[jaw]

> you can't treat depression by hanging out with other depressed people

I disagree, a sense of shared suffering can be really helpful in building close and meaningful friendships. Connecting with another miserable person who understood what I was going through - and plotting with them about what each of us could do to try to change things - was one of the key things in getting me through one of the most depressed periods of my life.

> Meetups in my area were also only tech-related.

No book clubs or discussion groups or political action or volunteer groups? Maybe you need to move; there should be a lot more than tech going on in any decent-sized city. Even if it's such a tech-focused area that lots of the attendees happen to work in tech, you'll see other facets of them at those events; people have passions outside of their careers.

[thelettere]

Not sure why this is downvoted. It is well documented that the most demanding activities lead to the strongest and most enduring relationships. War is the most extreme obvious example, but at college students who participate in demanding sports or band or those competitive business groups have far richer social lives in general than those who join casual clubs. In adulthood careers like medicine where people do gruelling shift work together results in again in more enduring and close bonds than in your usual 9 to 5.

It is perhaps an inconvenient truth but share suffering and struggle is the "secret" here. Why do you think childhood friendships are generally the closest ones a person will have? In part because of the intense earnest struggle to figure things out. Which is what brings people together far more effectively than shared happiness or some vague feeling of social dissatisfaction.