Depression

[darkcyd]

Ways I have found to deal with depression.

1st is work out. Get out of the house! Go do something and make sure it involves a raised heart rate. The physical activity alone will keep a majority of people from sinking into an atmosphere based depression.

2nd, is get laid. If yer a girl, this is cake. If yer a guy, do not be afraid to lower your standards a bit. You need the attention. She needs the attention. You can quell you conscious about how you thought it would last later but if you NEED somebody, don't be too big to ask for it.

3rd is avoid your house. Many of the people who are depressed stay in the same environment while worrying creating a spiral of no hope that they can't see a door out of. The door is right there. Get out of the environment and you will find answers.

4th is don't be afraid to chuck everything and redirect your life. This is a hard thing to do with many people investing so much time in something. At your age, there are plenty of places you can be and college is just one of them. If it isn't time for college, leave. Set your own path and you have no borders.

Lastly, when you decide for that change, don't chose get married. Finding some ugly chic that gave great head is a good thing, but its not the epiphany you were after. It comes from looking at yourself and what you know of you, finding what you want, researching how to get there, and setting your sails.

Don't be afraid to be selfish. Your life is yours, have fun!

DISCLAIMER: This is from a 20 year old male mental health standpoint and the language is for that reason massively chauvinistic. If that bothers you, you are probably not a depressed 20 year old guy so I make no apologies.

[PoopShoot]

Have those mushrooms got anything to do with this?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 27,00.html

I skimmed the article, but fly agaric is one of the likely culpirits for a lot of the religious stories of the area if mushrooms are to blame.  Swami in India and Pakistan (in certain texts) were revered for being able to give followers visions through their piss.  This is a strong indicator that they were using agaric.

[Asmodean]

I'm not asking you to buy it. Or even try it. Just a suggestion.  Btw, the answer to 5. is yes.  Recognizing and challenging negative thoughts is outlined in many books.  Yes, the steps are hard to follow.  If there was an easy way to combat depression, there wouldn't be so much of it.  You seem to have your depression under control, if drugs work for you, I'm sincerely happy for you.  The unfortunate fact is that they don't work for everybody.   There is a lot of promising info on the internet about the TLC method.  This isn't some Tony Robbins self help kind of deal.

Again, as stated, it may work for some people. But I think its effectiveness is largely outlined by the type of depression you are having and its causes.

And yes, for me, antidepressants work very well. So I have found my easy solution  

[humblesmurph]

I'm not asking you to buy it. Or even try it. Just a suggestion.  Btw, the answer to 5. is yes.  Recognizing and challenging negative thoughts is outlined in many books.  Yes, the steps are hard to follow.  If there was an easy way to combat depression, there wouldn't be so much of it.  You seem to have your depression under control, if drugs work for you, I'm sincerely happy for you.  The unfortunate fact is that they don't work for everybody.   There is a lot of promising info on the internet about the TLC method.  This isn't some Tony Robbins self help kind of deal.

Again, as stated, it may work for some people. But I think its effectiveness is largely outlined by the type of depression you are having and its causes.

And yes, for me, antidepressants work very well. So I have found my easy solution  

You didn't say that it may work for some people.   You said was that you didn't think it worked for anybody.  Of course everybody is different.  It's a 10 dollar book that can likely be had for free and it's a quick read.  All that is wasted by giving it a look is a few moments of time.   Drugs aren't an option for some people, what do you suggest they do?

[Asmodean]

You didn't say that it may work for some people.   You said was that you didn't think it worked for anybody.

[humblesmurph]

You didn't say that it may work for some people.   You said was that you didn't think it worked for anybody.

Get a good old-fashioned reason for living seems like callous and ineffectual advice.    Some people don't have psychiatrists.  People without health insurance get depressed too.

[PoopShoot]

Get a good old-fashioned reason for living seems like callous and ineffectual advice.

Callous, yes, ineffectual, not necessarily.  It's quite pragmatic and the only reason it would be ineffectual would be how it's parsed.  Of course noone is going to take advice that hurt their butt, but butthurt doesn't deter everyone and the people who take it to heart could benefit from it.  Quite franly, having a good old fashioned reason to live has literally saved my life on more than one occasion.

[humblesmurph]

Get a good old-fashioned reason for living seems like callous and ineffectual advice.

Callous, yes, ineffectual, not necessarily.  It's quite pragmatic and the only reason it would be ineffectual would be how it's parsed.  Of course noone is going to take advice that hurt their butt, but butthurt doesn't deter everyone and the people who take it to heart could benefit from it.  Quite franly, having a good old fashioned reason to live has literally saved my life on more than one occasion.

Point taken.  I think I take things too literally.  I presume by one's continued existence that they have some reason to live.  Sometimes that reason is simply the fear of committing suicide.  I'm %100 in favor of whatever keeps you alive.  However, if one wants to get better, it seems to me that one eventually has to do a little more than just make it to the next day.

[PoopShoot]

However, if one wants to get better, it seems to me that one eventually has to do a little more than just make it to the next day.

This bears underlining.  Or repeating.  Or highlighting.  Or...

[Asmodean]

Get a good old-fashioned reason for living seems like callous and ineffectual advice.    Some people don't have psychiatrists.  People without health insurance get depressed too.

