Depression and what it's really like

Tbf I was on a combination of some dangerous (but necessary) prescription medications as a teenager, so I think chemically it f'd with my social psychological and physical development during my main growing years. Can't lay the blame for depression on any one thing really but perhaps looking at some real world causes, things beyond my control, gives it a context and helps me relate that to the real world.

Many suffer from self doubt as a result of corporate pharmacology. I hope that the next big civil rights fight is for physical disabilities and mental health.

I should probably try meditating more. But I always end up just putting on a good record and playing w Photoshop.

Sometimes it takes a leap of faith to believe in yourself.

I think realizing post-materialism is a thing and there are theories on it and stuff has helped me a lot. Reading about Zen and Allan Watts and stuff.

It is hard to get upset about not having money/a house/a job/a woman/etc when all of that is temporary anyways. You cannot take it with you. Focus on stuff you like, music, art, film. Write about it, or make your own. Creating things for the future. It's something that can give life meaning. Maybe that is why they built the pyramids.

Life has meaning and is a gift

f

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Hah can I interest you in my brochure?

dunno if it's been linked here and i'm aware hyperbole and a half is old news but this still resonates as honest to me
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

I have to attend a wedding next weekend and idk if there's enough liquor in the world to make me think I can handle it because i don't believe in fuckall right now, least of all my miserable self

small brief comforts or amusements keep me afloat but I feel so. alone. all. the fucking. time. even in the social settings I force myself to attend because I hate the stillness of this empty apartment

depression and anxiety were always a double edged sword; there was the immediate psychic pain, and then the idea that these ailments stood between me and what I wanted in life. in middle age the depression and anxiety have subsided, only to be replaced by a near certainty that there's really nothing worth wanting or striving for. zero sum game i guess.

mookie otm lol

i was supposed to go to an old friend's wedding recently. i didn't think i could deal with it, so I just bailed. still feel a little bad about it, but you gotta make out your own math about what's worth the effort

See that's a freedom you have. If you were married and had to go to this thing you would be stuck there w all that pressure.

yes, thank god i'm no longer married

i don't like yr brochure adam!

xp word. i've been dragged to enough weddings for my lifetime and took the initiative this time... to GTFO

Sorry I'm shitty at communicating and I apologize. I don't know you and your situation and I don't mean to say something that can be taken personally.

I keep clicking this thread kinda hoping emil.y has posted something here. Her last 3 ilx posts were several days ago and all three implied she was going to kill herself. This is worrisome to say the least.

xp it's cool i am joshing u

love to all who have posted here tbh

aimless, link? not sure how serious the posts are or if they merit action?

Search for the most recent posts by username emil.y on all boards and you get links to three threads on ILE:

emil.y wrote this on thread What one piece of advice would you give your twenty year old self? on board I Love Everything on Jul 8, 2015

Kill yourself.

emil.y wrote this on thread What one piece of advice would you give your ten year old self? on board I Love Everything on Jul 8, 2015

Kill yourself.

emil.y wrote this on thread What one piece of advice would you give your thirty year old self? on board I Love Everything on Jul 8, 2015

Kill yourself.

Since then, no further posts.

I hope she is ok.

I hope so, too. But she has posted on Facebook since then & I think she is away on vacation.

That's good.

okay, that's less scary then

:(

I'm glad she has FB posted since then. That series of posts was pretty ominous and hard to ignore.

i gotta say though her advice is correct

~i~really~don't~want~to~be~alive~tonight

I never thought I'd be willing to try and get pills bc I think ppl are prescribed antidepressants willy nilly in some cases (plus I take a daily amphetamine and dunno about the mix) but I really don't know how much more of this I can take, it's worse than it's ever been, worse than I ever imagined.

antidepressants being overprescribed or not doesn't have a bearing on whether you, personally, would benefit from medication. If you are suffering you are worthy of help.

which is to say, seeking care for your depression is a great idea and I wish you luck and strength

if you haven't tried meds, I would definitely say try them. i had gotten to the point where you are (granted, it was not the first time i'd been there), and finally decided, fuck this shit, if it's gonna make me a sheeple or "not-me" then fine.

