Beginning with this post today, we will inaugurate a brand new series,  sharing portions of personal stories   of those who  have a new life,  thanks to their participation in the fellowship of Depressed Anonymous. Each of those  who share their story   have made the  12 Steps a central factor in their own recovery.

Lois tells us that “the blackness – the despair – withdrawing more and more into myself – the hopelessness – there was no joy and I could no longer pretend. My husband said “You need to get some help.” I knew that he was right but I was always the one who helped others. Our newspaper carried a listing of all the support groups in the community and I found the notice for a Twelve Step Depressed Anonymous  group. I had never heard of it before, but I knew it fit. This group was just forming and was there when I needed it.

I had knowledge of Twelve Step programs and actually believed that I lived that life. Today I know that I previously had head knowledge but today I live the Twelve Steps.

It was December of 1992 that I made that decision. I know that I was powerless over depression and that my life had become unmanageable. I was  willing to do anything that Depressed Anonymous offered. I wanted to get rid of the pain. If Depressed Anonymous had told me  I would get well if I stood on my head three times  a day, I would have done it.  Daily, I read from the book (Depressed Anonymous)  and consciously worked the Twelve Steps.  I worked them one at a time. from Step One through Step Twelve. Working the Steps to me meant posting the Step I was working on and consciously pondering it throughout the day.

….The book gave me a formula. It promised me that I would feel better if I attended meetings, worked my Twelve Step program, ate properly, got an exercise program, and talked about my sadness to others.  I also started a journal, not just to state my woes, but with the intention of finding a solution. Each week, I articulated my unhappiness and my story to people who would listen and over time, inner wisdom began to unscramble the mess.”

SOURCE:  Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications.  Louisville. (Personal Stories section). Pages 110-111.

Tomorrow we will share more of Lois’ thoughts here online. Feel free to give feedback on her story.

To read more of the sharing of Lois please go to our Depressed Anonymous book to which she refers   and read more of her story. Her story is on pages 110-111 in the Personal Stories section of our manual.

VISIT THE STORE for literature on the Steps and Depression. You will find much of what you are looking for  help with  your own recovery .

 

I get it! When I first  crawled  into my first 12 step meeting I was alone and beaten. I had no place to go but up.  I didn’t know one person in that strange group of men and women united by their addiction.  All I knew is that I might be one of them –that is, an alcoholic. Dread! But  I found a group of men and women who were no longer strangers. I came in the group that day thinking I was  only a guest there for a brief appearance. I didn’t really want to be there. I knew that I probably didn’t belong.

By the time this meeting adjourned I was no longer a stranger nor a guest. I felt I found a home. I no longer felt shame or guilt, These folks were the “real deal.” I felt welcome.  They spoke about me and all that troubled me. The only  thing was that they were speaking of their own lives–and it sounded just like my life. Their lives and battle with alcohol was my battle too.

Then came my greatest curse, so I thought. It popped up soon after I had a few years of sobriety and sanity. It was a darkness that filled my body like a poisonous liquid  gradually filling me up from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. It all began unnoticed at first,  then the poison immobilized me  like the poisonous sting of a Black Widow spider. I had to battle to get myself out of bed in the morning. I began to feel fright. What was happening to me?

In time, the answer would come and the solution which I pursued like a praying monk, finally freed me. Thanks to the “miracle of the group” my 12 step fellowship .  I am free today.  I thank God, my Higher Power, for leading me to that group of alcoholics who gave me a key that released me  from my addictions–alcohol and depression. Now I want to share with you and anyone that needs to hear what I have to say: I know for sure that the key that I have in my hand will fit any lock that imprisons you in pain and despair.

READ ABOUT ALL THOSE FOLKLS WHO HAVE USED THIS KEY. CHECK IT OUT. SEE VISIT THE STORE.

SOURCE: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

PERSONAL STORIES SECTION (31  STORIES OF PEOPLE WHO USE THE KEY  ). Pages 111-152.

 

Welcome to the Depressed Anonymous

Newsletter Issue #4

We seek to prevent depression through education and by creating a

supportive and caring community through support groups that successfully

keep individuals from relapsing into depression .