I KNEW I shoulda' used more emoticons...   And in my country, people without health insurance get psychiatric help as well as everyone else, so I guess I'm sort of biased that way.

[humblesmurph]

Get a good old-fashioned reason for living seems like callous and ineffectual advice.    Some people don't have psychiatrists.  People without health insurance get depressed too.

I KNEW I shoulda' used more emoticons...   And in my country, people without health insurance get psychiatric help as well as everyone else, so I guess I'm sort of biased that way.

I figured as much, but one can never be sure what one means without emoticons.

[epepke]

Oh, well, I might as well tell my story.

I had serious depression since about 1973.  I saw a bunch of "counselors," who never did me any good and usually just frustrated me.  I presented around 1981 to the college health department for treatment.  They gave me Stelazine, which just turned me into a zombie.  I understand why they wanted to turn me into a zombie, but it was the wrong treatment for me.  Around 1983 to 1985, I had serious suicidal ideation.  This was temporarily abated by a short seduction in displaced mode arranged by a lesbian friend of mine.  I started to have a semblance of a life, but there was a short cycle of around 21 days, when I had severe depressions, and a long cycle of about a year and a half.  Around 1992, I decided to present for treatment again.  I was diagnosed as Bipolar II.  This is a form of bipolar that doesn't involve much mania but involves regular depressions that are generally acknowledged as the most severe known to psychiatry.  I was given Buspar, a non-benzodiazepine anxiolytic.  It actually worked, though I got some serotonin sickness.  It also stopped being effective about a year later.  I had many other medications, including Serzone, Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, the benzodiazepines Ativan and Klonopin, and the neuroleptic Neurontin (gabapentin).

I also did something quite unusual.  Immediately when the Buspar took effect, I embarked on a program to repair damage to my brain/mind by psychological means.  I used dreamwork, Cognitive/Rational Emotive/Behavioral Therapy (hard to remember the acronym du jour), and quite a few techniques I invented myself.  I confronted my thinking patterns and emotional states rather brutally.  I was pretty much done by around 1998 and 1999.  I have not needed medication since then.  I may get glum from time to time, but it is not within orders of magnitude what I experienced.  As far as I can tell, I may have the same cycles I had back then, but they don't affect my life much.

I think I learned a few things along this process.

1) If you haven't experienced this kind of thing, you have no clue what this is like.  You really don't.  Feeling low or down or glum is like a drop of water in comparison to a flood.  There are feelings of extreme helplessness and frustration.  When people say certain things, one's mind spirals out of control into what I call the Vortex.  Some people understand immediately what I mean by that, and others never will.  There is really no way to describe this, but I'll try.  There is a condition where people wake up, but the mechanisms that keep the body paralyzed in sleep are still active.  So one has the experience of being conscious but unable to move.  There are also cases where anesthesia wears off but the paralyzing drugs are still working, so one feels the pain of surgery but cannot do anything about this.  Most people who experience either of these conditions express that they felt terror.  Depression is like this, except it is like this all the time, to the point where one's circuits burn out from the terror, and what is left is a seemingly inescapable hell.

2) If you are experiencing this, or even if you have in the past year, you have no clue what reality is like.  You really don't.  This should be trivially obvious, but like many such things, it seems not to be.  Considering how marvelous life and the universe is, for someone to consider it hopeless and that they should not live indicates that there is something very serious going on.  Depression causes a monumental kind of stupidity.  The big problem is that this stupidity (again, obviously but not acknowledged) prevents depressed people from doing the things that might help.  Curing the prejudice against trying this or that to repair the disorder is tantamount to repairing the disorder itself.

3) However, all my experience is that confronting the most offensive, the most painful, the most fearful, the most cruel, the most callous things were exactly what I needed.  The things that increased the pain of depression were exactly the things that I had to face head-on.  The drugs gave me some temporary boost to tackle those things, but I needed to tackle them, not just sit with my thumb up my butt and imagine that the drugs would make me feel better forever.

4) When I tell people I got over it, a nearly universal response is to tell me that it is impossible.  To which my only possible response is, "well, if I tell you what I did you'll just abuse me because it challenges your worldview, and I'm not going to subject myself to your abuse."

[notself]

epepke,

Congratulations on your success in facing your emotions and mental formations.  It can't have been easy to keep at it while in the midst of the depression.  Thank you for telling about your experience.

[epepke]

epepke,

Congratulations on your success in facing your emotions and mental formations.  It can't have been easy to keep at it while in the midst of the depression.  Thank you for telling about your experience.

Thanks.  It actually wasn't so bad; the hardest part was making the commitment to do it in the first place.  Once that was done, I just used my stubbornness from my scientific training to try this and that and eventually find what worked.  It was certainly in toto a hell of a lot better than being depressed.  But then again, mine was really severe and had really lasted for a long time, and I was really sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I think that maybe people who haven't been as impaired and can still do things like have children at the approved time may not get the experience of hitting absolute rock bottom and rebounding therefrom.

[notself]

Vitamin D deficiency may be linked to depression. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20450340

It is clearly linked to breast and prostate cancer, osteomalacia, osteoporosis and other common conditions.  70% of American adults are deficient in Vitamin D.  In spite of this, Vitamin D is seldom part of routine blood analysis.