Jesus gobbo, sorry to hear that. My own battle with depression has been a losing one for the last year. I've started taking an aggressive medication and therapy approach lately but it is not working. I just started zoloft.

Also to AC_Slater, I have/still do use kratom, but recommending it for depression is a little silly. Opioid-like drugs can cause depression on their own.

It's better to receive a temporary glimpse of well being then to suicide oneself. Kratom may help a near hopeless case to see that a sense of well being is at least possible. The temporary fix of Kratom must be supplemented with a diet of dopamine rich foods to provide an even keel.

I've had it for 9years now, clinnicly. Last 2 years in particular its very,very hard every day. I went from seeing a psychologist for the first time to medicine - mental hospital 3months part-time- mental hospital 3months full time - electroshock therapy - suicide attempt a month ago. Nothing really helped. Im taking less and less medicine now, tired of all the side effects.

Im strangly oke now the last 3 weeks, dont know why. keeping busy with work and friends, girlfriend and minimum 2 hours of sport everyday. t will come back im sure, just taking it day by day now and doing the best I can to be happy. I don't think it will ever go away though, no idea how at this point. But im gonna keep doing my best and taking it day by day Dropped out of school a year ago, 1 course before I had bachelor and a few more for my master so going to try and finish that now.

Most of my friends know at this point, after noone having a clue for 8 years. I just cant really talk about it and never will. I have found a very good psychologist now (after enough bad ones) and that is much more helpfull than I ever imagined.

I don't know, I just see it as reckless and silly advice. Drugs of all kinds come with risks attached. I regularly use cannabis and stuff like that, but realize that they can worsen my depression so I monitor my use very carefully.

Depression is a complicated beast and no two people's cases are exactly alike. My therapist and psychiatrist have been working on looking at specific factors that may be affecting my depression and knocking them off the list one by one.

For me, it was my social isolation. So it came down to how can I work on that? well, I generally hate social interaction and avoid it. Then we explored why that was, and determined it's because I have severe anxiety. Now we are working on the anxiety.

Meds alone will rarely do the trick and no good doctor will ever recommend a treatment plan that doesn't include other stuff like CBT. It's a real battle and you need to take active steps to fight depression or it will take over, just like any other deadly disease. And you need to take it seriously, depression is deadly. Even in its less deadly, non-suicidal forms, it can suck years away from your life, years that are totally wasted. So using stuff like kratom or cannabis to try to treat depression is risky and dangerous and kind of ill advised, imo.


@gobbo if you ever wanna talk feel free to PM me

Another misconception is that happy people are always happy. Happy people are just reverse depressed people, they sometimes get depressed, just like depressed people occasionally feel happy. I think depression is the natural state of a human being. The earliest discovered personal letter (Sumerian I think) was a woman complaining about how pointless and painful her life was and how she just wanted to die.

Happy is an emotion. Emotions are fleeting. They come and go throughout the day. The opposite of happy is sad, not depressed. Depression is not simply the absence of positive emotions.

Not to derail your thread, but just want to toss this out there and maybe someone here has experience. If someone with insurance or financial resources has been depressed for awhile and tried medications and therapy with incomplete benefit it may be worth considering relatively newly FDA approved transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for depression.

Smoked daily for a decade, cannabis helped me a lot with my depression. But on the other hand, it made my anxiety explode... I guess that like you said,

My view is this should be for people with depression to share, and others to listen and support. The advice from those without depression on how it can be fixed is just insensitive and ignorant.

I had been depressed. I am no more.

It was pretty bad. With suicidal thoughts and insomnia and having a solid step by step plan for getting out of bed. You know things like: "First step: I put I left leg out. Second step: I put right leg on the floor. Third step: I sit-up straight......"
I also completely agree that stigma is real. Quite a few people did immediately distance themselfs from me when they understood that there is a depression on.

I did everything the school medicine suggests in such cases: various ADs and therapies, healthy eating, exercising, funny herbs, bathes...I won't say that it didn't help. It did. I didn't kill myself. But the depression was still there: suicidal ideation, insomnia, low drive.....I believe that the thing that resolved that for me was playing pretend. Here are some details of this pretending.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...20&postcount=6

Anyway to anyone in a bad place now: I am totally an example that things can get better. I am so often just soooooo incredibly glad that I didn't anything to dumb then.

I think any comments made in earnest should be fine, even the bad advice ones. They expose misconceptions that can be cleared up. But anyone making bad jokes should be removed.

It's so good to read all your posts as I dealt with depression for the last 4 years but discovered it only 6 months ago so far. I never been able to talk to a specialist but I will consider it. The thing is that I don't like talking about that, even with my family.

Lost my father whom I was very close with when I was 16 (I'm 21 now). In the same year 4 off 5 of my best friends lost their father too. We didn't talked too much about it and I don't think that one of us ever got suicidal thoughts but we started doing pretty bad things, life was violent and full of drugs to be honest. It is better now as we grown up and realise how stupid we were, but that dark part of life is still here and i think we all still feel pretty bad and got that unhealthy anger.

Anyway I don't have any advice and I can barely write a correct sentence in english tbh so I'll just send ya'll big love and keep it on the way up!
Will follow this thread 4sure.

When someone really close to me became clinically depressed it was really hard for me to understand. Especially since I had known them for 20+ years as a "happy" person.

