Depression Is a Choice: Winning the Battle Without Drugs

by A.B. Curtiss

While recognizing that in its most extreme forms depression is best treated through pharmaceutical and psychoanalytical intervention, Curtiss argues convincingly that most people can control the syndrome without the use of drugs and without the burden of endless therapy. To illustrate this, she draws from her own experiences with depression, anecdotes from her practice, and a wealth of information about the history of the treatment of depression. This helpful book encourages those people to take responsibility for their symptoms, and gives them the steps they need to fight and win the battle against depression.

Genres: Psychology, Self Help

496 pages, Hardcover

First published October 3, 2001

Reviews

[ayanami · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a rambling mess with a controversial title. However, this has actually been the most helpful and psyche-changing book on battling depression for me, despite it being the lowest rated of the depression books I've read. I only gave it 2 stars because I felt it could have been better written and edited down (it does not need to be this long), BUT, I do think that the main point made by the author is very much helpful and relevant and important. She just did not present it very well.

Curtiss' premise is that by thinking about depression, we are actually prolonging it since we only focus inward and on ourselves. If we direct our thinking towards external matters, particularly focusing on what is right in front of us (eg. work that needs to be done), we will not be depressed because our attention is not on our own depression. Instead of thinking about how depressed we are and how awful and hopeless everything is, we should instead focus on the next thing that we need to get done (whether it is laundry, writing a report for work, going out to meet a friend, etc). This book is very much in the vein of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy in that both books recommend that the best way to battle depression is to get up and actually do something, which takes your focus away from the depression itself. (Get It Done When You're Depressed is another very good book for more practical advice.) She takes a very 'tough love' approach which undoubtedly will alienate many readers, so I do think readers will need to be cautious. This book is best read when you're not deep in the middle of a full-blown depressive episode because it can be triggering for the more sensitive.

Some good quotes:

There is only one reason we ever suffer with depression. In order to suffer with depression, we must think about ourselves and out pain. If we don't think about ourselves and our pain, there is no way to suffer. (page 428)

...in our ignorance, we are asking to be cured of ourselves, rather than doing the life's work we need to be doing in order to become ourselves. And it is only our problems and our pain that can accomplish this by forcing us to do that work. (page 420)

It is not a chemical imbalance in the brain that causes us to be waylaid for long periods of time by depression. It is our lack of knowing how to handle that chemical imbalance. We need the impulse of fear to incite us to any action. It is our most important defense mechanism. Without the impulse of fear, we would be unable to function normally. In order to care about anything we have to be able to fear. (page 407)

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes the title of a book does not tell the entire story (as Borges said). Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This book is an example were the title does indeed tell the tale.

Depression is a choice. That is what Curtiss is saying. But maybe you are not entirely convinced?

To anyone having experienced depression it might sound like a bizarre and even outrageous claim. Isn’t the exact opposite the case? When depression strikes, it feels like a blow from the outside. Everything seems pointless. And there is simply nothing you can do. Except take drugs.

Yep, depression is a disorder of the brain, swallow some pills to fix it.

Curtiss says, more or less, that depression is a state invented by the pharmaceutical industry to sell its products. I am exaggerating slightly.

“It does not matter that people insist that ‘they can’t help it’. It does not matter that the whole psychological community declares that manic depression (bipolor disorder) is a mental illness and is not a question of choice. [...] The whole psychological community is wrong.“ (p. 231)

There certainly is a difference between depression and the flu or cancer. Curtiss has suffered from depression (and mania) and in fact a large part of the book consists of autobiographical evidence. She did have a twisted mind. (And her husband must have been a saint to endure it.)

The main thing she says is that depression is real but there are ways out of it. Use, what she calls, directive thinking. Think about something else. Mumble nursery rhymes. For example.

It is a long book. Too long, and certainly not very structured. But it is quite easy to put it into a nutshell. There are people, she says, who claim that depression is caused by self-pity. And people who think that are not suffering from depression. So the question is are they just ignorant of the pain of “the rest of us had to endure? Or was it just the other way round? Was the reason they didn’t get depressed directly due to the fact that they had that belief?” (p. 80)

This is indeed what she thinks. And I think, I agree with her. The reason why they don’t suffer from depression is because they believe it is caused by self-pity “and therefore they simply refuse to concentrate on how bad they feel...”

This is an easy answer, maybe too easy. It seems obvious, that Prozac and other drugs must do something helpful to some people. (The metaphors she uses to disprove this point seem quite silly to me.) But it is also obvious, that the fact that depression is regarded as an illness curable by drugs leads to people developing the symptoms in the first place. People are easily influenced. One example she gives is multiple personalities. A really strange concept. Different personalities in one body. I certainly thought that there must be a real basis for the stories one used to read about. But by now the concept seems to be totally discredited. Psychiatrists literally caused patients to make those personalities up. And if you can make someone make up different personalities, how easy it must be to convince them they suffer from “depression“. Or whatever disorder that is current. You can make people think they are trans. (This is something new not covered in the book. But she talks about obesity. This is also something that can be remapped into a disorder that demands pharmaceutical help.)

