AKA please, don’t tell me “get professional help”. Poor people can’t afford it anyways.
1- Exercise - I generally think that walking or running on trails in nature is one of those generally free beneficial thinks you can do for depression. Worse case scenario, you improve your fitness and feel better about the shape of your body.
2- Sleep - Yeah, this is a massive one, aim for at least 7-8 hrs. Regular exercise will help, but try to keep a relatively even sleep schedule (schedule yourself to be in bed without your phone by 10pm is a lazy but easy way to help).
3- Limit doomscrolling - Looking at the latest news about what craziness is happening in world probably isn’t that amazing to do that often, so limit it a bit.
4- Diet - I’m vegetarian, and when I started years ago I noticed it really seemed to make my bouts of depression easier to handle. That being said, at the very least make sure you aren’t eating too much junk food and try not to drink. If you aren’t getting enough of a particular nutrient, take a multivitamin (magnesium is a pretty common deficit for most, and can affect your sleep).
5- Meditation - The act of breathing can occasionally give a bit of a break from the spiral of depressed thoughts, so it’s no wonder that a lot of therapists tend to recommend it. Just start with 10 min a day and see if that helps any.
6 - Atmosphere - I know his can’t always be helped, but just adjusting your living environment can make a tremendous difference. Try taking a day or so just to thoroughly clean your room/apt/house. Personally, my advice is to clean like you are trying to truly help someone you love/respect so that at the end you feel like no stone was left unturned.
7- Music - Kinda try to find some music you like that is soothing and try to like, and limit depressive or harsh music. Sounds stupid, but it helps some.
8- Psychedelics - A bit controversial, but I personally use shrooms long term to handle depression. They honestly have been the best long term depression maintenance I’ve found for the price. But truthfully, most of what they do is give you a few hours to step out of your emotions, and force you to actually look at yourself. They are basically just making you acknowledge the above for the most part, and after a trip if you don’t make changes, they won’t really help that much. Pro tip, a notebook to capture your stream of thought can be very helpful for post trip integrations.
Shrooms are definitely dangerous, especially for people who are prone to schizophrenia I’ve read.
Personally, they made me realize my mind is capable of being content. No longer full blast, spinning plates all of the time.
That experience made me realise change is possible, and I got professional help a year later. Turns out I’ve been living in C-PTSD since I was 5.
I’d argue that shrooms themselves aren’t a huge deal, but pre-existing conditions for sure have accounted for (if you are schizophrenic or have bipolar disorder, please be careful/don’t take them), correct dosages for different strains should be taken, and you should do them in a safe environment. Shrooms themselves can’t directly kill you, unlike some stronger psychedelics (lsd, research chems, etc) which is why I generally recommend them (and not mushroom chocolate bars, which are usually research chems even if they say otherwise).
Either way, glad to hear that you seemed to get the benefit of change!
Most of your info is solid, just a couple quibbles from a longtime psychedelic user. LSD also cannot kill you. I prefer psilocybin of course but don’t spread disinformation.
Second one is it’s psychedelics, not psychodelics.
Thanks for the catch on psychedelics, my autocorrect messed that one up and I didn’t notice. Also, while I know actual lsd can’t kill you, I have heard that there can be contamination one some with elements that can (admittedly secondhand knowledge, but still). Testing kits seem to pretty much catch it, but I think if someone is inexperienced they might not know better. More just trying push them towards shrooms first, as it can be a safe first step.
Right on. What’s being sold as acid right now is often the RCs like the shroom bars. I don’t think any of it is life threatening though.
It’s generally 4acodmt, which is similar to pure psilocybin. It’s most assuredly stronger than shrooms, and as you said I think you could probably confuse it with acid. That being said, you could theoretically take too much of it due to the concentration and be harmed, as while shrooms take a bit of time to digest, 4aco doesn’t. Also, much the same issue as acid, it’s harder to produce so there’s a slight chance of contamination that could be deadly (again, word of mouth but I remember a lot of long time shrooms users being wary of the chocolate bars as they didn’t want newbies to start with them and be potentially harmed).
Schizophrenia is the only reason not to take psychedelics. Your first sentence could easily be misinterpreted as a lie that tries to falsely apply that danger to other areas.
