My friend Joey sold ad time at a radio station right after we got out of college. He asked me to do a voice-over for him one day since a client wanted an Australian accent and I was the only person that he knew who could mimic one (passably enough for late 1980s Starkville, MS, anyway). Thus began my short career in radio voice-overs. Since there was such little work involved for me, I took CDs and concert tickets as payment. It was a great arrangement that got me tons of tunes and got me in to see Heart and Jesus Jones where my worlds collided. (I was a chemistry lab teaching assistant at a local high school. Some of my students walked up to me at the outdoor show. Honey! You have never seen a cigarette get flicked and beer dumped so fast! I don’t know why I thought my students shouldn’t know that I drank and smoked, but I did and so jettisoned those articles at warp speed! If you were at the show at Malfunction Junction and were suddenly soaked, my bad!)

But, I digress. (Imagine!) One of Jesus Jones’s biggest hits was Right Here, Right Now. The first couplet of the chorus is, “Right here, right now / there is no other place I want to be.” And, although I sometimes have romantic notions about living in some simpler time, the truth is that I also want to live right here, right now. Every morning when I wake, I am thankful for modern advances, specifically in vision correction. I cannot see more than five or six inches before my vision gets blurry. Without glasses, I would be largely helpless. I am so grateful that I have access to tools that allow me to continue to function. Glasses are not the only daily tool I use to function, either.

As I’ve mentioned on many occasions, I have been treated for depression for over half of my life. A large part of my treatment was and continues to be pharmaceutical. And, although I have been taking my meds throughout all of my recent trials, I was still overwhelmed; so, I went to see my doctor – another reason I’m glad to live in this time. The doctor changed some dosage amounts and times around. I began to feel the effects within just 24 hours. Wonderful!

Now, here I am, several days later and feeling 100% better. I’m sleeping with only one or two interruptions rather than waking up every hour or so. I’m no longer craving sugar to the point of eating roughly 4000 calories every day (Y’all, I wish I were exaggerating. No Ho-Ho or Ding Dong was safe within a half a mile of me.) My stomach is once again communicating with my brain letting me know when I’m full. My mood and perceptions are once again stable. I don’t feel like I’m on the verge of tears all the time. It’s really wonderful!

I think of my Self as a castle that sits inside the fortified walls of my mind and emotions. Negative people and stress can deteriorate those walls. People whose endocrine systems function normally can manufacture the materials needed to repair the walls. To a lesser degree, I can, too. However, people with both normal and abnormal endocrine systems may find their fortifications overwhelmed by circumstances. Last week, I mentioned coping mechanisms, finding ones that work for you, abandoning ones that don’t or ones that are harmful, and seeking help when you need it – when your fortifications are being overwhelmed. Sometimes meds are the help we need, sometimes it’s counseling. But, somehow, we think of seeking counseling as some sort of character or moral failing.

Ummm.

Generally, I seek counseling when I’m puzzling through some situation I’ve never encountered and don’t know how to handle. So, it’s rather like reading the instructions in complicated flat pack furniture. Is it a character flaw to read those instructions to put together something I’ve never constructed before? Only a stubborn fool would insist that it was. So, how is seeking help to get through an unfamiliar situation any different? I just don’t see it.

Similarly, people often see it as shameful to admit that they are taking anti-depressants. Why? Are people with Type 1 diabetes ashamed to admit that they take insulin? Their bodies don’t make it. It’s not their fault. It’s just how their endocrine systems function, or rather, don’t function. The same thing is true for people with many mental conditions. These are actually endocrine system issues that express themselves through the mind. They can produce brilliance in the minds of some of the Selfs that carry them like in Van Gogh, Hemingway, and Poe. But they create misery in the minds of all of the Selfs that carry them. Perhaps those artists would not have created had they had access to today’s medications. Perhaps they would have.

In any case, I am grateful to have access to today’s medications and tools and to be right here, right now.