In retrospect, I suspect she had been depressed since birth. But it was only later, after homeopathy had cured her, that I learned the rest of the story.
She was nineteen years old when she first came in with her mother. It was in January, 1996. She had been on anti-depressants twice, once in 1989, again toward the end of 1994.
She gave the impression of someone who was scarcely present. She seemed detached, vague, disinterested.
Her mother said, “She has poor motivation. She becomes confused if she has decisions to make.”
I learned she had dropped out of the tenth grade and later got her G.E.D. (general equivalency diploma).
At one point, she moved out of her mother’s house to live with her father. The parents were divorced. For an entire year she hardly left her bedroom. I asked her why.
“When I’m depressed, I want to hide,” she said.
“Her way to handle things is not to speak, to be passive, to withdraw,” said her mother.
There was a time when her weight went from 130 lbs. to 98 lbs. yet, she maintained, she was unaware of the weight loss. That surprised me. How could a teenaged girl not be aware of a 32 lb. weight loss?
I asked if she were depressed now. She said she was not, but her manner, expression and posture suggested otherwise.
When she did become angry with someone, she would simply stop talking to that person, cut them off for months at a time. She was known in the family to be malicious.
When she was five years old, her parents divorced. Her mother had been married a total of four times.
Asked how she felt about that, she said, “I don’t feel any resentment against my parents.”
I tended to agree. Feeling was something quite foreign to her.
“Last year I got depressed and didn’t notice it,” she said. “By the time we noticed it, I couldn’t get out of bed.”
During her last depression, she lived on a ranch and slept a lot and played with her dogs. The dogs helped. She said she loved animals and preferred them to people. Mostly though, she wanted to be alone.
Her mother spoke of her good qualities. “She is dependable and responsible. She is punctual. She saves her money. But I don’t think she is equipped to take care of herself.”
She said she did not know why she had no motivation. The very idea of choosing a career and making important life choices was “overwhelming.”
When she had a busy day with lots of activities, she felt better. “I work well under pressure,” she said.
She constantly felt overheated. “I use the air conditioning in the car in the winter,” she said. Hot, stuffy rooms were unbearable. She sought cool places.
Asked what was most important in her life, she said, “I haven’t stopped to think about that. I don’t have any idea. I guess I want everything to be calm and organized and not rushed. I want stability.” She disliked being pressured to make decisions.
Her mother recalled that at six weeks of age, she had pneumonia. “She never fussed or complained with that pneumonia,” said her mother. “Another thing, she never complained about any of my marriages or divorces.”
Her indifference extended to the physical. Once a horse broke a post. It went flying and struck her. She never complained! She and her mother agreed that she never got upset about anything.
When she was a small child she used to disappear into her room around 8:30 p.m. every night. She never asked her mother for help with homework and never asked for money.
Her indifference extended to food though she admitted to mostly eating junk food.
Her level of disinterest was appalling. She had been vegetating—doing nothing—most of her life. She seemed literally not to care about anything. Clearly, she had been, and probably still was, depressed. But it was deeper than that. It was profound apathy.
The other striking symptoms: she was hot-natured and had a high threshold to physical pain. I used the following rubrics (symptoms as they appear in the Repertory):
- Indifference, does not complain. (never complained about anything—ever!)
- Dislike of heat; desire for cool (using the A/C in the winter)
- Painlessness of complaints usually painful (being struck by a post)
She needed homeopathic Opium. Think of the smoking the real stuff. It induces a sleepy reverie, an indifference to the world and its problems and it is a narcotic. Of course, homeopathic Opium has been diluted so many times that no molecules of the substance remains.
She received a single dose.
When I saw her six weeks later, she was a different person.
“I have been working for the IRS for the last three weeks and I’m enjoying it,” she announced.
A year ago at this time, she was depressed, unable to concentrate and cried a lot. “Now I look forward to going to work. I’m planning to do a degree in the fall. I haven’t felt this good in I don’t know how long. I used to feel hopeless. Now I’m looking forward to life.”
Asked when was the last time she felt this good, she said, “I don’t ever remember feeling this good. I feel my entire life I’ve been in a shell.”
She started to recall how even in the fourth grade she would wake up every hour all night long. “And you know, it was just like when I was depressed later on. I never wanted to talk to anyone then and for most of my life.”
When she had been depressed she would wake frequently “every hour on the hour.” She had never slept deeply and had never slept through an alarm or telephone. People who need Opium often sleep as though drugged, not hearing alarms, even thunder, but some Opium people sleep lightly. She was one of those.
I said, “You know, I thought you were depressed when I first met you six weeks ago but you said you weren’t. Was I mistaken?”
“No, she said, “You were right. I was depressed.”
She went on, “I’ve never felt good my whole life. I don’t feel like myself anymore. I feel like a new person.”
She was less hot-natured and had been wearing a sweater to work.
We talked more. I learned that throughout her life, even as a child, she never noticed pain. “I never cried. I was never scared when other kids were.” Once, she was hit by a board in the back of her head and her vision blurred. She was unable to see for a few seconds. “I don’t remember it hurting at all.” She was taken to the ER and a hairline fracture was found!
She spoke again. “As a child, I remember just sitting and watching, watching the world go by. I was never part of it.”
One week after the Opium, she announced to her mother, “I feel well,” and started to look for a house. “I feel I have a whole new life ahead of me.”
Her mother talked some more about her pneumonia when she was a baby. “I stayed up with her night and day. I was afraid she was going to die. You know, she never cried.”
Her birth was notable. Her mother told how she rushed to get to the hospital, driving at high speed. She arrived at 3 a.m. The child was born ten minutes later. “I was scared,” said her mother. I was afraid I’d have the baby in the car.”
“The nurses made me go to the bathroom. I was terrified I’d have the baby in the toilet. They insisted I get up and walk to the table. They said I’d have to wait for the doctor. They said, ‘You’ve got to wait till the doctor gets here.’ It turned out the doctor was on his way to the racetrack. I was scared. I loved my doctor and he promised me he’d be there.
“I told the nurses I was having a baby and they said I couldn’t be as I wasn’t dilated. But that happened to me the first time (first birth) and the same thing happened to my mother.”
The mother’s story of the birth confirmed my theory. She came into this world the product of a great fright on the part of her mother. Somehow, her mother’s fright imprinted itself onto her whole being—mind and body—making her insensible not only to pain but insensible to all of life. The product of a shock, she turned into a zombie. Opium broke the spell and returned her to life.
I did not see her for years but her mother reported she was doing well, that she had married and had a child.
On June 5, 2007, she brought her son in for treatment. Asked how she had been, she said the nineteen year depression had never returned.