 

This Newsletter is published by those of us who are committed to sharing

our journey of hope as we live out the Twelve Steps of Recovery. The

Newsletter continues the tradition of an earlier Depressed Anonymous

Newsletter, the Antidepressant Tablet. Even though our emphasis is the

same, offering information on a regular basis about new Depressed

Anonymous groups forming, giving hope to the depressed, as well as being

an advocate for those who are still suffering from depression.

We also have as an objective the “how” of starting a Depressed Anonymous

mutual aid group, plus sharing the thoughts from the members of the

fellowship who are using the Twelve Steps of Depressed Anonymous in their

own lives and recovery. Their personal experience, hope and strengths will

be welcomed as an essential feature of our online newsletter.

 

How to Start a Depressed Anonymous Meeting

If there is a Depressed Anonymous group operating near where you live, you could go to one of their meetings. But if yours will be the first in your area, you might find it helpful to attend one or two other self-help groups just to see how they operate. Most self-help groups, as well as Depressed Anonymous, have literature about their work which you will find helpful. You can click onto the website at www.depressedanon.com for a full explanation and information about our Depressed Anonymous group.

Once you have three or four people, who, like you, are struggling with depression and who want to set up a Depressed Anonymous group which will follow the Twelve Step program, you can form, a core group to work out how to contact other people as to where you will meet, and when and how you will all share the work and the responsibility of the group.

To contact other likely members, draw up a notice which states the aims of the group, who the group is for, the time, day, place of meeting, and the name and phone number or email address of the person whom you can contact for more information about the group, and who will arrange to meet and welcome new members.

When you are depressed, it is often very difficult to go into a room full of strangers, so having someone meet you beforehand can be a great help. Send copies of this notice to all those in your community who would know of persons who might be helped by this Twelve Step program of recovery. For starters it is recommended that Mental Health Centers are always a good place to start as well as local religious communities. Many people believe they are the only ones going through this painful experience that we call depression. When they discover that there is a group of people who feel as you do, this in itself can provide hope. In time and with regular attendance at Depressed Anonymous meetings, they will no longer feel like victims, but will reach out to others.

If surrender of our wills to the “care of God” is of the essence of the spiritual life, for anyone who truly desires to free himself/ herself from a chronic and compulsive behavior such as depression, then the Twelve Steps can be our stepping stones to a path of a hope-filled life.

The following is a list of publications produced and made available by Depressed Anonymous Publications.

A total of 12 Books have been published including e-books. For more information about these books, you visit our website and do online ordering of our literature. The following is a complete listing of available books.

* Depressed Anonymous

* The Depressed Anonymous Workbook

* Higher Thoughts for Down Days: 365 Daily Thoughts and Meditations for Members of 12 Step Fellowship Groups

* Teen Care: Helping Teens Prize Themselves

* SeniorWise

* How to Find Hope

* Depressed Once-Not twice: An Autobiographical Spiritual Journey of the

* Founder of Depressed Anonymous

* How to Find Hope

* Shining a Light on the Dark Night of the Soul

* The Promises of Depressed Anonymous

* Dep-Anon Family Group Manual

* I’ll Do It When I Feel Better

* Believing Is Seeing: 15 Ways to Leave the Prison of Depression

---

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Question: Is Depressed Anonymous a class? Does someone teach this class?Answer: Depressed Anonymous is neither a class nor does someone, such as a professional lead the group. We are a mutual aid group where each of us brings our own experience and shares them with each other. We also live our life based on the 12 Steps, the suggested spiritual principles of Depressed Anonymous.

Question: How much does it cost to join the group?

Answer: There are no fees or dues. All a person needs for membership is a sincere desire to keep from saddening themselves.

Question: Can you come to a meeting even if you are not depressed? Like a family member or a friend of someone depressed?

Answer: Yes, in fact we encourage family members participation in the group. The more we attend meetings the more likely we are to get a better understanding of the experience and nature of depression.

Question: What position does Depressed Anonymous take with regard to antidepressant Tablets?

