antidepressants

  On 1/10/2012 at 7:17 AM, abusivegeorge said:

Is this your blond haired best mate hoodie? (don't want to mention names). If so I am sorry to hear this, actually I'm sorry to hear that full stop as I'm aware that anyone you would be friends with is a pretty decent person. Call him everyday, tell him you love him and offer to do anything for him if you can. All you can do is offer your love and care, people are powerless over each other and there is only so much we can do. You're already doing that, so feel safe in the knowledge that this is the case and although he's going through a bad time, be sure to keep yourself in a safe emotional space.

 

Big love friend x

thank you george <3

  On 1/10/2012 at 7:34 AM, Murveman said:

Yea, just hang out with them, but don't bring up depression. When I was depressed/suicidal in high school I hung out with another depressed/cough syrup abusing friend and just walked around and ate zebra cakes. It made life not suck.

This.

Just have some kind of contact. But without the depression even being some latent subject.

From my own experience, when you're depressed and you have some kind of contact and it just happens to be about your depression, you dissolve a little bit more into that big black hole of nothing. Those are moments your depression can kind of take over your personality a little bit more which is probably what you were fighting against anyways. It's counterproductive, despite good intentions.

Anything which makes your world not revolve around your depression helps. Contact is good. Key perhaps. As long as the "D" thing is not involved. (not talking about drugs)

yeah for me, when im in the throes of depression it's terrible because there is nothing to talk about.

there is just sad. it's not logical sad. there's no talking it out. there's no rhyme, there's no reason.

all i want is someone to hang out with me and distract me and pretend i'm a good person and pretend things are mostly okay but also know and subtly acknowledge that for me, they arent.

it's a weird tightrope to ask someone to walk.

but that's just me, i guess.

i encourage you to talk to your friend. when he comes out of it he will remember who was there and who was a fair weather friend. Just give encouraging love. Say hi

  On 1/10/2012 at 7:24 AM, chimera slot mom said:

  On 1/10/2012 at 6:41 AM, Hoodie said:

idk if i've already posted about this, but one of my friends is dealing with depression and it's really killing me because i literally cannot do anything to help. i mean, normally, if he is sad or whatever, i'd talk it out with him and everything (well, mostly everything) would be fine after that. but it doesn't work like that anymore, does it?

 

it's frustrating and it's tearing me apart to see someone i care about having to deal with these horrible feelings. it can turn a bright, wonderful person into a feeble ball of despair. i want so badly to help, but i don't know how. unless i learn how to secrete anti-depressants from my sweat glands, i am entirely useless and cannot help him cope with this mental illness.

 

shit sucks.

 

Sadly, most of the time, no. Some people, some of my friends and my girlfriend for instance, absolutely have to talk their blues away before it eats them alive, but when I'm really down I can't talk to anyone. It's like you become allergic to the noise of the world and have to shut off as much as possible. Unfortunately, talking, and most other people, even people you like, become part of that noise. This is hardest part of depression to connect with, it sounds unflattering and dishonest for a friend to hear that. But in that situation there is no discerning and even ones self becomes part of the noisy world one cannot stand. The truth is there's usually not much to talk about, it's just a black hole inside with no answers.

 

I don't know which of the above camps your friend really is in. But my advice would be to not try to talk him out of it unless he asks you to, maybe be someone who listens, and most importantly accept that it's there. Whatever you do, refuse to buy into the idea of it as a dysfunction, that only aggravates things. Enough of those thoughts going on inside the head already. Hard to explain but it projects the wrong kind of responsibility on the person, i.e that they are having a problem, when they are experiencing that the problem is having them. It's a situation and a reality, not just something inside their head. It's not out of their control, but it feels that way because it's so valid and real when you're in the middle of it, part of why people seclude themselves is because of the dissonance between what they are feeling and what everybody else is feeling, doing and telling them. So a way to help is to approach that reality from their point of view, to crawl into that depression with them and not just be a bystander. But that can be a tricky and scary thing, even for the best of friends. Some also just don't want to be reached, let alone seen.

have you thought about being some kind of counsellor? without trying to sound patronising you've got a very logical but empathic, intelligent/thoughtful and insightful way about you. good on ya!

ps edit. lol that did sound patronising didn't it?

  On 1/11/2012 at 2:32 PM, keltoi said:

have you thought about being some kind of counsellor? without trying to sound patronising you've got a very logical but empathic, intelligent/thoughtful and insightful way about you. good on ya!

