There is an illness all around me in modern society that seems to be spreading like Black Plague once did in Europe so long ago. It's called depression, have you heard of it? Has it affected you? The more I look, more I see it in so many people in my life, including myself. Depression sucks. It's a real drag, and I mean real drag. It is different from feelings of unhappiness that all humans have to deal with in their lives. It is being in a solitary prison where you are only one who can see walls; you are jailor, guard, and prisoner all rolled into one. Sounds like fun huh? Well, we better become more aware of it because there are certain aspects of contemporary life that are causing more and more souls to lock themselves up, some believing that they have no hope of ever finding key out.

If you look up depression on Internet through a Google search query you will find a lot of different ways and means to manage or treat problem. There are Eastern and Western approaches, psychological and spiritual; today there are 15,400,000 links about subject. It seems to be on everybody's mind and yet we don't give it general social awareness that we do for other illnesses. This is probably because there are so many stigmas around faults with human mind. Broken bones and cancer we can understand or at least think we do; but we touch on a soft spot when we find a problem with that infinitely complex, helpful, magical device we call brain.

Recently I went to a public talk by a world famous Psychologist named Dorothy Rowe who was selling her new book, 'Depression: The way out of your prison". I'm not going to tell you that she has all answers, but I did like different approach that she took to illness. She's not against modern medication, but she feels that it can be only part of solution. Of course there are types of intense clinical depression that need certain chemicals to rebalance brain to a 'normal' working order, but for all depression she feels that focus could be shifted from a management to a prevention paradigm.

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"25 Things You Should Do Before You Stop Smoking"

- by Joe Armstrong

(c) 2005. All Rights Reserved. http://www.BookShaker.com

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1. Write down why you want to stop

2. Write down why you like to smoke

3. Decide if you want to stop more than you want to smoke

4. If you do want to stop more than you want to smoke, continue with this checklist. If not, read on only when you're ready to quit

5. Continue to smoke until you've completed checklist.

6. Write down where, when and with whom you smoke

7. Write down what feelings lead you to reaching for a fag

8. Visualise yourself in same places, at same time, with same people and with same feelings without smoking.

9. In your imagination, what do you do, say, think and feel? Play out a scene in your head. For instance, someone offers you a smoke. How do you feel? What do you say?

10. Consider abstaining from alcohol while you're quitting smoking. Lots of people relapse while taking a drink