Answer: Depressed Anonymous takes no position on medications. We are asupport group which has as its base a spiritual foundation as laid out in the 12 Steps. We are not professionally led. We do not discuss topics of a religious nature which are specifically oriented to one religious faith or another. One’s personal medication regimen as well as religious preference is solely the responsibility of that individual and is not discussed in the group meeting.

Question: Do I have to give a talk if I attend a meeting?

Answer: No one is asked to say more than their first name at a DA meeting. We have all been where you have been, namely as a newcomer and we respect one’s right to talk only when one feels ready to talk. Every member of the group is given the understanding that when they have a turn to talk they can just say PASS and everyone is OK with that.

Question: How many meetings will it take before I am no longer depressed?Answer: That is a question that we can’t answer. I believe that even though my good days are now more frequent and my bad days less, I stillkeep coming back to meetings so as to help myself and give help to others still suffering. Our program is one that you don’t graduate from.

It is a lifelong fellowship where one continues to learn that to stay well means to keep connected with the group, use the daily spiritual tools that keep us all out of the prison of depression.

Source: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

---

THE MIRACLE OF THE GROUP

It’s the Miracle of the Group where I Can Start Loving Myself! I have hope that I can accept myself today and just let fly all the old messages from the old tapes of childhood.

“You desperately wanted people to love you, but you became wary of giving your love to others. You reasoned that the less you loved another person the less it would hurt when the inevitable rejection came.” Dorothy Rowe

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

I have been holed up for so long in my own little world of feeling hurt and rejection that to attempt to love someone else like the greatest challenge of my life. I desire so badly to be loved by someone else that this lack of another’s love makes my isolation from others so hurtful.

After having witnessed the miracle of the group in DA, where depressed persons come together with their feelings of being hurt and rejected, I find that others love and nurture challenge me to hope once again, I can share with the group the fact that I haven’t measured up, that I am angry and that I just want to lay down and die.

I am open enough now to let the light of love from others, who like myself, realize that I am not alone and that I am beginning to feel better already now that I no longer need to be perfect.

This means to be willing to affiliate and give of myself for someoneelse’s good. In the program I am starting to love-myself.

MEDITATION

We are going to make a mental decision right now to let God, as we understand God, guide us and instruct us on how best to love ourselves.

Source: Copyright(c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous. Publications. Louisville. March 3rd. (Available on Kindle).

---

“Depression is Different from Normal Sadness”

Depression cannot be reduced to a single factor. It is the result of the coinciding of different factors. Biological, historical, environmental and psychological factors play a certain role in the beginning and its evolution.

“Many people never reach a state of clinical depression . Such depression, with the feeling of paralysis that it involves, is different from normal sadness. People with clinical depression, in general, demonstrate physical and psychic alterations; people who are not depressed manifest certain mental signs of sadness. In addition, people often confuse depression with unhappiness, and often one can hear the phrase I feel depressed, even though the person concerned only wants to say that he or she is not happy. Until one has really experienced depression one cannot realize the enormous difference that exists between being depressed and being unhappy. When we are unhappy, despite the scale of the tragedy that has afflicted us, we remain incontact with reality. When other people offer us consolation and love w can still feel gratitude for their warmth and support. But when we are depressed we feel like people who are excluded from the rest of the world. The comfort and love offered by other people do not penetrate our barrier and we feel neither consoled or loved. To experience real depression means to feel entrapped in pitch or suffocated by some dense, heavy material or buried alive in a dark tunnel. The depressed person is interested in nothing and nobody, and does not feel any hope.” SOURCE: Jose Saraiva Martins

Comment: If you are a depressed person and are reading this you know the guy who is writing the above material knows what he is talking about. But, if you are a person who has been unhappy but never depressed, it is impossible for you to even begin to fathom what he is talking about.

Yes, you might say, but I don’t see any plaster casts, no sign of physical brokenness and the guy or gal is always happy. You know, the life of the party. There is a night and day difference between being depressed and being unhappy. I know, as I have been depressed. I also have been very unhappy as well. Being depressed is a life threatening illness and for many the trajectory can lead to suicide preceded by thinking that is hopeless and suicidal.