 

ps edit. lol that did sound patronising didn't it?

Well, thanks! Not patronising at all, just really weird because I hear it all the time. Either that or I'm entrusted with some dark secret. It's not something I consciously try to be, it just sorta happens.

The worst thing about depression are the dark as fuck moods - total mental torture and I get them too often. I'm actually seeing the leading specialist in depression the UK now - I kid you not! He's talking about added L-Tryptophan to my coctail of Mirtazapine 45mg, Venlafaxine 225mg and Quitiapine 200mg! When he suggested it I was like thinking 'wooo that's pretty fuckin' hardcore' partly excited and partly scared lol. I took 5htp once with Citalapram and had an amazing high lol. Lets just say the next day wasn't so fun lol!!

  On 12/19/2011 at 1:43 AM, chimera slot mom said:

  On 12/18/2011 at 1:09 PM, Zephyr_Nova said:

  On 12/18/2011 at 3:30 AM, Awepittance said:

that's a really interesting breakdown of your experience, thanks for sharing! When you say your mind does a 'switch' can you go into a little more detail? So far it sounds extremely similar to what my own break from realyity twas like.

 

I'll try! [snip]

 

Wow, that was an amazing read. I've got a kind of derealisation switch that is very similar to yours, and your post reminds me so much about it,

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

especially in how you're dealing with it and that no one knows about it, I don't mean to hijack your conversation but I want to put down my thoughts on this and see if you or anyone else can connect, or at least maybe be fascinated by how fucked up people can get. I've never talked with anybody about it, the last time I spoke to a psychiatrist I didn't get to this part because I had no idea how to describe it, and the psychiatrist was more keen on talking about my anxiety. I've sort of spent the last year putting it into words so I can not only make more sense of it myself but also try to talk to someone about it. I didn't want to mention it earlier but as we're crossing into bipolar and schizotypal territory, I'm figuring why not let the crazy cat out of the bag.

 

I'm not sure how it started because in retrospect it's a sensation that has been there almost all the time without me being aware of it, but my awareness of what was going on began with me leaving the town I lived in for a very long time, and being sad to leave my best mates because I felt like I'd never get to experience the feeling I had with them again. Everybody else was a stranger and I was going to a new and uncertain place. Little did I know that eventually you find new friends who become your best mates, and you get that feeling all over again. And somehow, this both reassured and bothered me, because it was the same god damn feeling.

 

Someone else mentioned how panic and depression makes you aware of things you do not want to be aware of, and that's partly what created my problem with it. I somehow felt like I reached an end to the possibility of sensory experience in that direction, the feeling of hanging out, having beers, whatever, with good mates, regardless of how pleasant it is, will be the same no matter who you're hanging out with, that it actually doesn't depend so much on the people you're with as your impression about the people you're with. And I was reading so much into it that I couldn't read any more into it, and I couldn't stop myself from doing so. I still barely can.

 

Soon enough, I began making connections in other situations, doing the dishes, having a walk in the park, browsing the internet. And since then, this has spiraled into what I can't quite describe other than private conclusions about the totality of my sensory experience in any given situation. It becomes a switch wherein one moment I'm quite caught up with what I'm doing, the next I'm hyper-analytical, feeling vertigo over the reality of my experience, and it triggers itself out of the most mundane things simply because of the ridiculousness of the mundane. How can anything we ever do be mundane?

 

The strongest triggers come out of these mundane things like, whoa, why the fuck do we have basements, construction sites, seemingly ordered, straight lines and spaces out of dirt, rock and wood? I'll be at the shopping mall and I'll see the roof is this quite shanty thing out of naked tubes and metal, and I'll go nuts. Doing the dishes will feel like travelling through a recursive loop of infinite curved roads. It's like a constant backdrop of energy, but the vertigo isn't so much the sensation itself but what is inferred by the sensation, namely that there's this thing, this basic fact of reality, going on all the time that you're unaware of, and it's so beyond your comprehension that it is both scary that you can't understand it, but fucking insane that you can even be aware that you don't understand it. It's like making art out of everything, a design with no designer. But the only language we're capable of speaking is through messages of designs, so what does this message, of the aspect of our reality that isn't made with us in mind, mean to us? Is that what forces us to create societies and occupy ourselves with illusions?

