We’re now a few weeks into 2022, and I have to say, it could have started better without the omicron variant of COVID. At least it’s not 2021 or 2020 anymore.

For the most part, I think this will be a great year, but there’s a long way to go for that happen.

This year, I’m already very close to the physical health goals I set out to achieve, and that’s the main thing I’m happy about right now. It’s January, though, and I’m never all that happy in January…or February or March either.

That brings me to what I want to share more about in 2022: depression and mental health. I’ve now been managing chronic clinical depression for almost 35 years. I’ve very rarely shared anything about it with anyone.

The reason I’ve decided to do so now is that I finally feel as though I’ve figured it out. That doesn’t mean I don’t have it, I won’t get it, or that I’m not suffering from the ravages of it all time. It’s just that I now have the information I lacked before to know why it happens to me, and maybe this information will be useful to others, as well

To get things started, I’ll say this. There’s absolutely no outside reason for me to suffer from depression. I had a good childhood. My parents were good to me. I had everything laid out in front of me in perfect order. I’m a white male American, I’m not an idiot, and I’m not offensive to talk to, be around, or look at from what I can tell.

I also have great internal drive and strong motivation to learn new things. By the time I was 15, I was a nationally ranked chess player while playing 3 sports.

I can’t say I was exactly *happy* at that age. I’m not sure anybody is at that age, but I was doing ok in the grand scheme

But when I was 16, depression just full on attacked me right out of the blue. I was mostly able to cope with it, but my trajectory in life was altered terribly. By the time I was 18, I really fell apart.

Like I mentioned, there was no good reason for it. Nothing “happened” to me.

Only in the past couple of years have I learned the cause of my depression is almost certainly the overproduction of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. I figured out around 15 years ago that acetylcholine has other negative affects on me, all of which I’ll talk about in future posts. But I missed the bombshell research papers in 2012 that linked acetylcholine and depression until late in 2019.

Suddenly, it all made sense. I’d figured it out. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s gone or subsided in anyway. There’s no surgery to reduce acetylcholine, and the state of medicine for it is severely lacking.

So I’ll talk about understanding it and also living with it. And I’ll talk about how it makes me a bit different on the inside. I’ve looked at it from just about every angle, and I’ve come to know that I’m definitely not the only one who suffers from this particular variation of depression. So maybe I can help others with it, and maybe I can help some caregivers understand better how it’s affecting their loved ones.

That’s it for now, but I promise I’ll be back with more. More about why I faint, why I sweat so much, why I have a great memory, why I exercise every day, why my dreams are so vivid, and why my left hand is starting to shake so much I can’t drink my coffee with it.

So, welcome 2022. Get your act together! We’re going to be busy!