All the usual “be safe, feel safe” advice applies no matter what!
Everything (except 8, obviously) is pretty standard practice for CBT as well. In terms of self-help, I’d also definitely add
9: Find nice people/a nice group to spend time with. Doesn’t really matter what it is: sports club, theater, study group, board game club, garden builders. Just follow your interests.
I think many people dismiss the incredible value friends bring to our life and the stabilizing effect it has on out mental health. Loneliness is one of the deadliest causes out there (some studies say it’s as harmful as smoking daily), so make sure to have people around you whom you like spending time with! And no, digital groups are not the same as real-life ones. Body language is incredibly important in communication, and with it missing orr brain processes information differently.
Tl;Dr: Get out there and find nice people.
Excellent post.
On the topic of shrooms, the 50-100mg of Golden Teacher or Penis Envy have worked well for me. Every other day for 2 months. Then take a month off.
If you have the ability, OP, you could adopt a pet. It helped me a lot to have someone to keep me company and that I was responsible for.
You can’t just lay in bed hoping for tomorrow when you got a terrier yapping at you to get up and play with him.Glad it helps, I was kinda in the same situation as op as few years ago (depressed, broke, and living with my parents), although I was in the US. I don’t personally recommend having a pet when depressed, I’m thankful that my dog wasn’t cared for by just me at the time as I suspect that I wouldn’t have gone great. I personally try to fully trip every 4-6 weeks, but the more time passes the longer I find I don’t need to trip that frequently. I take a pretty high dose, have to schedule out a full day to get through it. I haven’t really tried much in the way of micro dosing, but I’ve heard that they work for a lot of people.
I’ve found, like with most drugs, I need more than average. I take a quarter+ to really trip then smoke DMT during. While my friend I last tripped with ate an eighth and tripped out.
5-HTP serves me well. It’s got a similar serotonin impact without the tripiness of shrooms.
Don’t do it on your own, do it with other people.
I found that the more time I spent with other people, the less time I was spending beating myself up.
There’s an AA saying that the opposite of addiction is community; I find the same thing is often true of depression.
Ever heard of the cocaine mouse?
The experiment was to put a mouse alone in a cage with two water sources. One had sugar water that would keep the mouse alive, the other had cocaine and no nutritional benefit. The mouse would keep drinking the cocaine and starve to death.
Then someone tried the same experiment but they gave the mouse companions. With other mice around they would all eat.
Highly agree with this.
I struggled with depression for years and the most beneficial change I made was to put effort into developing close friendships. Having friends and family that you can talk to and share things with is immeasurably valuable.
Also, listening to other’s problems helps develop your own empathetic response and it’s a short step to extending that empathy to yourself. Be kind to yourself and avoid negative self-talk. You deserve better. Life is hard enough as it is.
That’s not a possibility
You’re literally interacting with people right now.
There are people online who need help with all sorts of problems.
If nothing else, you can just listen to what they have to say.
Online interaction does nothing for me.
It seems like if what you’re doing now was working you wouldn’t have posted.
Why can’t you interact irl?
Professional help can be cheap! You just might have to look little harder. For a while, I saw a psychologist who had a deal with a church where they subsidized most of his fee. So it was super cheap for me.
One of the most helpful things for me was Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT. I used a workbook that helped me see how skewed and untrue some of my thinking was.
Finally, walking in nature or, even better, exercise! Find what works for you. I like jump rope. Good luck!
There’s literally nothing where I live. I’m not American, so many of your structures and help don’t apply to my world.
Walking outside is free! There are free support groups online. Those require time, but just 20 minutes can make a bigger difference.
The CBT workbook I used was maybe $20, I think. It’s worth the investment.
Finally, getting over depression is all about retraining how you think. It’s going to take time, practice, and effort. Depression wants to show you how you don’t have the resources to beat it. That’s not true. You can beat it, even if you don’t have the resources other people might.
Depression has forever changed me. It’s easy to think that it was for the worst, but I’m more empathetic to people than I was before. Something that helped me was realizing and believing that depression is temporary. You won’t always be like this, even though you might feel that way.
You can do this.
