I love the feeling you get when you are running, or have just completed a run—the runner’s high. It’s a rush of endorphins that pulses through your body rewarding the effort. It is such a great sensation that you keep coming back for more, lacing up shoes day after day, week after week. It’s a good thing.
But I went from wanting a runner’s high to needing it, and then from needing it to not having it all, and the result nearly killed me.
I am 37, and I have battled severe depression and anxiety since my early adolescence. I went untreated for many years until, in my early 20s, a suicide attempt brought me into contact with doctors and therapists.
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Mental illness is a tricky thing, though. Unlike a pancreas or an elbow, which are anatomically similar in most people and have straightforward treatments for injury and illness, the brain and its bath of chemicals is different in every human being. What works for one patient may cause terrible side effects in another patient.
I have treatment-resistant depression and generalized anxiety, making it very difficult to find medication and therapies that work for me. I spent years in the mental health establishment going from doctor to doctor and therapist to therapist. When I say I have been on every drug there is to treat depression and anxiety, I am not overstating the facts. I was tortured by my illness and the inability of doctors to treat it. A lifetime of that kind of suffering became more than I could bear to face. I attempted suicide twice more.
One of my attempts was actually successful. I died, but doctors resuscitated me and put me on a ventilator until I resumed breathing on my own. I remember regaining consciousness, feeling the ventilator tube down my throat, and trying to pull it out. I looked around in a panic, not knowing if I was alive or dead. My husband, Emerson, ran to my side, grabbed my groping hands, and called for a nurse. I assume I was sedated. When I woke again, the tube was gone, but my husband was still holding my hands.
Emerson is the most amazing person I have ever met. His love and compassion for me are like a river bathing me in fresh, clean, cool water all the time. Running was one of the things that brought us together.
I remember, once, we went running for a date. I was diligently trudging along at what I thought was a healthy pace. Emerson was jogging beside me, engaging me in conversation and laughter. As the run progressed I looked over again only to see him walking. I pointed out his faux pas, and he began pretending to run again.
He persevered as my trainer, though, and I became faster and stronger with time. In March of 2000 we ran a 5-mile race together. The next year we ran a half marathon. That was the year we married.
I was still secretly battling my undiagnosed mental illness, but I remember feeling happy when I was running. It wouldn’t last, and before too much time had passed I became too sick to hide anything from anyone.
Funny, I don’t remember how I arrived in the office of the doctor who finally helped me. I was 24 at the time, and had seen something like seven psychiatrists in the previous three years. Each one was befuddled by an illness they were seemingly powerless to treat.
This doctor’s office was nothing more than a glorified doublewide trailer. Looking at the unimpressive façade, my expectations were pretty low. I had seen some of the most renowned psychiatrists in the area, in some pretty impressive offices, with waterfalls trickling down stone walls and soothing nature sounds coming from surround-sound speakers in the waiting rooms.
What this office lacked in atmosphere was more than made up for in compassion, wisdom, persistence, and the doctor’s ability to ply his craft to a desperate patient. He listened to my story, evaluated my mental health, and made careful notes of the medications I had been on, as well as their results and side effects. In tears, I begged him to do something. And then he proceeded to do what no other doctor or therapist had been able to do before: He helped me.
I wasn’t cured. There is no cure for mental illness, only management. So I devoted myself to the management of my depression and anxiety. I was compliant with my medications, I never missed a doctor’s appointment, I saw my therapist regularly, I got 7-8 hours of sleep every night, and I resumed running.
Running had always felt good, but now it seemed to be even better. Emerson and I had three girls between 2005 and 2013. I experienced the ups and downs and cyclical patterns associated with my mental illness, but was still able to manage it well enough that life was enjoyable and, well, normal. I began to try mindfulness and yoga, and I really felt I had kicked my depression and anxiety to the curb once and for all.
In 2014 I turned 35, and I started devoting a lot more time to running and fitness. In October of that year I ran my first marathon, the All About Marathon Training on a Treadmill DAA Industry Opt Out.
