[mjb394]

There are a lot of different medications you can take, and they have different side effect profiles. Prozac is different from Wellbutrin is different from Lexapro, etc. Sometimes doctors don't have a good reason to choose one over another in any particular case. If you sit down and have a serious talk with your doctor about which side effects often come with each medication, and which side effects you can live with, you're more likely to get off on the right foot.

People telling you to exercise are right, but that is pretty hard advice in that format. The real answer is to find the kind of exercise that works for you, and don't give up until you do. I've never been a morning person, and I always hated running and other cardio, so for years I didn't really exercise at all outside of walking places. Turns out I really like biking and rock climbing. If you can switch to biking as part of your commute (biking to the train maybe) then you don't have a way out, and you have to exercise. Use the days when you do have energy to make plans for later days when you may not. Try to do things for other people.

The best thing for me in the end was 1. Getting out of the life situation where I had been depressed for a long time. 2. Getting into something totally new and overwhelming, and doing it totally by myself. I spent all of college and grad school dealing with some pretty severe depression, and when I finally graduated I took out extra loans to travel for a few months over the summer before my job started. I bought a one way ticket, planned almost nothing except listing a few places I wanted to see, and went alone. When you are traveling alone in a foreign country, it really hits home that you are entirely responsible for your own experience. There are beautiful sights, incredible food, life changing encounters to be had, and you have to make the choice every day between getting up and out and interacting with the world and crying on your hostel bed. You'll still spend some time crying on your hostel bed, but you might also smoke a joint with a Brazilian and some French women in a park in Prague and start a travel romance with a former professional trail runner in Barcelona.