoholic. And so in 2005, with a lot of really hard work, I get sober. After a couple of years of sobriety, I think maybe I'm not mentally ill. Maybe now that I'm not swigging back bottles of depressants every day, I can be what I always wanted to be when I grow up. Normal.
It's in my excitement about possibly being normal that I do what every other mentally ill person has done at least once in their lifetime. I go off my meds just in time for the holidays. Now's the time. That March, my friend and ex-roommate Clara comes to visit me. I had moved back from the city to be back upstate again. She lived with me through the great Depression, the pre-medication era. She knows the signs. Not that it takes an expert. My apartment is dark when she enters.
She goes to turn on one light and then another. But the bulbs are all burned out. It smells like garbage. She has to tell me because in my state, I don't know. ‘Eva, you don't usually live like this.’ ‘I don't? Are you sure?’ ‘You have to go back on your medication. I'm sure.’
Years have passed, and for the most part, I'm doing very well. Some days you will find me and my pile of laundry doing shots of liquid vitamin D together and soaking up the rays of my seasonal affective disorder lamp.
We do what we can. I occasionally wish that I didn't have to take medication. But then I look at the life I get to lead with them. I get to take care of myself well. I get to witness all of these people tell their truth, release their shame, and become more of who they really are. I think about all of the unlucky, gifted people who suffered through this disease before medication was available, like Virginia Wolfe and Vincent van Gogh. And I remind myself to be grateful that I've mustered up the courage to talk to you about this, with both ears intact, and no rocks in my pockets.
******
EVA
As I mentioned in the story, I wrote this while teaching our very first workshop at The Mental Health Association of Ulster County. We went on to teach 16 more workshops there and helped over 150 people share their stories about mental health and mental illness.
My time working there was transformational for me personally, and I learned so much. I had so many of my own blind spots removed. I realized I had never heard someone with a serious mental health diagnosis talk about their own experience. I had never heard anyone say, “I have schizophrenia and this is what it feels like to be me.” I had only heard, quote-unquote, experts talk about them – those other-ed people. I never realized how important these first-person stories are, and in our next episode we’re going to share one of them with you.
“People recognize me all the time. Today I have a new story to tell.”
I know I’m not supposed to have favorites, but I have to admit, Morris was one of my favorite participants to work with. In a special letter he wrote to his grandmother who he lovingly referred to as Gigi, he shared what it was like to grow up with schizophrenia and feel misunderstood by his family and those around him. It is a story filled with honesty and unconditional love.
Morris participated in a very special workshop – it was a 10-week session that we filmed every moment of, and culminated in an award-winning documentary, Vicarious Resilience, hence the name of this season. The piece was created to invite people into the process. There is so much you hear in each story told on stage, but when you are in the workshop, you see even more transformation happening before your eyes, from the moment someone walks into the very first session, to the moment they take their bow on stage. Morris went from feeling invisible in our community to feeling like a celebrity. I can’t wait to introduce you to him next week.
If you want to watch Vicarious Resilience, it is available at vicariousresilience.com.
If you think you have a problem and want help, call the substance abuse and mental health association’s national helpline at 1-800-662-HELP. That’s 1-800-662-4357.
EVA
If you like what we're doing, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. TMI Project is available to offer true storytelling workshops and performances for your school or workplace. To learn more or to support our work, you can find details about it all at tmiproject.org.
This episode of the TMI Project Story Hour was produced in partnership with Radio Kingston. It was written, edited, and produced by me, Eva Tenuto, Blake Pfeil, and Raine Grayson. Our theme song is Secrets by Edison Woods.
I'm Eva Tenuto, TMI Project's Executive Director. Our Operations and Programs Manager is Blake Pfeil. Our Organizational Administrator is Raine Grayson. Our Marketing and Digital Coordinator is Laura Marie Ruoco. Our Partnership Coordinator is Dara Lurie. Our Administrative Assistant is Riley Gibbons. Our graphic designer and webmaster is Lauren Gill. Our Partnership Outreach Coordinator is Dara Lurie. Our workshop leaders are Perla Ayora, Haley Downs, Raine Grayson, Rae Lipkind, Dara Laurie, Micah, Julie Novak, Blake Pfeil, and me, Eva Tenuto.
To learn more and to find a special writing prompt so you can start telling your story, visit tmiproject.org/podcast.
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