Limit time spent online. Stop viewing the news. Improve the foods you’re eating, if you can. Exercise. Go to a nice spot in nature, if your location allows, and appreciate natural beauty. Every day, think of one thing for which you are grateful.
Don’t forget to try to get good AND consistent sleep.
Maintaining a good sleep posture is really important. When you get in bed it’s to sleep, not to look at your phone for a little bit first. Put on some background music, take a melatonin an hour ahead of time etc.
Also even if you don’t exercise go outside and just exist in the sun. Lack of sunlight is horrible for your mental health.
Oh, great point that I’ll add to as I have battled insomnia all my life. If possible, develop a rigid sleep cycle where you get up at the same time every day and go to bed at the same time every night. Set an alarm and get up to it even if you have the day off. This helps me to a great degree. Once the pattern is set you can drop the alarm on days off because you’ll likely still wake up fairly early out of habit (I usually wake up at the time when the alarm would have been or an hour after and feel quite refreshed doing it this way).
You really shouldn’t fight depression solo. We’re social creatures. Trained therapists aren’t the only people who can help you, even a trusted friend or a random stranger in a free support group can do wonders.
Local support groups probably exist in your area. Sometimes they aren’t very visible, and being depressed certainly won’t help you find it.
I didn’t know about any in my area, since when I’m depressed I’m unable to look for those groups, and when I’m fine, i have no need to look. But after joining a local mutual aid board, i found out about quite a few resources that were fully free or extremely cheap (less than $50 us) when others asked for them.
If you are queer, a lot of queer support groups often have resources to help you out.
As for how I treated mine, exercise and hiking, finding scenic areas, avoiding alcohol (which i was bad at), and trying to live more “intentionally” and not getting into patterns that left me feeling hollow. For example, i tried spending less time gaming, and substituted that time with reading, since that made me feel less like I was wasting time and my life. I also tried learning to cook, since having good meals was great, and not constantly eating shit from a local fast food joint helped me stop rapidly gaining weight, which was certainly making things worse.
I also have a trusted friend who i talked to about some of my problems, and he helped me get through the worst parts. This was probably the most important part, and it got me on the path to getting out of that depressive episode.
When hurricane Milton hit I lost power, internet and my cell signal was like using dial up so all online access was gone for about a week. Sent the family to go stay with friends and I stayed behind. With no electricity and no internet all I had was myself. The first 2 or 3 days were tough. I didn’t know what to do with myself so I cleaned and sat outside in the shade to escape the heat. By the end of the week I was in a good place, not perfect, but better than when I started. I was relaxed, my thoughts were clearer, I could comfortably focus on one thing at a time. I think knowing that after I was done focusing on something I could return to a comfortable quiet helped.
When power and internet came back within 2 days everything was back to ‘normal’. No more peace. No more comfortable focusing. Back to my usual habits. I recommend disconnecting from phones and computers for a few weeks. Give your mind time to get into the habit of not using them, it’s so easy to fall back into old habits, you have to set the stage for new ones to slowly grow, like trending a garden it takes time and effort.
One of best descriptions of self mental health care was from Rick and Morty. It’s like wiping your ass, or washing the dishes. It’s not fun but it’s something you have to do everyday. You can suffer the pain of doing it, or suffer the pain of having not done it. Front load the pain don’t offload it to your future self. Give future self a break, do some work for him/her and I know they’ll be incredibly appreciative.
I’m my past when I was at my worst I noticed that I was in a better place when I was around people than when I wasn’t. Be around people/friends if you can. Ask someone to spend party of a day with you doing absolutely anything.
Exercise until you know you will be sore the next day. I didn’t exercise regularly, but I did notice that whenever I did some physical activity that left me sore the next day, within about 2 or 3 days I was a much better version of myself for a day or two.
So in conclusion. Do nice things for future self, even talk out loud to yourself about future you like they’re someone else. Disconnect from Internet and tv so your mind can have some time to itself. Be around people, we are social animals, we need to feel like we are part of a group, a tribe, maybe go take some night classes that will force you to work on a project with others. Exercise or do something strenuous.