 

I have quite pronounced synaesthesia which makes feelings, or sensations of atmospheres, more pronounced and connected with other senses like tastes and colours, but I am absolutely certain this is an aspect of every persons life, it's part of the mechanism that makes us attracted to bright colors, stylish designs, and so forth. There's a certain language in the universe that living creatures understand without being taught. The synaesthesia only makes it easier to define and categorize.

 

The synchronicity that I feel is that what I'm watching is inexplicably related to everything else in existance in a sort of meltdown, collapse or infinite recursion. That says very little of what it's like, but it's like looking at the box from outside the box and being aware of every single detail and the statement it amounts to. It's like reading the mind of god in a broken-down old car, a streetlight or a basement. It's the call of the abyss saying, do you see how all these things fit together? Street lights can be quite romantic from a distance but look closely and the details of the metal and light are overwhelmingly crazy.. I could go on and on, but anyway, my ability to process stops, because I don't know what this means in my human language and limited human perception. It's something majorly indifferent towards me as a person but not as a part of existance. I can be adventurous and the feeling will be quite invigorating, as a kind of gotcha, or that I'm too occupied with being fascinated by how novel it is to sense something like this to try and make sense of it, or I'll be fully panicking and the feeling will destroy me and my sense of self, mostly because of how palpable, unavoidable and encompassing it is in the way it irrevocably distances me from what I thought I was. Being aware of it in a way that, if there was any mercy in this world, ought to be beyond my capacity, and especially beyond my emotional spectrum.

 

And like what you're describing, the vertigo is produced is by my recognition that it isn't a thought-process but a nearly primal awareness and that the source is external, not internal.  The only times I have truly thought of suicide have been for the purpose to escape that awareness.

 

So there's a sense of chaos. It's quite amazing, in a way, that we are so quick to infer order in our lives simply because we're attracted to order. But I think of a quote by Einstein:

 

  Quote

When the expected course of everyday life is interrupted, we are like shipwrecked people on a miserable plank in the open sea, having forgotten where they came from and not knowing whither they are drifting.

 

Is the real problem with depression and other mental conditions that the veil is lifted and this constant drifting is revealed, and it becomes difficult to put the blanket back on? Is it a natural reaction to nature's "true" nature? My questioning begins, is this madness or is this the unavoidable conclusion, that if you look far enough, this is what you're going to see, in your own way?

 

But paradoxically, there is a sense of order, of math. Some of the strongest triggers of my switch are visualized mathematical equations like fractals or the ulam spiral. I've hated math all my life and now I've developed an astounding interest and love with math because it feels like I am communicating directly with that abyss. And the sense of accomplishment when learning new things is quite distracting.

 

Regardless, the strangest thing about any conclusion you make is that it tells you more about yourself than what you're concluding.

 

Regarding some of the other posts in this thread, I absolutely do not recommend drugs because they don't work for me. There's nothing wrong with drugs per se, but when you're depressed you're not entirely rational in the classical sense, and I think the answer is to reinvolve yourself with purpose and a sense of strength in dealin with your problems - Just because it's an illusion doesn't mean the illusion doesn't work on you - which is something that drugs easily counteract.

 

So I try to do zen meditation so I don't have to drink myself into a stupor in order to stop feeling crazy. And I do everything to involve myself in the illusion, I get up in the morning, I do really mundane and boring stuff, as long as it keeps me active and occupied. Games and other distractions are great, as long as they require an active involvement with as little requirements of analytical skills as possible... No movies. I study math. And I try to relax with stuff like the computer only when I feel I can control it.

 

Part of me thinks this is just a part of life and everyone deals with it in their own private language, but it's something that's exceedingly difficult to communicate between human to human. Just that some people have a self-awareness, and aren't distracted enough, that it becomes quite intense and obvious... or that they're stupid and reckless enough to bring themselves into such precarious mental 

 

 

 

We're now three. 

I already told my story on here but I guess I'll do it again. 

So I was on acid and my synaesthetic feedbacks were greatly enhanced when I suddenly experienced some kind of deja-vu / already-thought moment that got me kicked up into this mental fractal structure you mentioned chim. It was maybe different than your own experience guys - I tend to think about it as a dissolution of the argumentative level. But what is common to our experiences (I experienced it several times) is that it always starts with a sudden shift. Since I'm very intellectual or,rather intellectual-ish, and my own experiences occurred on the argumentative level, I experienced pure joy and amazement for hours (the same amazement again and again). It's hard to explain. It's not hard to explain it's impossible to explain. It's beyond words. No. It can be reached by words, endlessly. It cannot be encapsulated. Yet it can be pretty well coined by the fractal notion. You know what I mean.

