By Dalani Aamon

Depression in our culture is one of the main ills that drive our quest for feeling good. Black people will always seek a way to feel good. We were a happy people who only desired what was natural. That drive to feel good has taken us to the brink of destruction both mentally and physically.

Feeling good should be an outgrowth of a sound mind and body. We absorb the unhappiness of strangers because we really are already close to the edge. Our feelings of compassion are really masking our true feelings of hopelessness in Amerika. Our childhood is one of the main factors in determining our adult happiness. That is why we have to solve the early years in order to find peace and tranquility in the later years.

Most manic-depressive people are treated with varying degrees of medication to balance out the day. Blacks are treated for abnormalities in the mental process that have never been quite understood by the non-Black professional. Black health-care providers are better equipped to handle the needs of our people but even our own have been mistrained to mistreat us.

To be Black is unlike anything you could ever study in a university setting. Our sojourn here is so unique as to have no equal. Our depression and need to feel good is our response to the oppression felt for more than four hundred years. We pursue drugs both legal and otherwise at an alarming rate. We pursue the good life at all costs as proven by our crime rate in this country.

For most of us feeling bad is not an option. We will medicate when should educate. We will medicate when we should meditate. I love my people and their insistence on not feeling the pain of poverty, neglect, and all that it means. We need not to settle for short-term relief, but seek out permanent solutions to our mental shackles. To really understand our Blackness is to know that all things have a purpose.

We have always been a despised and rejected people, and therefore in need of love. Love could and would eliminate the need for mental-health-care providers in this world. Our depression stems from a lack of love from the people who gave us all they had. Our newfound enlightenment has bought the issues in our life out of the closet. We are no longer angry at the world for what has transpired.

All of your dysfunction was passed on to you without your permission. Things you can't control usually bring on depression. Our parents were responsible for instilling a sense of direction in us but did not have the tools to do so. The oppression that has been heaped on our ancestors and subsequently passed on to and through us equates to the depression we now see.

To have a medicine cabinet full of prescribed drugs is not mentally fighting off the shackles that have been taken off. We now have enough knowledge that we should know better than to put poison in our systems. To give in and become a substance abuser is just the opposite of what we need but will always satisfy our temporary need to feel good. I feel good knowing that I have solved in my own mind why we have this need.

Some of us are reaching out to the masses to tell them to say no to the temptation of drug abuse, food abuse, spousal abuse, and any other abuse caused by depression. If you want to feel better then start to learn about who you really are and what that means. Knowledge will make you feel better so that you will start to eat better, exercise more, stop smoking, and love the new person that you will become. For those of us who really understand what it is to be Black, we drink less, smoke less, eat less and complain less.

The time has come to face the reality of accepting your share of blame for the things you do control. Control is all about saying no and meaning no. Most Black people who come to an accurate understanding of who we really are could never accept society's version of acceptable behavioral standards. To smoke, drink, and medicate your way through life signifies an absence of love and knowledge needed to fight back.

The properly oriented Black person sees himself as part of a more natural environment that doesn't allow for self-destructive vices. Our eating habits are more like slow suicide than life-sustaining nutrition. Once we start to show better judgment about drugs, food, and our history we become less depressed. If your plan is to sit and wait for a miracle while eating and drugging your way back to reality, good luck.

People have to start to view sobriety as the hallmark of understanding and engaging our unnatural enemies. We continue to walk around in need of feeling good but always seek temporary solutions to long-term problems. There are some who will pay more than a hundred dollars an hour to be told you have a problem and seek solutions based on that diagnosis.

We as Black people have always had the power to heal but have been here too long. We now run where they run to seek help as if we are the same people. Our problems are exclusively ours. To go to a European-trained health care provider is a waste of your time and money. If you really want a cure, go look in the mirror and start with that person first. You will know when the brainwashing has been complete by your own behavior.

We have embraced all the teachings of the Europeans. We study where they teach. We even worship where they preach. We brag about being Catholic but that church financed our enslavement. We are so politically astute but culturally in a coma. We baptize our children just as the Europeans did in the first century in Europe not Africa. We pray to White images. We perform our marriages to a precise European tradition, though it was Europeans who wouldn't allow us to marry.

We celebrate with them about them. Sometimes we love them more than they love their own. How bad do they have to be for us to reject them? How many mass murders? How many planeloads of drugs for our youth? How many saviors? How many guns? How much sex and how much violence? How many negative portrayals on TV? How much hypocrisy? How many liquor stores? How many churches? Why do we pledge our allegiance and salute a flag that belong to a group of people who won't even apologize about past or current mistreatment? How bad do they have to be before you start to embrace your own beautiful self? When will it end? It could end right now if you say no more, and mean no more.

We will always be crazy until we get our culture straight. People who embrace other people and not their own will always be a depressed people. I get depressed once in a great while trying to help people that don't understand our love affair with Europeans. I tell them that the Europeans have turned everything backwards. They say prove it, and I say look, they took our GOD out of us and put their DOG in us.

We originally worshipped the SUN that you can see and now we worship the SON that we have never seen. We worship the son on Sun- day. How backward can you get? My battle with the mental health of my people will always be an ongoing struggle as I attempt a rescue from the clutches of despair.

I would love to see us all join groups that will help in our recovery. We all suffer from black family dysfunction and can benefit from helping others to overcome this destructive vice. I want to pass on some real tips about depression. You are not alone. It is not your fault. You are in control. You must learn to know thyself. You will learn to love thyself. You will arrive on time to your destiny. Your true greatness awaits you.

Don't look for God on the outside. Your creator is on the inside, so inquire within. Last, but not least is for you to know that I am 100 percent behind you and know that you are now on your way to becoming the very best you can be.

Dalani Aamon is an activist, author and lecturer. This article taken from his book at http://www.dalaniaamon.com Contact him at author@dalaniaamon.com