Oh and a couple more things, try to establish a regular sleep schedule! Someone mentioned this already and they’re right, change your environment. Your mind and body will default to the feelings it’s used to having in the place it most often has them. As an example, if you’re a home pooper then when you get home your body will go into pooping mode. If you only use your bed to sleep and not look at your phone or watch tv then you will feel sleepy when you get in bed. New environments will put your mind into learning mode not default mode, keep finding ways to keep it from sitting back down into the depression it’s left in the chair. Like that song, you can get used to a certain kind of sadness.
Okay one more thing, video games. I like playing them but I have a habit of using them like a drug. It feels good to use a drug, and when you hardly feel good why wouldn’t you use it. You will play them again, and you’ll enjoy them more after your mind has had some quite time to itself. You’ll get to play again someday, you just have some mental chores that need tending to first.
Last thing I promise. Quite time is even better when done in nature. Any nature. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution designed us to be in nature, part of nature. Quite time means no podcasts or music as well.
Now get out there and do the dishes, wipe your ass, and do something nice for future self, they fucking deserve it.
I used Ai to vent my problems to, and binged research papers. Read up on cognitive behavior therapy and the mechanics of depression.
I also made some big life changes and cut WAY back on drinking, but it took months and years to ease into the changes. Im still having shit days often, but can actually troubleshoot my mood and see why I’m depressed.
Half if it is don’t dwell on the bad things and that is damn hard. You got to catch your brain thinking something like “im a fuck up”, or “I get no benefit from $hobby”. Once you catch it stop or distract the though, literally tell the thought to fuck off if that works for your head.
Once your ready start stacking little things like showing and walking a few laps around the house over time. Its sound like bs but it helps.
I have tried a couple different things, but they haven’t really helped me.
I started running back in March. I used a free android app called Just Run and I bought myself a cheap smartwatch to track my distance. Like the app suggested, I take 1-2 rest days in between each run day…which seems to help me stay relatively consistent in doing exercises because it allows for breaks. It was more satisfying in the beginning being able to check off days in the app, but even then it only does so much. It provides a brief distraction I guess. I have tried to continue it because it’s supposed to be good for you regardless. Although running really does suck ass haha.
Recently I have been trying to take an OTC supplement called St. John’s Wort. It is one of the few supplements that has showed statistically significant results similar to SSRIs in clinical trials. However, do note that if you take literally any other medicine, please do not take it. It interferes with basically every other drug out there. But if you aren’t on any meds it might be worth trying. I haven’t found a noticeable difference with it either after trying it for several weeks. But I just bought a “better” brand and am planning to increase the dosage a bit (I was taking one less dose than recommended on the bottle), so we’ll see if it does anything.
So yeah neither of these worked for me. But I’ve read that they have worked for others. It doesn’t necessarily hurt to try them. Except like I said, please do NOT take St. John’s Wort if you are taking any other medication.
St. John’s Wort
if you take literally any other medicine, please do not take it. It interferes with basically every other drug out there
Thanks for including that! The link below has some more information on common interactions.
The list below includes some recognized interactions. However, other drugs may also interact with St. John’s wort. Check with your doctor before using St. John’s wort in combination with any other drugs, especially prescription medications.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-st-johns-wort/art-20362212
This is a comprehensive article! Thanks for the link!
On running. I found that running or lifting weights on their own had no effect on me, but doing cardio AND weight training AND deep stretching in a single session was like magic. So instead of running for an hour, or weights for an hour, or yoga for an hour, I did 25 run/20 weights/15 yoga+stretches.
Should try meditation. Specifically mindfulness meditation. If you want a book, I Recommend “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” by Shunryū Suzuki.
Persist.
Keep at it; try again tomorrow.
Depression will rob you of joy, erode your appetite for life, and leave you blaming yourself for any/everything.
In those circumstances where you cannot defeat it, you can still outlast it.
Do what you can for yourself. When you can do no more, do what you can for the person you will be later, and, when you can do no more: forgive yourself.
Depression is a parasite and it’s been eating your strength far longer than you realize.
Exercise.
Cardiovascular and resistance exercise both release a chemical called BDNF, which causes hippocampal neurogenesis, which causes a decrease in depression.
