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Thanks Kathy, you shared re the Columbine mom who committed suicide: "From her viewpoint it may have seemed a totally unselfish act, to get out of the way. CD lets me understand that thought, medication allows me to read it and see just how far off track it is." This explanation helps me understand, but also gives me some insight into what I went through last year. For some time after being diagnosed PWP I dwelled on doing my spouse a favor by making sure the nice term insurance policy pays off before the coverage expires. Six months ago this seemed like a very legitimate concept and it absorbed a fair amount of my limited mental energy. More importantly, it didn't seem spiritually inconsistent at the time. I considered it probable that in 5 years when the insurance renewal rights expire, my quality of life would be nearing an end and sneaking quietly out of my body would be a two way gift for her, relieving her of caretaker job and assuring financial security to the level I felt I should have achieved by that time. Some of us seem to be defining CD as a condition that only appropriate medication can relieve, hence, ipso facto Sinead, I and anyone else who emerged from the darkness without meds could not have had CD. OK, how about a sort of junior type depression, sub clinical, or something like that. This isn't a "my depression was worse than yours" discussion, and I readily agree that when these thoughts, feelings and perhaps more severe brain chemistry result in paralysis of action, medication is an imparative, appropriate and stigma free course of treatment. The following is therefore for those who haven't reached CD, or those on med for CD who have recovered to the level where some conscious decision making capacity returns, but perhaps they still feel a lack of joy in living. As I have shared before, when my PD specialist declined anti depressants, I looked for the lessons of my pain, asked for Higher guidance in understanding what love would teach me, and, with pain as the catalyst, I let go of the was and yet to be, and settled into existence, for the first time in my life, in NOW. What a great place to be, because NOW doesn't need a five year plan. It doesn't even allow a five year plan. In yet that last day of life insurance coverage may still be etched in big letters at the end of a dark tunnel of decreasing days. In NOW that tunnel doesn't even have an entrance. When I am really NOW consciousness moves outward. When I was living in the was and yet to be, I felt guilt and remorse for the was that wasn't enough, and fear for the yet to be, since if my was was imperfect, my yet to be would surely be a disaster. In NOW was and yet don't exist, so there is nothing keeping me focused on myself, my needs, my shortcomings, my failures, my future infirmity, etc. Before NOW I was a black hole, sucking at the energy and attention of the world around me and giving no light in return. In NOW I have become, once again, a fully participating part of the IS in which we move together, connecting with the world without exhausting those around me with a constant tugging at their attention to meet my needs. A perverse little part of me kind of misses the attention, the excuses PD and my understandable despair made for me, the worried and sympathetic looks. I kind of enjoyed my sub clinical depression and bending ears with my misfortune. Hell, I still like the attention. On balance, however, I'm glad the pain was intense enough for me to become willing to be guided by a loving director into the safe haven of NOW. Being a victim felt good in the spotlight, but when the lights were out between was and yet and I was no longer the center of attention, I felt just plain lousy. If true CD contains none of these characteristics I describe, including the little payoffs, but is purely a chemical condition with no causative or recovery relationship to thought, then my experience is, as has been inferred, irrelevant, indeed unhelpful to those with CD, and to those folks I apologize if they take my thoughts as critical. It is not my intention to criticize or judge, and since I think Guilt Sucks, certainly not to suggest that these friends are weak willed or morally remiss. I readily accept the possibility that my problems were a thinking disorder and true CD's, in contrast, suffer purely from genetic or other chemical problems. But for those who have achieved substantial relief from the darkness with medication, but still lack joy in their daily lives, perhaps my experience can be helpful on the premise that a medically stablized CD, who might incidentally also have some "stinking thinking," might benefit from a change of perpective. Chuck