I used to suffer from depression. And I know that it seemed like there was nothing one could do. Except waiting for it to end. What did help me was that I said that depression is not an illness but the default situation. Life is in fact meaningless. One should kill oneself. But on the other hand, why not trick oneself into the delusion that everything is fine. That it is meaningful to write silly reviews on Goodreads, for example?) So I do what Curtiss recommends. Think of silly things. Do not think about yourself. Certainly do not think that you have a right to be happy.

There is more to the book. She goes on, for example, explaining why the Dogma of self-esteem (people just need to learn to think they are great to make them great even if there not capable to excel at anything) is bad for the individual and the society. Again, I agree.

A well written book, much too long, as I said. But one more thing I have to mention:

“Surely, it is no accident that the French word for bread is pain”. (p. 208)

Now, this is such an incredible nonsense that I should have thrown the book into the dust-bin right away. If you are capable of letting some thought like this pop-up chances are that you are out of your mind. (Even worse, she thanks her editor for this observation.) Incredible.

7/10

[raccoon reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very torn between 2 and 3 stars. Two- because Curtiss really got on my nerves but 3 because she does have some valid points. If only I could give her 2 1/2. It's really too bad she makes you traipse through nearly 500 pages of shit to find the good nuggets of useful info landminded throughout it.

I kept wondering to myself where the hell is her editor???as I over and over again read sections that were essentially the same as one a few pages or more ahead of it, though she might have changed the words around, it would be exactly the same example. It reeks of being unedited. This is what people do, you write it one way then you say it another and another, not realizing you've said it before. You need the outside force to see it clearly and point these things out to you. I had the distinct feeling that her editor never really read her book, or never read it as an editor should. Either that or was too afraid of Curtiss to suggest actually making the book a manageable length. There is no reason for this book to be over 250 pages. There's a lot of crap in here that could be completely axed. I often wondered if the book wasn't written entirely in a crazed manic state because at times it holds a feverish pitch of enthusiasm that screams "Hey!HEY!Hey!LookAtMeI'mManic!" It made me wonder if she no longer suffers from depression because she's permanently stuck in her manic state.

My advice is that if you are determined to read books about treating depression without drugs, maybe try another one instead of this. But if you do read this one, try to not focus too hard, just skim it maybe for the good stuff... Otherwise you're going to get irritated by her uppity tone, her condescending know it all "I'm better than you" attitude, and her constant contradictions, the insufferably bad editing, and so on.

There are also some disparaging remarks about Native Americans which really- and I mean really- pissed me off. As far as this manic lunatic is concerned she judges all peoples and all cultures with her same small insignificant white-minded measuring stick. For all her big supposedly "I'm more enlightened than you" open minded talk I found her close minded and ignorant. She bad mouthed an Indian woman for seeing herself as "Native American" because she saw herself as being born first into a tribe. Curtiss seems to imply (and if she didn't mean it this way then you can chalk up another to murky "what the hell is this woman saying") that the woman was using "Native American" and her "Tribe" as a "Dangerous" sub-culture that is part of what Curtiss believes is the "Culture Dump" that is ruining our culture. She feels this segregation displayed by Native Americans is bad and they should identify first as Americans. Last time I checked they were part of their Tribe- first- 1000s of years before the white man put them on reservations and tried to kill them off so they could get their land. Oh God this lady pisses me off! I need to stop here. I could go on, but then I'll be as bad as Curtiss and just start repeating myself.

[Alissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was not amazing in any literary way, but A.B. (I believe her name is Ann) embarrassed me out of depression. Her examples of her own hysterics made me realize how obnoxious my own behavior was. Of course, going into this book I wanted to be off medication, so her story fueled the fire for me. She illustrated to me just how much I allowed the depression to rule over my life, or even more, how I used depression as an excuse not to get my act together. If you are currently suffering from depression, be prepared to be insulted. And then get over it.

[Jessica Jasmine lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was good but dragged on a bit. Some very good points and it helped me! I thought it was very inspiring and helpful and could be useful to assist someone who is feeling depressed to try and take control of their situation. Only gave it a 3 star though because it could have been more concise and too the point instead it was repetitive.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a man thinketh, so is he -James Allen
This book makes a convincing claim for the case of engaging our minds and choosing to be happy and not giving into the 'primal mind.' I found it to be an easy read and interesting insight into the life of a manic depressed person (as the author was). It's an easy read and worth picking up, if the topic is of interest to you.

[Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

So full of experiential, cultural, historical, and scientific understandings that clarify a values based approach through directing thinking away from depressing.

[Rachel Wallis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this initially inspiring but then VERY annoying.