To me, it was like a mental/logical big bang. I had this huge intuition/per-thought and what I'd do was trying to explain its cause. And this would make me go back through the causal chain, [au fond potentially], but at the same time, that quest for the primal cause, from causes to super-causes, was just settled in a effect to subeffect chain [in the form, actually]. As I was travelling back in time mentally, I was still following the normal flow of time physically. It's not a state of mind. It's a dynamic. The trip was fed by the trip itself, sustaining itself til I fell asleep. And I wonder if we could consider the cause of that mental big-bang, or consciousness shift, or whatever word fits your mood, wasn't that trip itself, ie a cause coming from the future. Maybe. Anyway, to me it's a subjective proof the causa sui exists. 

During the following trips, I had someone join me. I argued with him for a food couple hours, then he experienced the shift or trigger when I showed him a fractal (that part of Mandelbrot featuring a spiral made of spirals made of spirals, …). It was like we were bathing into the same stream. We were describing our ideas as they came visually, and what was astonishing was that we were seeing the same things. 

We developed a couple notions that I'll try to summarize here, but I'm ready to bet you already formed them :

- an opinion always has a counter-opinion (I'm not talking about absolute opposites). 

- when you say something, you put some content on the table. You do it with a certain style, it has a certain form. There is always a way to find out the form states the opposite idea brought by the content. For instance, when you say "There is no absolute", you're expressing an absolute.  (I don't like this content/form dichotomy, it's not vague enough, the French fond/forme just sounds better, ie it sounds less. I found out the philosopher Lupasco, uses the terms actualization/potentialization and it seems to,fit better, since it brings around the idea of 'becoming' : throughout time, throughout thought, contents turn into forms and vice versa).

- The third man (Lupasco named it the "included middle", and opposed it to the "excluded middle"). Remember : we were experiencing a dissolution of the argumentative level, so we weren't defending any specific view. We were two, so we're always chasing the third man in order to become the third man. The third man is the argumentative position that offers a compromise between an opinion and a counter-opinion. But it's not a compromise that makes you bitter. It's a compromise without concession, a fully integral, joyful, middle, opinion.  And it's not an absolute : a third man has a counter-opinion. And this couple will correspond to a third man. Or if you want to think of the third man as an absolute think about it as a direction, not a place. (travelling North will eventually lead you South). 

- and there is the logical square and the DNA-like shape it traces through time. 

I wasn't paying much attention to all these insights. To me they were just, you know, trips. Then I studied linguistics, was depressed, tried to kill myself several times (F A I L). Dropped out before entering a programming school this autumn. And that's when the synchronicities appeared. They weren't immediate synchronicities about everyday life elements (some of them were though). They were delayed synchronicities. Random stuffs happened to me and I did some random choices throughout my life. Then suddenly they all made sense and appeared to form a coherent whole, a path, a destiny (I explained in detail what I was living in the CERN faster than light neutrino thread). 

You know when your math teacher starts drawing on the blackboard the attractor he discovered and that it exactly looks like that you randomly 'discovered' a few years ago, you wonder : is this a joke, what are the chances we met ? And when he says, on top of his chaos theory phd, "Chance does not exist", you start to get nervous. It doesn't happen immediately, but at one point you start to consider seriously the hypothesis both of you have been strangely attracted to each other. What you thought was a nice-looking graph on a computer screen turns to be outside, above. And that's when things start to derail. Because you were raised in a absolutely anti-religion family, you are not prepared to be confronted to the idea of god (I'm not speaking about meeting god, that oneness feeling people talk about). And when it does, it strikes you hard.

In October I had been developing the idea of semantic fluxes, when my down-to-earth dad told me I was getting mad. 10 mins later I was freaking out and I knew exactly why : I had exposed myself and others to inappropriate fluxes, and was receiving back aggressive fluxes. So I bent down like an herb, and decided I was indeed getting mad. I was. 

I tend to think you guys give up to quickly on this "special power" of ours (especially zephyr nova). You think of these insights by opposition to reality. What is reality ? I don't know. But I assume the version of reality you're referring to. That some psychiatrists use in their speech : "you NEED to get back to REALITY". Why not ?