This comic really helped me understand a little bit better what my role was and how I could help:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co...-part-two.html

If I have helped you then this thread was a great decision and totally worth everything. I'm happy that you're going to take steps towards helping yourself. Lemme know how I can help.

You know you're depressed when the idea of posting in this thread makes you a little sad and very tired.

I've been depressed since I've been conscious. Even as a kid atheism was obvious so I've had a vague existential sadness for as long as I can remember. This is all pointless, we're only a blip on an infinite timeline, etc. I don't really understand how people can NOT dwell on this stuff constantly.

Nobody likes a downer. Depression is isolating so I actively try to foster and preserve my relationships however I can. I definitely need to "recharge" my batteries. I've never considered self harm. Seems kind of pointless and scary.

I was raised in a culture that values family secrecy. Mental illness is not talked about. Even typing these few sentences out feels like I'm completely betraying my family.

I think humans are too smart, and smart humans are way too smart. We have it all and have nothing.

I think, and I don't know if this is true, that we are the only species that is aware that we are going to die. And we basically can guess the time frame. Plus, everyone around us perishes. That alone is a life-crusher.

Perhaps religion helps and a belief that there is something more. Otherwise, it does seem pretty bleak. Fortunately, and it is evolution I imagine, that is very difficult to kill ourselves. If it was as easy as pushing a button, the suicide rate would astronomically, and may even threaten our survival.

Bottom line is that if you are not religious, you should trick yourself into being religious. Religious people live longer and are probably slightly happier.

This really resonated with me. I actually felt extremely anxious last night about my posts and wished I hadn't posted. I actually got teary lol. I'm even contemplating hiding this thread as every time I see it I am reminded and I am not sure reading it will be a good thing for me.

Nothing to add here, but the best of luck to all of you folks struggling with this.

There is a stigma against it. And people generally don't want to be around depressed people is another reason that it is kept quiet. Sadly, it is sort of a "winning" solution.

I've focused on my mortality every day of my life since I was ~6, I used to fear getting nuked while in bed (this was not topical at the time, I was born in the 80's). Struggling with the lack of an afterlife has preoccupied me up until about 3 years ago when the worry just kind of lifted a bit. It was always gnawing at the back of my mind at a minimum previously.

I've largely been able to stave that off by being preoccupied in finding happiness. This has caused issued in terms of delayed gratification and not focusing on the long term. As soon as I would, I'd start becoming preoccupied with thoughts of death and feeling like I was going to be a sucker: sacrificing and having something befall me before I got to reap the fruits. This worsened as I aged.

Now I've become a little more ambivalent at the thought of eternal nothingness. I used to so want to live in some form forever. I still hold out some hope but I've stopped focusing on a question that can't be answered in my lifetime.

Sorry my post wasn't very well worded. I meant the thread reminds me of how bad I was at one point and I don't want to be reminded of it. You are correct though regarding the stigma.

Lo siento. It is tough and I feel for you. And even the 'happy' people don't have any realization how close they can be to depression. We all have it inside of us and the right exogenous forces can push the best of them there.

Medication may help. Religion may help. Exercise may help. YMMV.

This makes me sad. And SO pissed off at the same time. I wish I could give you a hug.

I went through a serious depression years ago. A serious attempt at suicide. Intense therapy for three years and a year in group. With the help and extreme patience of a badass therapist, I'm alive, relatively well-adjusted, and I like my life. Of course I dealt with the stigma. My ex-husband couldn't get over the embarrassment of having a mentally defective wife. He wanted me to lie about my hospitalizations. F***you, pal.

I am writing this to help you see that there IS a life after depression. We're all works in progress. And I'm pretty fond of this version of me. You all can do this.

I am a licensed psychologist who has suffered a number of major depressive episodes myself (primarily after I chose this career, so it wasn't a motivating factor). This thread is simultaneously frustrating and inspiring. Frustrating because there is still so great a stigma surrounding such a basic element of the human condition, and inspiring because - despite that stigma and the soul-crushing weight of depression itself - there are still so many people willing to reach out for help.

There is no shame in being depressed. It is not a sign of weakness, of failure, or of a ****ty life. The causes are multifaceted and incredibly complex, but also arise from the very human instinct to seek out and process the many problems in our lives. In an ideal world, we use this information as motivation and encouragement to make things better - but that assumes that we feel empowered to actually accomplish that. Otherwise, we are stuck looking at problems and ruminating on traumas while also feeling powerless to stop them. That can be crippling.

Yes, there are things we can do that alleviate depression (therapy, diet, exercise, sunlight, etc.), but that doesn't mean it is any easy or instantaneous fix. While chronic physical pain may be masked by opioids, we can't just give people handfuls of pills and expect them to "get over it" (we do expect this, but we shouldn't). Recovery can be a long road, and oftentimes it's especially difficult without someone walking by your side.

I'll try to contribute to this thread as much as I can, without getting into the ethically sticky trap of providing targeted therapeutic advice over the internet. Great topic, and certainly something that we can all afford to learn more about.

Thank you for your kind words. It makes me feel better that some people get it. I do agree that things can get better for people.

ILF,

Very thoughtful post. I actually forgot to list sunlight, I definitely believe that a lack of sunlight can be harmful. It can make me feel better just going into my garden and pottering.