Poetry as Medicine? The Real, Helpful Antidepressants!

[princesslolita]

Depression as a disease of modernity: Welcome to the 21st century*!

Medicine has an anaesthetic relationship to pain – it wants to rid the patient of it. Poetry’s relationship is aesthetic – it wants pain to speak.- Jay Griffiths

Drastic changes in daily life can easily get things out of balance: A new working place with longer working hours, high school and the pressure to get higher grades, the sudden death of a beloved person, breakups, the socioeconomic situation and status, trauma, etc. We try to adapt to these new conditions and easily trip into a state of "monotony". Once you start feeling blue it's easier to feel numb and empty than you thought. It all starts small, sneaking up until it resolves in something bigger, uncontrollable. The next thing you know is your therapist's diagnosis: MANIC DEPRESSION!

I've been there for the past nine years of my life, trapped in complete darkness, coldness and confusion...fighting my way up to the surface in slow-motion (at least that's how it felt like to me). The neurologists and docs tried to ease my mental battle by prescribing me diverse antidepressants until we finally found an acceptable combination for me. But all they did was drug me with pills, which increased my suicidal thoughts and robbed my sleep, played tricks on my hormones, and either causing me to eat less or more. I had to stop taking antidepressants in order to stop the many side-effects from happening.

So I devoted myself completely to poetry! For me, poetry is medicine and I've used it as my personal therapy. In the 19th century people in asylums were encouraged to write their own poetry as part of their mental process. I've written many poems myself as well as read many poems and the result: "Poetry can heal the connective tissues of the mind, making it whole and reuniting it with the world!"

Poetry heals the reader as well as the writer. -Jay Griffiths

In the awful loneliness of depression, poetry is the kindest companion when one is keening to be comprehended. - Jay Griffiths

It's a beautiful feeling when you see the unspoken words on a sheet of paper, it's relieving. There's nothing more beautiful than self-help! Go for it, try it out for yourself...it'll work miracles. Open yourself up and be honest with yourself, don't lie to yourself.

For me, writing poetry at night was an enactment of a metaphoric truth: I could see better in the dark. - Jay Griffiths

* Depression has always existed in one or the other way. It takes us back to the Ancient Greeks and probably even further.

[oddwaffle]

There are certain beauty in poems. I particularly like Li Bai. His poem always strike a very beautiful and sad feeling in me.

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.

The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.

To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and break.

While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.

This poem is really really sad.

The guy was drinking alone in the new year's Eve. So he invited the moon to drink with him like so many poets. Then he got his shadow to drink too.

But he realized the moon doesn't drink and his shadow just follows him.

He got more depressed. He drank some more. Then he sings to the moon. Dance like a maniac. Drink until he turns sober. Then drink some more until he becomes drunk again.

[Anonymous]

Such a nice one

[Jager66]

This is a good take and very true! Lately this poem has been on my mind.

THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
by Rudyard Kipling

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

[ATuairiscean]

Fantastic take - I know exactly where you are coming from - I was diagnosed with mild bipolar but had to give up medication because the side effects were worse than the thing they were supposed to be curing - Creativity has been a big part of my life but even more so since stopping the medication - I am not writing the next big novel just stuff for myself, but it keeps my brain focused when it threatens to spin out of control or it can barely lift its head off the floor after the crash.

[jacquesvol]

Here's a German poem 'Die Lorelei' (Heinrich Heine, 1822 with EN translation): http://ingeb.org/Lieder/ichweiss.html

I like it much.

[princesslolita]

Thank you so incredibly much for sharing! I'm fluent in German, so it was even more touching to read a new poem by Heinrich Heine! I shed a tear...

[jacquesvol]

Huh, it's hardly new :) But whatever we didn't meet yet is always fresh and new.

[jacquesvol]

Here's a short one one in Latin , by Catullus:

image.slidesharecdn.com/.../...ms-a-inoa-5-728.jpg

[princesslolita]

I meant new in the sense that I didn't discover it yet, haha. When I was in Highschool we had to translate "Odi at amo"... and I loved to translate it and how it made me feel deep inside.

[jacquesvol]

I too translated it in HS :)
(Must have been 16 then)

[princesslolita]

Yeah? Funny, because I was 16 as well back then! :)

[Phoenix98]

Poetry does indeed help but at the same time we poets usually are driven insane, mad or end up killing themselves in the end sooo, kind of a two edged sword.

[princesslolita]

I feel like poetry wants you to do what it wants and if you simply ignore it... it just haunts you and tries to hunt you down. It is indeed a two edged sword... I agree. Ah, the human mind is a mystery on its own!

[Phoenix98]

Well as Robert E. Howard once said.

The little poets sing of little things:
Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings;
Lovers who kissed and then were made as one,
And modest flowers waving in the sun.

The mighty poets write in blood and tears
And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears.
They reach their mad blind hands into the night,
To plumb abysses dead to human sight;
To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled,
Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world.

It's no wonder we all go mad eventually.

[foxsquirrell]

Poetry as medicine? To some maybe. I find reading poetry frustrating because I can't understand anything save for a few exceptions. Writing though is great, it clears your mind and forces you to think lucidly. When I feel confused and my head is full of thoughts I write them on paper to see exactly what is there and what makes sense at what doesn't.

[John_Doesnt]

Every alternative medicine claims to cure/treat depression. Magnet therapy, reflexology, Vitamin O, acupuncture and even quack chiropractors claim their treatment can alleviate depression.
Which is exactly why I stay away from ALL forms of alternative medicine. Because every single one claims to treat illnesses that have the possibility for spontaneous remission.

[Apope16]

I fuckin love poetry. I've written a thousand poems to qwell anxiety.

[404filenotfound]

I'd say that taking action period is the best medicine for depression. Excercising, Yoga, Meditation, Poetry, whatever helps you the most

[Unit1]

Everyone, who has or had real depression knows that articles like this cannot be trusted because they don't work like many things did not.

[BaileyisDarcy]

But they worked for the person writing it.

Its personal experience theyre sharing as a "hey, this worked for me. Why dont you try it?"
Not a self help guide.

[Unit1]

@BaileyisDarcy indeed. It may have worked for the author but may not work on all readers. I am just saying this as someone, who is depressed for 10+ years and has read plenty of stuff about depression and attempted to resolve it.

One of the worst responses were those, who said something like "i gave you the methods (working out, eating healthy, seeking psycho-therapy), now its up to you to do it or stay depressed while making excuses". 🤦🤦🤦

[FýrdracaDócincel]

Word of advice to everyone on this page.

Every time you say something like this, someone with depression knows they can't trust you.

[Anonymous]

Depression isn't unique to the 21st century and to honest, poetry makes me depressed. I hate it.

[Red88xxx]

Beautifully done mytake

[Anonymous]

what happened to GAG see no reply/ opinion

[BaileyisDarcy]

What?

[CT_CD]

Thank you