i feel fortunate in that my health system/insurance company is fairly conservative when it comes to prescribing stuff and determining dosages

Docs totally know how to handle psych meds plus a daily amphetamine so please don't let that be a roadblock.

also you are an awesome poster, and i would miss you if you decided to not choose life

I was doing ok with a therapist but stopped going a while ago, I thought I was ok and some shit happened w/ life that maybe I woulda been equipped to handle had I been talking it out, the unpreparedness is def my fault bc it could've been alleviated

or maybe it coulda. I don't know. but I know I need to find out what the right path is

I just get so tired, when I get home from work and back to this place, like so mentally lethargic (physically to an extent but not as much). pain is easy - lol as fuckin true detective of all things says, "pain is inexhaustible" - life is hard

i know the feeling. been putting off getting in touch with a therapist for a while now
agree with silby - don't be afraid of trying antidepressants if you think it may help. there can be bad experiences with them, but there are also literal life-saving experiences as well

thank you sarahell/silby/carl agatha for the kind words. same to anyone who has offered them in the past.

do you have trouble sleeping? for me, the last straw was the not being able to sleep for more than 3 hours before waking up and being consumed with thoughts of how shitty my life was and how i couldn't do anything about it, which made me feel worse, because sleep is really important

(and nhex ty as well xp)

I'm ok with not a ton of sleep, because I can usually read or write or watch a game that's on if I can't sleep but I def have trouble getting to it, which sometimes (not always) leads to drinking a bunch to knock myself out and that's just alcohol sleep which isn't really productive from a body sense

I usually sleep 5 and a half a night, maybe more if I got messed up, including weekends

i'm averaging about 4 hrs a night right now - sometimes less, infrequently a little more. it's enough to be functioning, but little enough that i feel dumbed-down and foggy and just exhausted all the time.

the thing is, i don't really care. before i got on meds, the depression i'd been experiencing for a year was a lot of crying, feeling really sad and worthless and just straight up miserable, as well as insomnia at about the same level i've had the last few months. now i mostly feel indifferent - like, i know i'm still depressed bc i kinda want to just blink out of existence, and i think everything ever is just pointless, but i don't really have any strong feelings about it. it's not constant, and i'm not actually suicidal/thinking about ways to die or anything, but it's how i mostly feel day to day.

i'll third the suggestion that you do seek out a psychiatrist and figure out if some meds can help.

and remember it may take a couple of tries to find the right meds, so don't bail if the first time out doesn't work right!

stay with us, please!

at one point i had a confluence of very bad events that put me into a severe depression. i saw a doctor who prescribed meds. i took them for about four months and it totally fished me out from the bottom of the pool. if you're feeling unable to go on, see a doctor. it could work.

I'm gonna call my therapist and try to get back on her schedule - it might take a bit bc it's a mental health clinic not a private practice so have to do intake all over again - and go from there, discuss the possibility of meds

thanks for the kind words, folks. I really appreciate it.

i think there's something to be said for taking medication as a way of taking control and not feeling additional angst about not dealing with yr depression

When my life went off the rails several years back, I'm fairly sure that the straw that broke my particular camel's back was losing my psych support at a time when I needed it most (I hastily quit my job and then lost my insurance in the wake of numerous hard knocks). If you have access to it, by all means take advantage.

i started taking medication almost exactly a year ago and it was a revelation. i'd absolutely been of the opinion that meds are overprescibed, but i'd been depressed and anxious for so long that i'd kind of forgotten that it wasn't normal to spend every waking hour feeling totally worthless.

after a few weeks of medication that fog lifted and i could finally get some perspective on my life and see that my life had all kinds of positives that i'd been wilfully overlooking and i've felt infinitely more positive and capable ever since. it's definitely worth giving medication a try - if you're already at the stage of 'i don't want to be alive tonight' then the only way is up, right?

therapist def seems like a step in the right direction. rooting for u :)