Post-Avatar Depression

Yeah, I saw this one coming from a long way off.

First this story started taking shape on the woo-woo circuit, and now it's hit the big time: the phenonemon of Post-Avatar Depression is real enough that even CNN is taking it seriously.

Thousands of people are experiencing severe depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the controversial James Cameron blockbuster film. Some have become so immersed in the film's reality that they find themselves obsessing over it. CNN quotes one unfortunate soul as saying:

"That's all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about 'Avatar.' I guess that helps. It's so hard I can't force myself to think that it's just a movie, and to get over it..."

Other moviegoers, according to CNN, have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race because of the film's effect on them. Others report a disengagement with reality. Still another said:

"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning. It just seems so... meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep... doing things at all. I live in a dying world."

What these people are reporting are exactly what many others have reported after undergoing various epiphanies and satoris, hyper-lucid dreaming, induced eidetic imagery, remote viewing, scrying, astral projection, past-life regression, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and other practices best not spoken of here.

It's also akin to something I've always called "The Narnia Effect". When I read The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe as a child, even then I thought how unrealistic that the children would enter the magical land of Narnia and stay there for years, then return through the portal in time for supper at home, where only hours had elapsed. It was immediately evident to me that the children would have become so matured, so changed by those years of experience in faraway magical lands, that their parents and peers would have immediately noticed the drastic personality change. More to the point, the children would most likely be unable to function in their humdrum old normal schoolkid lives. Not after having the adventures they did. Not after growing up for years in a time-compressed track of an alternate reality.

That's precisely what these people are apparently feeling, so dazzled and bowled over are they by the fascinating and beautiful 3-D world of "Pandora" that Cameron has crafted. Another quote from a sufferer:

"One can say my depression was twofold: I was depressed because I really wanted to live in Pandora, which seemed like such a perfect place, but I was also depressed and disgusted with the sight of our world, what we have done to Earth. I so much wanted to escape reality."

If there is a solution, it's to try to learn to spiritually multitask - to hold these different realms in your head at the same time, keeping your feet in multiple worlds 24-7. Sure, it'll make you seem erratic, cloudy, foggy, bipolar, inconsistent, self-contradictory, confused, vague, disassociated and absent-minded - just like your humble chronicler - but hey, it's better than having your body sit here in a near-coma of mopey unfunctionality while you're traveling in that land which lies an inch behind your forehead.