[sillysaurusx]

You sound like you're in your 20s. Even if you're early 30s, life is long.

Listen. I felt similarly to you. Then I was put on Prozac. I stopped having those feelings.

There's a data point. Any time I recommend that data point, people lose their minds. So I'll just state it and leave it up to interpretation. What worked for me won't work for you. (Are you sure?)

My point is, get your ass into the doctor's office. I'm sorry to phrase it bluntly, but if no one told me that bluntly, I never would have. I wrote about it here. https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1392213804684038150

The doctor's appointment was the pivotal change in my life. Before doctor, unhappy life. After doctor, happy life.

The problem is, most doctors don't seem to really care deeply about you. Or at least me. I lucked out big time by finding a small sleep clinic with an elderly doc. As I say in the post, she took to me like a mother hen, and she seemed genuinely pained when I expressed the sorts of feelings you're saying here.

Let me put it a different way. You're unhappy with your current trajectory, and you don't see it changing any time soon. I was unhappy with my trajectory, and the only thing that changed it was getting my ass into a doctor's office repeatedly until one of them cared about solving the underlying problem.

In hindsight, there was one other important mental shift. You're not broken. There's nothing "wrong" with you. That would be like saying you're a broken person because you have a broken leg. That makes no sense. And it makes no sense to go through life without taking care of it, or feeling like a crutch makes you less of a person. My crutch was Prozac. Yours will be what works for you.

Good luck. DM me any time, 24/7. Happy to listen about whatever you want to vent about.

[R0b0t1]

How do you know that ignoring your previous feelings is good? Prozac likely did not solve your problem, it just made you ignore it.

[gsinclair]

Interestingly, solving symptoms can be important. My wife went to the physio with a sore back. He treated it with massage, of course, but equally importantly, he told her to take (over the counter) painkillers in substantial doses for 2-3 days. He said it was important to “solve” the pain. My interpretation is that this is a superficial fix but it’s important so that the body/brain doesn’t get accustomed to feeling that pain. Break the habit, so to speak. I see an analogy with what GP wrote.

[sillysaurusx]

Mm, perhaps it's tempting to think that. I understand where those feelings might be coming from. Before being on it, I probably felt some variation of that.

The best analogy I can think of is, imagine heating an iron rod over a fire and then pressing it against your skin. Would you want to ignore those feelings if you could?

Whatever part of me changed, I'm glad it did. My suicidal ideation dropped to zero, which I never thought was possible. In fact, I thought it was normal for everyone to go through life feeling somewhat suicidal.

All I can do is point to what few accomplishments I've made, and say "you have things to look forward to. Fix yourself, and your life can turn around. I never bothered to try. Once I did, everything changed."

[R0b0t1]

I've been on psychiatric medication. Lexapro "worked" but I quit taking it because I realized it merely made me complacent. I'd occasionally look around at my surroundings and see how they were not changing for the better.

I went to a psychiatrist and it set into motion a series of events that gave me the worst experiences of my life. I would be better off having never gone, and attempting to go again has not restored any faith in psychiatric practice. I think your advice is reckless and ill founded. Doctors have plenty of stories of people they helped, but they can't have (or at least make no effort to track) the stories about people they have not helped or scared away.

[sillysaurusx]

Thank you for sharing. How are you doing nowadays? I hope things are better.

What do you feel is the best alternative to my advice? My problem is, although everything you say is true, there doesn’t seem to be a good “do X instead” option.

[ekianjo]

you dont need to treat the root cause to solve symptoms.

[Revenant-15]

In fact, it can be helpful to treat the symptoms first, because the symptoms might make it impossible to productively approach the core issues one might have. They might be feeding back into each other in a never-ending loop of negative interpretation/emotion.

[fy20]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Can I ask why you went to a doctor and not a therapist? Wouldn't they have been able to lead you down that path too?

[sillysaurusx]

I think so. And the reason I phrased my original comment so sharply is because it took me almost getting fired for sleep issues to get me to focus on anything resembling “that path”.

