[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).