I’ve experienced symptoms of clinical depression on and off since I was 9. Sometimes it was just benign blues other times it was sever enough to paralyze me. I would stay indoors and pine away for days. Getting up, having a shower and going to school or work would be a massive chore. Sometimes the work wouldn’t get done at all and I would fall behind. I declined or passed on invitations to go out and be with people.
For a time I just thought that I was an introvert or shy. As a young girl in the village I read compulsively to escape my overwhelming misery or played really loud music to drown out the sound of the miserable voice in my head. My constant companion was the radio. I would fall asleep with the late night music show on. Barry White and Isaac Hayes crooned me to sleep. Then as a teenager I discovered rock and roll. It matched my angst perfectly. I used to think like an ogbanje child. “If I die they will all be sorry.” Maybe ogbanje is just how my father’s people described dissatisfied/depressed children.
When I moved to Lagos at 21 I became ‘a club girl’. No, not that type of club girl, I just went to the club every night and danced all night. I loved to dance; music transports me totally and has a profound effect on my mood. I wanted to be a dancer once upon a time but growing up in 70s Nigeria the only professional dancers I knew were Fela’s girls turned wives. I did not find it an inspiring picture.
I’ve also used alcohol, food and a variety of drugs to anesthetize my feelings. Valium and Librium used to be available without a prescription. Prozac and Zantax still are. Sex is also a common escapism to depression. Makes you feel something other than your misery for a little while. None of it is a cure for depression, I know. Hell I didn’t even recognize what I had as ‘depression.’ I just thought I was really really really sad and I thought that living in Nigeria was what was making me really really really sad. Maybe that is a part of it but it’s not the whole story. I’ve had depression while away from Nigeria too. Depression comes and goes or just gets chronic. When the episodes pass it’s as if they never happened. The sun comes out and all is well with the world.
No one wants to admit depression, you just know that the natives won’t get it and will probably make you feel even worse. So why am I admitting it now? Because there is someone else out there feeling just the way I do and I want to reach out and say ‘Hey, I get it.’ We can support each other even if we can’t get professional help around here. Admitting it is also so liberating. I’m not going to walk around making excuses for my life because of it but I feel better knowing there is a perfectly good scientific explanation for what I feel sometimes. I can forgive myself.
I’m compiling a list of resources in Abuja. If you know any, counselors, shrinks or sufferers get in touch.
Love and power beautiful people.
MzAgams 
44 responses to “Coping With Depression in Nigeria”
Very brave post Les. Like you said it would be an uphill task trying to get Nigerians to understand the concept of mental illness. Dare I say, almost impossible. Still you’ve made a move. That said I saw this somewhere and thought I’d share
“Mental Illness is not what we think it is. Our society is so afraid of everything that whatever is out of the ordinary is quickly demonized or shunned. It is a great loss for all of us. I can tell you that I suffered depression my entire life until the day I understood it was a gift from the Creator.
It made me slow down. It made me quiet. It made me thoughtful and compassionate for the suffering of others. This so called illness taught me to live an authentic life. But I had to see it as a gift first.
I had to train myself to recognize and understand it. I had to learn to embrace it instead of being overwhelmed by it. It is a very sharp blade and I am still learning it’s complexities.
How much suffering would I have been saved if it was in our culture to teach and share with empathy and understanding? If I hadn’t had to discover this unknown knowledge on my own? How much suffering could we end for our children who are lost, scared, rejected and alone?
Mental Illness is a very mysterious gift and we treat it like the Plague. It is why I am able to create. More important it’s why I love so deeply.
The path to understanding is lonely and overgrown, but the path is there. Follow all your deepest truths and love everyone and everything with gentleness and you will find it. Love life, love challenges, love joy and suffering, war and peace. Never despair. Turn that cry of fear for the world and for the little souls into a focused silence and create. Make a vision of strength and beauty out of it.
Swim in dark seas and you will drown. You’ll lose the light. Always strive for the brighter shores and you’ll find peace on the edge of existence. You’ll find supreme balance on that blade’s edge, but first you have to learn silence. You have to learn to give yourself the gift of discipline and patience. Create with intention. Breathe with your whole body. Be grateful. Be actively grateful for hours at a time.
There’s so much more, but it’s a start, a way to look at it in a different light. Your illness is a cure for the madness of the world, but it does no good if you don’t first learn to walk in peace”
There si a lot that our society have termed mysterious that are not. Thanks for the boldness to share and working in the field of sexual violence and having being a victim and now survivor I can understand and quite deeply. Creativity is spurned out of depths of madness, if I may say so… Love has conquered all for me and that springs forth from a discovery of God. This journey is taken daily, giving a little everyday and learning to open up to enjoy that.The pain I still carry is for the future, how do we make the system take a grave look into making available mental and psychological services particularly for persons who have gone through sexual violence of one forma or the other and other trauma. I hope deep in my heart that the stigma associated will be a thing of the past….