An ex-Observer journalist on her battle with depression, and the creation of a celebration of women with complicated lives
Not long after my 30th birthday – which I spent cry-dancing in a random club with baffled strangers – I went to my GP and was diagnosed with depression. In some ways it was a relief. The feelings of hopelessness, inadequacy, unworthiness and loneliness with which I’d struggled since my teenage years finally had an explanation. It was caused by dodgy brain chemistry, serotonin deficiencies. Even better, there was a treatment and it was simple and easy to swallow.
For the next five years I took Prozac for depression and propranolol for anxiety. They helped. Work was also a crutch. After a brief and improbable career as a teacher in a private school, where the pupils were as self-confident as I was self-conscious, I quit for the glamour of journalism – well, the Oban Times. I then, via the Glasgow Herald, joined the Observer, technically as Scotland editor, though a more accurate description could have been the panicker in the north.
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