After being on medication and in therapy for years, I basically lost my medical care and has to figure out a fallback strategy. Learned about this exercise connection, and changed my running habits from:
- About a mile
- About once or twice a month
To:
- About five miles
- Three times per week
The effect on my depression was profound. It was far more powerful than the medication and therapy
And if exercise makes you miserable?
That may indicate HPA axis dysregulation depending on the timescale.
When you exercise, how long is the miserable period afterward?
I had a dysregulation of my HPA axis that resulted in a cause-effect function like “ten minutes of vigorous exercise results in a week of insomnia, headaches, panic attacks, and muscle rigidity”.
Is it like that? Or do you just mean exercise isn’t fun during the exercise? Or something else?
I strongly dislike being sweaty and, if exercising, even walking somewhere, outside, dislike being at the mercy of the elements.
There’s also that one cannot simply exercise. There are necessary activities that need to be performed afterwards if not before.
Some people take jumping into a shower for granted, for example; they don’t even think about it, and just do it and it’s done before their brain even engages. For me that takes a lot of mental energy, which brings me onto another point:
I do not know how much mental stamina I have for a day, so I could start an activity and run out of steam before I’ve had chance to get to the end of everything, making for a very uncomfortable hour or two as I drag myself miserably through whatever else needs to be done.
As such I tend to want to avoid that happening, and it’s on my mind the whole time I’m doing something that takes time.
Throwing exercise into the mix only guarantees less time to be able do the things I need to, even if there are still many hours left in the day.
I figure this could be a case of needing to somehow force myself to do it anyway, but I do not know how to do that. And there’s that I would then need to keep doing that every day forever in order not to fall back to where I am currently, which seems both unsustainable and unpleasant.
Probably best to start with a small amount of exercise then. Like one to five minutes.
You certainly don’t want to deplete your resources to the point of making the rest of your life undoable.
One thing I’ve found useful is to study the different resources that the body uses. This can be abstract concepts like “willpower” down to concrete molecular energy reserves like “glycogen”. Both the concrete and the abstract concepts have been studied by science, and there are models of how they work.
In my own day to day, I pay attention to:
- Willpower
- Hydration
- Sleep
- Mental conflict such as results from unresolved moral conundrums
- Potassium
- Glycogen
- Total calories
It’s also a fact that exercise will, over time, tend to increase the capacity of the various “energy” stores one has access to. It will improve willpower, concentration, flexibility, glycogen, oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, mitochondrial health, etc.
But doing too much (which at the beginning can be just a little bit) can definitely cause problems. Especially if that willpower budget is small.
If I were in your situation, where exercise was likely to push me over the limit and deplete my willpower budget (and other resources) to the point where I failed in other parts of life, I would start extremely small with the exercise routine. Like one push-up. I mean tiny.
People ask “what’s the point” to something that small. The point is that it’s a stepping stone to being able to do more.
Of course, you also gotta make sure you’re eating enough, getting plenty of sleep, getting all the nutrients you need, etc.
Also (and I know this comment is all over the place) meditation can increase willpower budget over time.
Big, drastic changes can be overwhelming and can set a person back. This is why baby steps are recommended. “Baby steps” means basically tiny steps. Tiny changes. One push-up per day. Maybe curl 1 lb, once a day.
Baby steps are steps that, themselves, don’t change one’s life. But what they do is they open the door for larger steps that can change one’s life.
This might be a weird one, but it is helping me a lot.
My deepest spirals into depression and alcohol abuse happen in the evening and at night.
I switched to waking up early (5am), focused on experiencing and enjoying sunrise as a kind of meditation, then going about my day. I’m off to bed by 8pm.
There’s still days where I can’t catch sleep for hours, mind racing. But hours past 8pm is still only 2am.
I found that a five minute session on a Muse 2 device (essentially over the counter neurofeedback training via a small consumer headband) kills my insomnia for at least a week.
Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll look into that
Distract yourself into some offline activity which you love especially with someone you are comfortable with.
Once mind in place, deal with the problem which lead to depression in the first place. But if nothing can be done about the issue, then stop worrying about it. Work around it.
I make it look easy but I know its not.