But be aware it's mainly a shitty reality. When I look at my sister (type I bipolar), who used to write really really beautiful texts and now works a shitty job, I see her hands shaking, I see her observing her belly, I see her lack of men in her surroundings, I see her extinct glow, I see the void in her life and I see the void in me. 

This is not a solution (I still take tercian as an emergency pill, and risperdal after I spent a week thinking about wild things : I haven't experienced the shift for years, but I have a lot of inertia now. I'm even to meet a psychiatrist tomorrow). What do you think people from the 25th century will think about contemporary psychiatry ?

You tend to think about our thing as a plague. It is and it is not. Consider things beyond good and evil, think about the future, project yourself into it. Entertain your dynamics, and manage to cross the abyss. Do it at your own rhythm, and take care not losing equilibrium. And most importantly, keep your heart warm and gay : if there is an absolute value, it's happiness.

You might ask : why should I cross the abyss ? I don't know but if you don't you won't be able to regret it. 

I know what I wrote won't help but what we experience can be felt on many level. I haven't been as far as seeing synchronicities in Watmm topics, but I did feel pretty badly aggressed by events as light as a flight of crows. I know how it feels. There isn't much you can do about it. I'd recommend you to go see a psychiatrist and get some emergency antipsychotic pills from him (tercian is good). They are pretty effective. 

Reading can help. Ken Wilber has a good theory on spiritual growth. (called integral philosophy and spiral dynamics). (beware, it relies on the logico-magical square. Jung archetypes and animus theory directly deals with synchronicities then there are more abstract stuffs, like moretti's generalization of logical square, hexagon, cube and beyond achieved on the basis of n-simplexes. Mioara mugur schatcher method is also very interesting, it's a tough read though, and you might prefer to start with Coecke pictorial quantum mechanics. What the old guys from quantum mechanics wrote is also heart-warming. And new age stuffs are important. They detain an important part of truth as well. 

And besides that, I also have a couple methods to "take off" but maybe you don't wan't to hear about it.  So I won't post it here. 

Just … it's not a curse, it's not necessarily bad. Actually I haven't been as happy as I have been in the past months. There is room for you, there is room for everyone. 

my depression didn't subside until I took matters into my own hands and started finding my own solution. thing that makes me skeptical of medical practitioners/psychiatrists is that sure, they are educated in the latest medications for mental illness, but it is from a purely objective stance.. their diagnosis' and prescriptions are based off of external studies they learned but not experienced. most of them don't really have any idea what extreme depression or anxiety is like, but are taught that certain medications are proven to work, but even in this day of age it is based primarily on trial and error, neurology is still a very misunderstood field.

so for me, I am trying to find what works for me and not letting pharmaceutical consensus be the end all. i see it in the same way some people view the food industry which has taken a turn towards more artificial manufacturing methods. organic remedies are sometimes just a whole lot safer and better then what scientists try to create in a lab. sure there are exceptions to this, but i think it's important to realize that a balance between organic and clinical remedies is a viable solution

what i'm getting at is that sometimes it's important to look outside the ideal standard of proper drug use or what is presumed to be beneficial. I really believe that with moderation, certain 'recreational' drugs can be useful for people suffering with depression.. you just have to find what works and be responsible with it. that being said, people who are looking for guidance out of depression should checkout MXE.. a ketamine analogue that was discussed not too long ago. and for those who want a nice safe mood lift should also try kratom. they are more then recreational drugs, and so far have really improved both my inner security and general outlook on everything

edit: I have just currently been having success with this, but as always with drugs, things could always take an unexpected turn. that is very important thing to keep in mind. tread carefully but be open-minded, there is allot out there to help, you might not realize it now, but in a state of dark desperation you might find exactly what you were searching for, just don't give up

No offence but to me depression = loss of pleasure. If you don't have that in abundance you really ain't depressed.

is it possible to have an abundant loss?

It really is fucking hard to get the feeling of your life as being coherent. I guess that's the main inner reason for depression: Being unable to see some coherency in your own life.

  On 1/13/2012 at 5:00 PM, keltoi said:

is it possible to have an abundant loss?

Mm I'm not sure - maybe explain what you mean in a bit more detail. :-)

  On 1/13/2012 at 5:50 PM, Promo said:

  On 1/13/2012 at 5:00 PM, keltoi said:

is it possible to have an abundant loss?

