Alastair Campbell
Alastair Campbell is a writer, communicator and strategist. He is best known for his role as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman, press secretary and director of c...
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Who are you?
My name is Alistair Campbell. I am a writer, consultant, strategist, and I'm here to answer questions about depression.
What is depression?
I think my definition of depression is mine. I'm not an expert on depression. I'm an expert on my depression, and so all I can really say is that for me, depression is the state of mind. You get into when things that normally have meaning and things that normally give pleasure and things that normally give hope and optimism don't. That's why I would say it goes way beyond being sad or miserable or fed up. And the way I assess whether I am depressed as opposed to just feeling a bit low and a bit fed up is, am I feeling it physically? I think there are physical manifestations to depression and the sense of being hollowed out inside. And then also, is my work being affected? Are my relationships being affected? Is my sleep being affected? So that's my depression. Other people will have their own.
What does it feel like to have depression?
When I'm fine. When I'm feeling fine, I would still argue that I'm a depressive. So I can be feeling absolutely wonderful, but I can still say to myself, you are a depressive. You get depression. When I'm depressed. In a state of active depression, it doesn't always feel the same, but there are certain patterns that I recognise, that sense of emptiness, the feeling literally that you've been hollowed out and that makes you feel not just physically empty but empty. You've got no energy, you've got no drive, things that are normally of interest, you just can't be bothered with them. And there's an intensity to that that is very, very, very hard to describe. And I would say the other thing I'd say about my depression is that it has a feel, it has a look, it has a texture. Often comes to me when I wake up, so I'll wake up possibly after a bit of a troubled night sleep, but I wake up and I am conscious of a physical presence up there, up towards the ceiling. It is like a little cloud, and it is not as amorphous as a cloud. It is usually shaped like a quite large rugby ball, but its texture is very kind of nebulous and cloudy. And for years I used to fight it and talk to it and tell it to fuck off and leave me alone and go away and die. And I'd talk to it in recent years. When it happens, I just say, okay, come on. Then when you come on in, and I know that I'm going to go into depressed state probably for a few days, and it then feels like this cloud is coming down and it enters my head and it sort of works its way right down through my body and my legs feel heavy and my arms feel heavy and my head feels heavy, and I have no desire to get out of bed. Now I do tend to get out of bed. It's very rare that I'll just stay there all day. It sometimes happens, but I tend to force myself to get out of bed. And then it's just like something that you are carrying with you all day. It's heavy weight. You, the cloud's gone now the cloud's kind of inside, so there's nothing you can feel or pick up. But if you imagine in the days before wheelie bags, when If you were travelling, you had those really big heavy suitcases. Imagine carrying a couple of them and you've got a huge, great backpack and it's full of weight. That's how it feels. And there's a sort of desolation and desperation to it because even though your rational mind knows, and I know I've been through this before, I've seen it off before. I've come through it before. When you are in it each time, you feel like it's going to be like this forever. So that's roughly how it feels. It's not always the same though.