People often need some event to snap them out of whatever rut they’re in. At the time, I was too far gone and too strong headed to think “A therapist? Help me? Yes, I think that’s reasonable.”

In hindsight, it was obviously reasonable. But there’s a certain stigma with even talking about any of this, let alone acting on it. I did eventually get fired solely for the sleep issues, since narcolepsy is incurable. Attempting to hide it and not going to any doctor would have been in my financial interest. And the exact opposite of my long-term interest, as I am quite happy in every way now.

So when you say “go see a therapist,” I completely agree. And I also think that 20-something young professionals are unlikely to actually go do that. Males in particular. Testosterone has a funny way of making you feel that you know better than domain experts.

In hindsight, what happened was, the sleep issue was becoming more and more of a problem. I volunteered to go get a CPAP machine from a sleep clinic, since I remembered hearing a coworker from my first job in 2008 go on and on about how miraculous it was. So I showed up expecting my quick fix miracle, was informed “actually, you have incurable narcolepsy,” was kicked to the curb by Employer, and my sleep clinic sessions ended up becoming de facto therapy.

Lucky for me. Also idiot me for not just going to <domain expert> years ago.

Part of it was also that my mom snuck me antidepressants when I was 17 or so. I was really upset when I found out. I’m not sure what she was thinking. Maybe it was the only way she could get me to try it. But I rebelled as soon as I found out, and ended up filing it all in the “mumbo jumbo ignore this crap” bucket in my head until forced to partake in 2016.

Glad I got course corrected. Hoping that lots of people here learn to take care of themselves sooner. I don’t dwell on it, but it’s probably true to say that I would have had more friends and more happier years if I did it when I was 21 instead of 28. Good luck convincing a 21yo male to go talk honestly about his feelings with a therapist though.

I just hope that in a few decades, someone comes across this comment and thinks “gosh, how anachronistic,” the same way we feel about comments from the 70s about women. The era of men feeling they should hide their pain and “man up” needs to end.

[mr-oh-noes]

I had a little DMT smoke session the other day and this woman couldn't feel much of anything from the DMT despite smoking a large amount. Others got desired effects. I think it was because she was on SSRI antidepressants, which are known to desensitize to serotonergic psychedelics. To be honest, I found it utterly disturbing to watch someone unable to connect to their unconscious. She said the antidepressants removed the lows, but also the highs in life.

I might rather be depressed.

[sillysaurusx]

In my experience, the only side effect I've noticed is mildly decreased libido. But the decrease wasn't too significant.

I would say there's probably some truth to your observation. I don't partake in DMT, so I can't speak to that part. But it's true that prozac will probably make you less... prone to intensity.

I prefer it. It's nice to have control over my mental state and behaviors. Previously, it was uncontrollable suicidal ideation, which was neither fun nor productive.

At this point it's been so many years since I've had those thoughts that I honestly can't remember what it was like. All I remember is that I was miserable in the worst way. I thought I was a total wuss, too, and that there was something wrong with me for thinking those thoughts.

Turns out, I was going through life with the equivalent of a broken leg, and not bothering to treat it. So when you say that you'd rather be depressed, just know that for those broken few who Prozac helps, it's a bit like saying you'd rather have a broken leg as long as you can have a good DMT experience.

Perhaps some would make that trade, but personally I felt happy with my outcome. But it's true that for others, Prozac may not be the best way forward. It's why it's important to proceed under the care and supervision of a doctor that actually cares about your long-term well-being. (Ideally a therapist. I've thought about that other parallel comment, and they were right; if you're not having luck with doctors, go the therapist route. It's what ended up saving me.)

[mypalmike]

Yeah I totally agree with you, despite the fact that Prozac was a terrible 6 month fog for me some 20 years ago. It really works wonders for some people. And the cognitive behavioral therapy I received at the time, in addition to short term anxiety medication which I still take occasionally, were huge in terms of my long term mental health.

[Revenant-15]

> I might rather be depressed.

After experiencing both, I vastly prefer being on SSRIs, no contest. Probably wouldn't be here right now without them.