The person who has experienced depression themselves and who seeks help to climb out of the dark pit now has friends in the Depressed Anonymous fellowship of the 12 steps. The new person coming into our group soon learns that the members know about the depression experience. Some have talked about trying to commit suicide. My point is that persons depressed live in a world that they cannot touch, a world which they are viewing from the insides of an enclosed soundproof glass room. They are completely isolated and adrift floating alone in a river of turbulence and dangerous currents. And when the time comes to flee this pain and isolation they run to the people who say they know what depression is. They also have a tool kitwhich they continue to use in their daily lives which helps them to forever stay out of that glass enclosed room. I am one of those persons who never returned to that past time in my life when I felt totally alone, without friends, purpose or meaning in my life. I owe my life to Depressed Anonymous and its powerful focus on hope instead of hopelessness.

THIS MONTH’S BOOK

HIGHER THOUGHTS FOR DOWN DAYS(c)- Publisher: Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.KY. 266 Pages. Author Hugh Smith. Book is available in Paperback and eBook Kindle

CONTENTS

366 daily meditations for 12 Step fellowship members and groups. This is the right book for those of us who want to think and reflect on those Higher Thoughts written by persons who know how to use the Steps for their own recovery. Each days Higher Thought contains an Affirmative thought, a Clarification of thought paragraph and a final spiritual meditative paragraph. All in all, one has a positive and solid base on which to reflect upon the coming day.

One of our fellowship groups makes use of the Higher Thought as a Group topic on which members can center their discussion for the meeting. In order to discover more helpful literature please

VISIT THE STORE at WWW.DEPRESSEDANON.COM

Also please contact us with email at depanon@netpenny.net

(mailto:depanon@netpenny.net)

Depressed Anonymous has saved my life twice now. When I first came, I had been suicidal for some time and was only looking for the right time and place to make it look like an accident. After a few meetings, the suicidal feeling began to leave. I started to realize that I wasn’t the only one who was having problems coping with the problems of life.

In the spring of that year I suffered from another bout of severe depression and had decided to end it all. I had the date, the approximate time, the place,  and the accident all picked out.  I started withdrawing from the Depressed Anonymous group so that  they would not try to talk me out of it. I stopped taking my medication to make sure that I could not pull myself out of it. Our Higher Power had different ideas. Depressed Anonymous members for some reason kept in contact knowing something was not right. That added a great deal of difficulty in carrying through with my plan because I  could not distance myself from people who cared and showed it.  It was a very hard to know that I would be letting them down.

I managed to make the appointed day and had prepared to leave the house. As I said, the Higher Power had other ideas.  Just before I left, a Depressed Anonymous member called me to just chat about themselves.. That took a little time. Then  all the neighbors, one after another, kept coming over to ask me to help them with little projects. It was very hard to put on a “happy” front, but I knew I had to do it or somebody would figure out that what was about to happen was not an accident.

By the time everything was done, it was dark and too late to leave. If I had left after dark, and had the accident, it would have been obvious it wasn’t one. This was a 400ft bridge  in the middle of the wilderness that no one but emergency vehicles goes across in the dark. The day ended and I was still alive and angry that my goal ha not been accomplished. Now I would have to plan for another day.

Depressed Anonymous members came to my rescue again and through their support and listening. I finally overcame the deep depression. I am getting better each week. I know that if Depressed Anonymous had not been there for me that I would have continued on with my suicidal plans. Sometimes I get very depressed,  but Depressed Anonymous is there and it is the vehicle that the Higher Power is using to help me cope and learn how to “knock down this fire within me.”

–Ron

[My friend Ron  has served for many years as  minister who supports and provides spiritual aid to long distance truck drivers in his roadside truck stop chapel and prays with them and for their needs. I have known Ron for many years and his faithfulness to those in need is truly a gift – a gift of hope! God saved his life that others might continue on the road of life and healing.  Hugh]

See more of these Depressed Anonymous members speak about their own recoveries and how they walked the talk of a new hope  who gradually left behind their anxiety and fears of living.  Many more testimonies can be found in Depressed Anonymous, 3d edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. (Pages 149-150. Please see the Personal stories section in our Depressed Anonymous.)