In retrospect, it was probably not the best choice for a first marathon, but with big challenges come big rewards, and I was hooked. The next year, I ran two 5Ks, one 10K, two half marathons, Tips to Prep for Marathon Training.
In 2016, I had big plans to run two marathons in one year. In May I ran a marathon in a total deluge, with freezing temperatures and wind gusts of 30 mph. I finished with a PR! Shortly after that race, though, I ran into an emotional tempest.
I had endured personal challenges in the past 12 years and had weathered the storms pretty well. I figured I would lean into the wind and weather on this one too. After all, if I felt a little stress, all I had to do was go for a run.
I became more and more stressed. I went from running five days a week to seven. Stress turned into anxiety. I went from running six miles a day to 10. Anxiety turned to depression. I went from running 10 miles a day to 15. I had plans to run that second marathon in September.
Other Hearst Subscriptions ankle started to hurt. It wasn’t excruciating pain, just enough to be a little uncomfortable. I figured I just needed to rest it, so I tapered my runs leading up to the marathon.
The day of the marathon was crisp and cool. At the gun, I started down the beautiful canyon, enjoying the feel of the pavement under my feet and being pleasantly distracted by the scenery. My ankle hurt a bit, but I brushed aside the pain as nothing more than a bit of tendonitis. Ten miles in, the pain worsened, but nothing was going to stop me from finishing the race. I ran the rest of the race and beat my previous PR by almost 25 minutes, but my ankle was killing me as I crossed the finish line.
I immediately went to see a sports medicine doctor. An x-ray and subsequent bone scan showed I had broken two bones in my right ankle. I went from running 15 miles a day seven days a week, to having my foot in a boot and being on crutches.
The broken ankle was nothing compared to the storm that came my way. Running had been my coping mechanism for raging anxiety and deep depression. But I ran so often, so far, that I ended up breaking my ankle. Now, with no coping mechanism in place, my depression and anxiety took over.
I felt the overwhelming sadness, fear, and panic that I had been keeping at bay for the past 12 years close over me like a typhoon over a fishing vessel. I had no will to live. I wasn’t really contemplating suicide, but lost my desire to care for myself. I stopped eating and drinking. I stopped sleeping, but never got out of bed. I couldn’t care for my children or home.
I asked my husband to admit me to a neuropsychiatric hospital. I was there for almost a month. At 5’8’’ and 130 pounds I was already thin, but I lost 15 more pounds at the hospital. Once again, doctors were baffled at the resistant nature of my depression and anxiety. The first doctor I saw quickly passed me off to another. The next doctor was more compassionate and capable. He set about trying unorthodox medicines to treat my illness.
After much trial and error, he found success. I felt the cloud lift and the winds subside. My children came to visit me, and I laughed with them. It was time to go home.
My ankle was no longer in a boot, but I was still unable to run. However, I was able to find other ways to cope. I saw my therapist more frequently, I went to yoga more often, I began practicing meditation, I read more books. The change in my medication stabilized my depression and anxiety.
My ankle healed, and in January my sports medicine doctor gave me the okay to begin running again.
I am taking it slow. I run on the soft surface of a treadmill most of the time. Now and then I jog outdoors with a friend. My long runs have amounted to no more than a few miles, but it feels good to be out there again, feeling the familiar patter of my feet hitting the ground.
I plan to run a 5k in March, a half marathon in June, and my big goal is to run a Boston qualifying time at a marathon in September. Most importantly, I am running because I want to run, not because I need to run. That makes me happy.
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Heather Parke currently lives in Salt Lake City, Utah with her husband and three daughters. She has abandoned the treadmill for the most part and is running on the roads and trails around her home again. She is planning to run the Leprechaun Lope 5K in March with a sub-24 minute goal, and feels that, at the rate she is improving, a Boston qualifying time in September is within reach.
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