Mm I'm not sure - maybe explain what you mean in a bit more detail. :-)

you said if you don't have an abundant loss of pleasure then you ain't depressed lol mate.

just being pedantic.

i could abundantly care less

my story of depression:

I was depressed. Wait, I still am depressed. I just handle it a little bit [A LOT] better now.

My methods were/are:

No drugs... none.

Exercise at least 4 times a week.

Healthier eating habits.

Try to fix to a good sleeping schedule.

That's about it. For a while I was on a bunch of medications, lexapro, prozac, lithium, seroquel, abilify, risperdal, xanex type things...

In the end the side effects generally outweighed the positives. I really thought they were working at the time, in retrospect it was a good comfort shield to have. The most important thing though is those 4 things I listed above. The medication/therapy is important if you're deep in the pit, to start to get you out. A helping hand, so to speak. Eventually though one sees that the medication and label of 'depression' is just holding one back... it can take a while. I no longer consider myself 'depressed' as a label, nor do I consider myself 'sick' or having an 'illness' in any way. To a certain degree, those labels make the illness worse.

Going to therapy and taking medication can become a confirmation that one is unwell. There are different degrees of the problem but I still maintain that depression is better not thought of as an illness [at least until medication starts to work better...or becomes a totally viable cure] but as a 'state of mind.' And yes, it can be fucking severe.

Still, I think that Zen, Buddhism, and Taoist principals can be the absolute best way out. I'm not being a cunt here, I really do think that. It just takes respecting yourself, respecting the 'depressed person,' not treating them like a pitiful child, and telling them the truth. That the world is quite horrid, it's not going to go away. To a certain extent depression could be seen as an accurate viewpoint, one worthy of respect in its own way. At the same time, one must ACCEPT... and go from there. Cease to cling, cease to do this and that. We can say that depression makes it impossible to think, and this it does in its early stages. Still, depression isn't a license to stop trying, to stop being 'human' and accountable. We can be accountable in the most small of ways, to begin to consider a way out, the way out which might simply be realizing the emptiness of life, and slowly making small movements towards something more healthy and pleasant in our life... ZEN THINKING and BUDDHISM always give me hope, and a closed minded depressed person isn't depressed in my eyes, just closed minded.

OK, now that I've outlined the ultimate treatment for depression, let us recap:

1. Exercise

2. Good diet

3. Good sleep

4. Some form of Zen meditation/reflection ... some kind of spiritual thing

5. Openness to baby steps, small effort, a maintenance of hope... realizing its the small steps forward, taking it easy, deep breaths

And an openness to learning how to improve... for instance:

http://www.wikihow.com/Build-Self-Confidence

http://www.wikihow.com/Develop-Self-Esteem

http://www.joy2meu.com/ ? ? ?

OK, so that is the general thing that one needs to do to get over depression... small battles are difficult within this. I know these are the soultions, though I woke up at 12 PM today, skipped my class, feel like shit in many ways, and don't want to do anything, for instance. I still KNOW though, that despite this minor problem today I feel, it will pass because I have hope in the above solutions.

THAT SAID:

This 'cure' or 'treatment' might not be the beginning solution. I see depression as like a 'Black Hole.' There are different levels. There are only so many times anybody should have to be in the black hole. After a few times one can learn to never have to return to that. For most, me included, without knowing and understanding depression... it is very important to see a therapist, and even take medication, to prop oneself out of the 'black hole.' And I'm certain there are different levels of severity to mental illness. I just know that in all cases, the strategies listed above, if not only being helpful in a mild way... will be very fucking helpful for all, including 'severe' cases. If only as a sign of hope.

I haven't read the whole thread. But I just want to share my exprience with antidepressants.

I've been on Sertralin and Cymbalta.

And I wholeheartedly recommend staying away from antidepressant. Only take if it's absolutely necessary.

It didn't help me at all. It just give me alot of awful side effects. I'm having a feeling that it has changed my mood for the worse, even years after I've stopped taking them. Maybe I just wasn't depressed enough for meds (I've never had suicidial thought or anything like that). The antidepressants where just a overall awful exprience for me.

Therapy is where it's at. It helped me a lot I feel like. I'm thinking of going back, I shouldn't have stopped in the first place. I was actually changing my life in a lot of good ways when I was in Therapy. Since I've stopped everything has just been going downhill again. I quit too soon. It was just after a while I actually realized it had helped me.

