Laughter: The Best Medicine For Suicidal Depression

I may be on to something here.

Normally, my Thanksgiving routine goes something like this: Sleep late, read a lot, and then right around the time I'm sitting down to a dinner my husband cooked, spiral down into an anxiety spiked depression.
This year was different. The plunge into depression happened, albeit a little later and minus the jittery anxiety, but this time, after I had gotten my pie and ice-cream and had told myself to go directly to bed after, I joined my husband on the couch with said pie where he was watching the Seinfeld special on NBC. Within five minutes, I was laughing to the point of tears running down my face. And after that, I felt better. I mean, better in the sense you get in the middle of a ton of craziness that says, 'hey...everything is going to be all right,' even though it isn't and the crazy is still there.

Thing is, I had just turned off the television on a hilarious VH1 episode of Top Fifty Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever and that did nothing to boost my mood...which is why I turned it off. Not being able to laugh at something that is supposed to be funny just adds to depression which I definitely don't need.

So what was the difference? I'd seen the VH1 show before, which maybe had something to do with it. Also, the funny in the Seinfeld special came from a) watching two funny people...Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld...recount their initial misfortunes with getting the show up and on the air (which was in and of itself, funny) and b) watching snippets from Seinfeld episodes, which basically consisted of people caught in situations that are so frustrating that you, if you were in such a situation, would have to laugh to prevent yourself from flipping out and killing people in the near vicinity. Tangential Note: Sometimes the characters did flip out, minus the killing but definitely including some screaming, yelling and flailing of arms and legs. Then again, I'd also never seen the Seinfeld special before.

At any rate, I suggested to the husband that we purchase the new, just released Seinfeld DVD to keep on reserve until the evening 20mg chaser of Adderall started working, or until my doctor gave up and started me on a new round of mood-altering amphetamines (aka Ritalin). According to the numerous advertisements throughout the special, the DVD holds Seasons 1 through 3 plus a whole lot of extra features. That should be enough to tide me over.

Note: The bold face...with the exception of the "Tangential Note" indicates place marks where I would like to put links to relevant content as soon as I am off of work and thus the work network which probably blocks such info and definitely logs visits to sites containing such info. I work hard while I'm at work and I feel it's okay to take a break every now and then but I still don't want to have to explain why I was looking for information on NBCs website or in IMDB's database.