It definitely isn’t
Once a day, think of one simple thing that a depressed person would not do. Do that. For some examples:
- Take even the shortest walk around the neighborhood.
- Read just ten pages of any book.
Also, think of something that you do especially when depressed, and avoid doing it. For some examples:
- Don’t watch TV
- Don’t scroll on social media
Sometimes habits become compulsive, you can do a lot for yourself by adding even a small amount of friction to doing those things. For some examples:
- When I notice that I go through periods of poor sleep due to habitually reaching for my phone, I might remove the charger from my phone and put it in a living area and charge it there at night. I might prepare 8 hours of podcasts and connect my Bluetooth before bed so I can have something to take my mind off things in case wake up or cannot sleep.
- Simply logout of social media sites, so that I’m forced to take a deliberate action to log back in to start doom scrolling again.
For more proactive maintenance things I try to do, which are important to establish when I’m mentally in a good place, I might make a weekly list of happy chores, like make sure I talk to a family member, make sure I talk to a friend, make sure I actually see someone in person, or play a video game in a way that I’m making progress at it, or spend 10 minutes practicing an instrument.
You need to exploit your good times to establish patterns of good habits for your hard times.
It’s very difficult, and in the end, it comes down to finding things that work for you, but in my experience, doing it “on my own” is virtually impossible. Humans need social interaction and often help, especially when battling with mental illness. That being said, there are some things that help most people.
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Exercise - you don’t need to run a marathon or lift free weights, but any kind of exercise, including walking, can have a big boost on mental health. If you can, working up a sweat can help release more endorphins (and also helps motivate me to take a shower when I’m struggling with hygiene).
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Sleep - prioritize getting good sleep. This has a huge effect on your mental health, and lack of sleep makes intrusive thoughts more difficult to ignore. If you suffer from suicidal ideation, this can be very beneficial. It can also help set up a routine for exercise, hygiene, etc. if you have more consistent bed and awake times.
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Eating healthy- this is hard, because often when depressed we go for unhealthy foods, which make us feel bad, so we eat more of them and it perpetuates the cycle. If you really struggle with this start by making small changes - find a fruit or vegetable you genuinely enjoy and start incorporating more into your diet. Learning some basic cooking skills can also make healthy eating more enjoyable.
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reduce drug and alcohol use (if any) - these can be excellent short term solutions, but will often make you feel worse in the long run
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find someone to talk to - online resources help, but there’s no substitute for genuine in person (or over the phone) interaction. This can be harder said than done if you’re older or in an area where it’s hard to meet people. Support groups are also excellent- there’s something very empowering about being surrounded by folks experiencing the same challenges you do every day.
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practice gratitude- take some time every day to thing of things you are genuinely thankful for. Supposedly, the brain can’t think or negative things while you are thinking of positive ones. Even if that’s not true, taking time to appreciate the good things in your life (even if it’s something small like your morning coffee) can help redirect your thought process.
Lastly, understand you can do all the “right” things to battle depression and still be depressed. No amount of exercise or vegetables will suddenly make you better - you will likely still have bad days. That’s why, for me, it’s important to have people I know I can call and talk to (my brother being a big one right now). We don’t even really talk, I just call him and cry talk for a bit and eventually it doesn’t hit so hard.
Give yourself some credit for all the bad days you’ve been through- if you weren’t strong, you wouldn’t have made it this far. Good luck! I’m rooting for you!
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You’re probably in a better place than most severely depressed people because you think that you can get better! Probably the best thing to do is keep a growth mindset and try to learn as much as you can about depression. Getting over depression is a journey.
Lots of other people have said running & friends, those things help me. But recently/now I am depressed and running 40 miles a week and seeing my friends regularly.
What’s a really cheap solution? Pirate some bibliotherapy books! Feeling good by David D. Burns is older, but I’m reading it right now and it seems like a really solid CBT book. I would also recommend “Adult children of emotionally immature parents”. It helped me understand why I am the way I am
The hardest part for me is noticing when my thoughts are turning situations from good or neutral into bad situations. Paying attention to your thoughts in an objective way is hard! But some sort of mindfulness practice can help.
Journaling can be useful! You can train your brain to look for good things by writing out 3 good things that happened or you did every night.