In the beginning I was thinking like most people thinks about therapy: 'how the hell can talking to a doctor help me feel better?'. But it works. It really does. Just don't be as stupid as me and stop it when it's too early.

So meds is last resort I feel like. But it's diffrent from person to person. But you have to ask yourself if you're so depressed that there is no other way. Not all psychiatrists do that for you.

  On 1/13/2012 at 7:04 PM, vamos scorcho said:

my story of depression:

 

I was depressed. Wait, I still am depressed. I just handle it a little bit [A LOT] better now.

 

My methods were/are:

 

No drugs... none.

Exercise at least 4 times a week.

Healthier eating habits.

Try to fix to a good sleeping schedule.

 

That's about it. For a while I was on a bunch of medications, lexapro, prozac, lithium, seroquel, abilify, risperdal, xanex type things...

 

In the end the side effects generally outweighed the positives. I really thought they were working at the time, in retrospect it was a good comfort shield to have. The most important thing though is those 4 things I listed above. The medication/therapy is important if you're deep in the pit, to start to get you out. A helping hand, so to speak. Eventually though one sees that the medication and label of 'depression' is just holding one back... it can take a while. I no longer consider myself 'depressed' as a label, nor do I consider myself 'sick' or having an 'illness' in any way. To a certain degree, those labels make the illness worse.

 

Going to therapy and taking medication can become a confirmation that one is unwell. There are different degrees of the problem but I still maintain that depression is better not thought of as an illness [at least until medication starts to work better...or becomes a totally viable cure] but as a 'state of mind.' And yes, it can be fucking severe.

 

Still, I think that Zen, Buddhism, and Taoist principals can be the absolute best way out. I'm not being a cunt here, I really do think that. It just takes respecting yourself, respecting the 'depressed person,' not treating them like a pitiful child, and telling them the truth. That the world is quite horrid, it's not going to go away. To a certain extent depression could be seen as an accurate viewpoint, one worthy of respect in its own way. At the same time, one must ACCEPT... and go from there. Cease to cling, cease to do this and that. We can say that depression makes it impossible to think, and this it does in its early stages. Still, depression isn't a license to stop trying, to stop being 'human' and accountable. We can be accountable in the most small of ways, to begin to consider a way out, the way out which might simply be realizing the emptiness of life, and slowly making small movements towards something more healthy and pleasant in our life... ZEN THINKING and BUDDHISM always give me hope, and a closed minded depressed person isn't depressed in my eyes, just closed minded.

 

 

 

 

OK, now that I've outlined the ultimate treatment for depression, let us recap:

 

1. Exercise

2. Good diet

3. Good sleep

4. Some form of Zen meditation/reflection ... some kind of spiritual thing

5. Openness to baby steps, small effort, a maintenance of hope... realizing its the small steps forward, taking it easy, deep breaths

 

And an openness to learning how to improve... for instance:

http://www.wikihow.c...Self-Confidence

http://www.wikihow.c...lop-Self-Esteem

http://www.joy2meu.com/ ? ? ?

 

 

 

OK, so that is the general thing that one needs to do to get over depression... small battles are difficult within this. I know these are the soultions, though I woke up at 12 PM today, skipped my class, feel like shit in many ways, and don't want to do anything, for instance. I still KNOW though, that despite this minor problem today I feel, it will pass because I have hope in the above solutions.

 

 

 

THAT SAID:

 

This 'cure' or 'treatment' might not be the beginning solution. I see depression as like a 'Black Hole.' There are different levels. There are only so many times anybody should have to be in the black hole. After a few times one can learn to never have to return to that. For most, me included, without knowing and understanding depression... it is very important to see a therapist, and even take medication, to prop oneself out of the 'black hole.' And I'm certain there are different levels of severity to mental illness. I just know that in all cases, the strategies listed above, if not only being helpful in a mild way... will be very fucking helpful for all, including 'severe' cases. If only as a sign of hope.

Dude I am so glad you posted this because it mirrors exactly my experience too. I have been reluctant to chime in on this thread because I avoided all drugs to cure my mental problems.

Changing my diet, which then led to exercise feeling awesome and doing more of it, and then lastly changing my attitude about life pretty much resolved everything.

I feel absolutely awesome eating the way I do, I exercise often because of it and feel even better every day. My skin is looking fantastic for the first time in so many years.

Used to have no friends, struggle making them.. Always depressed, never motivated. Totally destroyed by social phobias. Probably would have killed myself sooner or later.

