…salted lithium.

The Fifth Of Five Lists: My Brain Injuries: One of the most important tools to my recovery has been lists. A year into my recovery I started making lists to sort out my memories, including embarrassing memories, favourite movies, friends I’ve lost and the fifty-two places I’ve lived. Getting them out on paper has allowed me to place important events which were otherwise confused and scrambled into some order. In my opinion these lists can be very helpful to someone with manic depression or clinical depressions as a means of putting perspective into our lives. As proof I’m offering my lists.

This is a list of definite brain injuries I’ve suffered over the years. I was knocked unconscious at least three times between the ages of seven and twelve, and again when I was seventeen. I’m not sure if that’s considered a little, or a lot… but it feels significant.

There were other head-centred injuries, which were basically concussions where, afterwards, I saw stars and was woozy for an hour or two. But, from what I can remember (heh), there were only the four times when I was knocked out. It’s strange, I’ve been trying to put together this list for weeks, but the more I try to remember these incidents the faster they fade away.

The idea for this list came long before I found out about the research into the brains of professional athletes. The research is showing a direct link between multiple concussions and severe depression. I’m fairly sure that I don’t qualify, I never played in the NFL, and I never had four or five concussions in a month. but I also haven’t read anything defining “multiple”.

“While most people recover from concussions, a few experience persistent problems with memory or other neurological functions. Doctors believe individuals who experience severe or multiple concussions may be at a greater risk for neurological disease later in life than the average person… . Researchers know concussions disrupt chemical reactions in the brain and this imbalance may be what leads to depression.” — Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide, 2003

I started exhibiting the symptoms of manic depression when I was, roughly, seventeen. So I doubt my head injuries are to blame for the severe depression and manias I went through from 1987 until, roughly, 2009. But the damage from even a single concussion can effect the rest of your life, and there are many studies connecting concussions suffered in early adulthood to severe depression in middle age.

The symptoms are also very similar, at least between post-concussion syndrome (PCS) and unipolar depression. According to the Mayo Clinic, the symptoms of PCS include “headaches, dizziness, fatigue, irritability, anxiety, insomnia, loss of concentration and memory, and noise and light sensitivity”.

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