[sillysaurusx]

Heh. You said in a dozen words what I said in hundreds. Yes, ditto. And thank you very much for being willing to share this. (Hopefully one day it won't be rare to share, but currently it is.)

[bserge]

One of them, huh. Yeah... But I'm so sick of going through the systems. Maybe another good doc will show up in this shithole part of the world.

[sillysaurusx]

I feel that. Trust me and keep trying.

If you give up, there's no hope. It may feel draining to try for the 7th time, especially when you can barely muster the energy to face each day due to depression. But something will work for you. There exists a magical doctor that can solve your problems. I am certain that even in that shithole part of the world, there is someone who cares about fixing your issues.

You just need to find them. And the good news is, that's easier than it seems. There's no limit on how many appointments you can make. (Don't get me started on health insurance... For now, I'll take it as an axiom that you can make doctors appointments. If you can't, then try to scrape together the $200 to gamble that the first one can help you, and do whatever it takes to get your money's worth.)

The reason I phrased it like "get your ass into a doctor's office" is because that is really, truly, the key thing: 1. You, 2. in as many doctor's offices as possible, until 3. problem goes away. GOTO 1.

Write it on a sticky note, pin it to the wall, and repeat each day. Heck, even if you do one appointment a week, that's still 52 attempts at fixing the problem over the course of a year. The odds are in your favor.

Be thorough about looking for doctors, too. It's tempting to just pull up Zocdoc, click that "in network" button, and call it quits after the first two doctors (since all the others are out of network). But my salvation came from a sleep clinic. A sleep clinic is a rather unlikely source for a "miracle doctor," wouldn't you say? It certainly surprised me, and it was almost accidental -- I went in for sleep issues, and they ended up fixing the underlying problems.

The point is, keep your spirits up. Not the alcohol kind. (If someone here feels like drinking their problems away, please do DM me instead. https://twitter.com/theshawwn always open.) And keep trying.

[OnACoffeeBreak]

Yes! I like the phrase (stolen from Sam Harris) "begin again". To me that means that your life is not in the past. All you have is the capacity to do something right now in this moment. Don't burden yourself with expectations or fantasies about the future either, just do something in this moment.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Did you try some psyclosibin mushrooms?

[sillysaurusx]

Actually, yes. In fact, I was one of the first to submit a thread to HN about "Dropping LSD tonight. What should I do?" when I was 19 or so.

When it was removed and I emailed asking why, he said it was because he didn't want to encourage HN users to do "crazy things." (I'm nearly 100% confident I can dig up the emails if absolutely necessary.)

However, over time, I came to agree with pg's point of view. Prozac is a proven medical solution to a chemical imbalance. I'm happy to hear that shrooms help some, but for me, it was crazy to buy into that old quote of:

> Steve Jobs once said Gates lacked imagination and could have benefited if "he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger," according to Jobs' biography.

Yeah, I swallowed that nonsense hook, line, and sinker. "At least I won't be like stuffy old Gates," I felt.

It was interesting to do both LSD and shrooms. I recommend people try them recreationally once, in safe environments (with preparation), if only to have the experience of seeing just how different your perceptions can become.

But.. a long term medical solution?

Only with a doctor's guidance. If a therapist recommends it, I'm not going to say it's crazy. But if you're hoping it will help you... um... I'll just say that it didn't for me. I hope it helps others, but as you can probably tell, I came away from the experience feeling like it was a load of baloney. Would've been better to just accept it for what it is: an interesting diversion, like going kayaking.

On the flipside, is is highly interesting, and tangentially I think this is one area that would be better served by open discussion in substantive ways. In other words, while it may be true that "just try shrooms and see if it helps you" could be considered "crazy," it's also true that shrooms have apparently helped some subset of people, and that perhaps it's worth considering whether you're part of that subset.

But the key is to go find a domain expert, and do what they say. Don't do what you think. I would (and did) get lost in a sea of confusing, ineffective attempts at solving a serious underlying problem.

Hence my insistence on "find a doctor" (or therapist, as was pointed out in a parallel comment).