Now I can't even fathom being depressed and steamroll through anything life's been throwing at me.

People here tend to think i'm nuts for posting this shit but

1) diet

2) exercise

are essential for human health, and processed grain/sugar food is killing people.

meat, vegetables, fruit, and saturated fats changed my life and I will never eat anything else.

What's the deal with Effexor? One of my coworkers is taking it and she has panic attacks, depression, self-image issues.. I think she's a great girl in many ways but she's got a bite, mean streaks, moody.. Some days she's fun to talk to, others not so much and it gets my cortisol pumping. Says the drug helps her but is scared of not being able to stop.

Do anti-depressants affect decision making behavior significantly in your experience?

  On 2/6/2012 at 2:00 PM, HoA said:

http://www.rense.com...al34/quotes.htm

lol

Quoting from first page, but whatever.

  On 12/11/2011 at 1:01 AM, lumpenprol said:

I think it's been shown st johns wort isn't very effective, fish oil might be beneficial but not in any meaningful way

Actually, I think it does help cognition a bit. It has fatty acids like Omega-6 that are somewhat helpful. Not that much, but I think it's a bit more than psychosomatic.

  On 12/11/2011 at 1:06 AM, benc812 said:

sometimes manic-like behavior

This is fun, but also very dangerous.

  On 12/11/2011 at 1:06 AM, benc812 said:

vivid dreams

That's my favorite part. I've had so many government conspiracy dreams lately.

  On 2/6/2012 at 2:35 PM, gmanyo said:

Quoting from first page, but whatever.

 

  On 12/11/2011 at 1:01 AM, lumpenprol said:

I think it's been shown st johns wort isn't very effective, fish oil might be beneficial but not in any meaningful way

Actually, I think it does help cognition a bit. It has fatty acids like Omega-6 that are somewhat helpful. Not that much, but I think it's a bit more than psychosomatic.

Fish oil is concentrated omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 6 fatty acids are in overabundance in the Western world's food supply. Most people have absolutely no problem consuming far too many omega 6 fats in the form of refined vegetable oils.

I think it's easy to understate the important of fatty acids in diet and their effect on the brain.

Our brain structure is largely composed of fatty acids, cholesterol, vitamins, minerals. Nutrients like B vitamins, sulfur, iodine, omega 3s, and anti-oxidants are critical in protecting your neurons with myelin, producing neurotransmitters, and ensuring proper neurotransmitter function.

As of 2012 most people avoid saturated fats and try to reduce dietary cholesterol without question, yet our brain is largely composed of both. Many of us are deficient in most if not all of the nutrients required for our brains. I feel strongly that this correlates with the rise of neurodegenerative disease and probably has a lot to do with Western mental health issues. Totally my opinion though..

Fish oil's effectiveness really goes so far as you allow it.. Eating the capsules every day and consuming pizza and soda obviously will do absolutely nothing to help you feel any better mentally or physically.

In the context of a healthy diet they are not just important but CRITICAL for a healthy body to do it's thing.

  On 2/6/2012 at 1:53 PM, fiznuthian said:

What's the deal with Effexor? One of my coworkers is taking it and she has panic attacks, depression, self-image issues.. I think she's a great girl in many ways but she's got a bite, mean streaks, moody..

Do anti-depressants affect decision making behavior significantly in your experience?

This is pretty much exactly what I've witnessed from people taking Effexor. It takes depressed people and turns them into ready-to-fly-off-the-handle-at-any-minute people who rapidly cycle between frighteningly manic and horribly depressed. Combine that its tendency to kill all sex drive and one can't help but wonder how this drug is still on the market (I mean in a theoretical world where helping people is the point and not $).

so I came across this article about research into ketamine in regard to how it works as an antidepressant:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/31/146096540/i-wanted-to-live-new-depression-drugs-offer-hope-for-toughest-cases?sc=fb&cc=fp

I know for me that small doses of the stuff definitely relieved my depression and anxiety almost instantly. better then any antidepressant I have ever taken and with no bad side effects.

fairly interesting stuff.. I know skeptics might think its too extreme to be a realistic solution (I have read in Ketamine : Dreams and Realities that it was actually being used as a a last resort similar to ECT treatment). Other less potent drugs that they discuss also sound promising, Riluzole and Scopolamine, which also work on the glutamate system rather then typical SSRIs that focus on serotonin release.