[mbrock]

I have only been moderately depressed, and I have no experience with this particular treatment... but I have had experiences that for a few hours swept away my anxiety, poor self-image, and so on. Metaphorically, it's been like opening a window for someone who's been stuck in a basement. Even without extreme euphoria—just a simple sense of contentment, like nothing is very wrong—that's such a revelation.

A big part of depression seems to be this incapacity to even imagine any kind of robust, non-fake happiness. In bad moments one can even get paranoid: like, why is everyone going around pretending like they're happy, when they obviously cannot be? I think it's like this with any persistent mood; your whole world view is altered.

So however you find it, just a couple of hours of, say, having a conversation where you don't feel like the worst loser in the universe and the nadir of civilization, that just shows you something about life.

"Oh... I... I am just a person like these other people... I don't have to radiate horror and disgust... I can just stretch my arms right now and feel my body as an animal with the right to live and enjoy... Huh... Hah! Hahaha!"

And then the next morning maybe you feel like crap again, sure. But the understanding that these are just different mind states is so valuable. Like, for someone who really doesn't believe in anything except depression anymore, I totally understand suicide. So giving people the chance to feel something else, even just for an hour—if psychiatry can start to really do that, that's so wonderful.

[danharaj]

> So however you find it, just a couple of hours of, say, having a conversation where you don't feel like the worst loser in the universe and the nadir of civilization, that just shows you something about life.

It really would have been nice for me while i was a child. yes. i should have been given ketamine as a child. my depression was so bad for most of my life that i could count the days where i didn't feel depressed, didn't feel like a leper or a zombie going through the motions of life, and it protected itself: at some point i just stopped acting out my terrible feelings because it seemed like it only caused trouble with the adults and alienated me from my peers. that became a feedback loop that prevented me from expressing depressive sentiments for over a decade. if i could have been functional enough even for one week to clearly explain what was wrong to someone, maybe the structural defects in my life that caused my depression could have been ameliorated.

but that's all hindsight. i want to live in a world where no child is left to wallow in their depression. i don't know what you've been through and (maybe still?) go through, but it sounds awfully similar to what i deal with. i wish you didn't have to.

[phkahler]

You write as if it's all past tense for you. How did you end up getting better?

[danharaj]

the past tense was because i was talking about being a child. i'm still depressive although today is possibly the best i've felt in months. today is good because i've been working on improving my mental hygiene and it's starting to pay off. it's been a long project. i'd say that the very first step i took towards taking care of my mental health was 2.5 years ago. it's difficult to summarize what's happened since then, and introspection is nowhere near as accurate as it feels. i won't try. the first step for me was admitting to my parents and my doctor that i was depressed. but was that the first step? how long did i prepare myself for that? who knows.

getting into a romantic relationship was difficult for me. even after a year together, i found myself paranoid about my partner. did they actually like me? i felt like they were humoring me every time we did anything together, that it was a burden to be around me. finally trusting them, finally trusting that they liked me was a gradual process. first i had to understand the idea intellectually, and only then could i try to internalize it. i'm still working on it, but there are days where i feel very happy to be me, because someone out there loves to spend time with me. learning to trust my romantic relationship is a microcosm of learning to trust all of my social relationships and my place in the world.

my latest improvement to my mental hygiene is to keep a journal. i have a habit of letting my head crowd up with thoughts which leaves me anxious, confused, and agitated. writing things down helps me clear thoughts out. i've realized that suppressing thoughts does not work. inhibitory patterns like that are the root of my depression (i'm sure everyone has a different root. some might have a fundamentally unassailable root and need drug therapy). having a truly clear head once in a while is a wonderful, wonderful experience.

my favorite books to read to keep my mind healthy are the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi. I prefer Ursula K. Le Guin's rendition of the former and the translation of the latter by Burton Watson. there are passages in these beautiful works that can pull me right out of a depressive episode, or at least comfort me intellectually while i weather it. there's something deeply and mysteriously comforting in their lines. these books have a way of putting thoughts in my head that push out the invasive, repetitive, agitating, stressful thoughts and let me breathe.

i'm not depressed right now, but maybe tonight, or tomorrow. i don't mind. i like myself, even my depressed self who hates themself. they know they like themself; they used to feel guilty about hating themself and guilty about being depressed, but they don't feel guilty anymore. it makes it easier to cope. they and i know how to keep ourself healthy better than we did before. it's a lifetime endeavor, learning your own nature, loving your own nature, letting yourself be the way you are. i feel like this post is very disorganized, scatterbrained, incoherent. i cannot begin to touch upon all of my experiences that have improved me. even if i could, what good is it if i can't transfer that deeply personal wisdom to others? the words don't carry any of the power of the signified.

'mental hygiene'. i think this is the key concept to understand. it's different for everyone. keeping physically clean keeps away physical disease. keeping mentally clean keeps away mental disease. you can still get sick, but you'll get sick less, and you'll get better faster. you may even get better for the first time in your life.

P.S. i also did a lot of acid but that's reckless. it's a good way to scar yourself. it's also a good way to shove your brain outside of its normal operational range. both have happened to me. i believe that one day there will be a drug gentler than lsd or psilocybin that will be used in controlled therapeutic settings. if you need to escape the inescapable, these drugs will do it.

[phkahler]

It's not incoherent at all to me, but it may have been a year ago. I think it's like the blub paradox in a psychological context. Wish we could get a beer and chat.