(untitled)

Is depression a disease that can be cured ? Seems like its a personality trait for a lot of people. For others it’s as if depression is important. In both these cases, treatment seems unfeasible or doesn’t exist at all. And yet plenty of people seem to regain control of their life after going to therapy , while others just seem immune to this treatment, or don’t believe in it at all. Personally , I think psychologists are scammy - but I don’t deny they help people to find a way out of their problems (even if the cost effectiveness ratio seems bad). Look at Anthony Bourdain. He was apparently chronically depressed and didn’t really try to resolve it. His relationships with women comprise a string of similar bad break ups , as if no effort to achieve stability was ever taken seriously. A friend of mine told me his suicide was just waiting to be triggered , that he had long fantasised about it. This makes me believe Anthony’s depression was as intimate to him as his bones were; a total love affair with his thoughts. So I wonder : have you tried to get therapy ? Do you believe it’s curable? Is your depression a part of your personality ? Would curing it reduce you ? figured this would be the perfect place to ask

Its not a disease. Its a symptom of a soykafty life. You cant fix it without fixing the cause. Drug addiction is same thing. Rehab doesnt work unless you fix the root cause that leads people to drugs.

>>85383 What if the cause for drug addiction is depression from a broken heart of 10 years ago ? Your life became soykafty on your account since your attempt at recovering was drugs ; since this depression isn’t quite identified as a disease , it will not be handled ; in this case , drug addiction comes from depression and depression comes from yourself - as long as you live , this system is plugged in to the socket. This makes suicide seem like an extremely plausible solution, which is what happens to most people who think and act like this. I want to highlight that i don’t think suicide fixes it - it’s just a lifelong escape. As if you will be depressed in your ashes or in your coffin. People will remember you as The Depressed. A way to break out of the loop is required and I think a psychologist can provide you insight to do so. The tricky part lies here since a lot of people simply won’t put in the work. Not putting in the work seems logical if there’s a more complex relationship with one’s depression - instead of looking at it like a problem which causes problems, you’d look at it like something that belongs to you. A part of your personality. Perhaps some use depression as a tool to fight their vulnerabilities. My point here is: its not identified and handled as a problem, allowing it to freely shape your way of thinking, your life and your fate; an infection of the brain (or maybe the spirit?); depression is to your mind what tuberculosis is to your lungs (i guess?)

>>85384 We had in school a book named something like "the sorrows of the young werther" that in their time sparked suicides over relationship drama because its about a guy named werther that suffers from his oneitis getting married of to another man. A book igniting suicide streak just shows people get manipulated by the content they consume into thinking patterns. The problem is how people think they ought to behave. They adopt bad patterns from the media they consume. So what you need to do is ingrain better patterns that lead to healthier outcomes.

>>85385 Totally agree. You reap what you sow! That werther thing reminds me of aokigahara. People went there to do copycat suicides because of a famous Japanese soap opera. Although there might be a more impulsive reasoning behind this type of spikes along with a sense of comfort by choosing to depart from a place others have also chosen. I don’t know. I think that the answer as to why people don’t choose therapy is not simple and just avoiding consuming poison isn’t the fix since there are genetic implications as well as cultural factors - you’re more likely to be depressed if your mother was too and you’re not going to escape content that romanticises certain behaviours like doing Drugs (look at euphoria from hbo… people will say it’s not romanticising even though rues addiction was a central point in the plot which was accompanied with good and bad moments - with life)

>>85381 The problem lies with the fluidity and inconsistencies of these 'DSM' labels. Because there's actual medical dysfunctions of serotonin/dopamine, or just general health and diet, and then there's natural, human reactions to poor personal/societal conditions. And then there's cynicism/contrarianism etc. in general, sometimes given this same label of 'depression', which may be an innate or learned behaviour of thought, and can be changed via willpower alone. And sometimes that cynicism/contrarianism is a negative consequence of someone's ability to imagine something better, which itself may be the inspiration for the creation of something positive; and inspiration and positive change that may be lost, if misdiagnosed as 'depression', and medicated away.

>>85381 Go to an endocrine specialist and get a shot of testosterone in your ass cheek. See what happens. You're right that therapized navel-gazing and serotonin meds that have had their mechanism of action debunked since the 1990s are a giant scam, part of the American P.T. Barnum medical sheep-shearing operation. Maybe the TRT thing is scam as well but at least it's an interesting new venue of biohacking. I would like to do it once just for the sake of exploration. I don't think I'd want to stay on it and become some kind of antitroon

>>85407 Yes the idea that the DSM is based on some kind of scientific empiricism is laughable. It's just the opinion of academics (i.e. a pack of shrill, frigid, neurotic women with big stupid glasses. Mediocrities) >>85385 This is an interesting case, yes. They called it melancholy in those days which was less clinical in connotation. Great example of mental pathology-as-social contagion (and can also present as diagnosis fad). Many people today are depressed because of SHIT living conditions in human zoo/global hospice care safetyworld. But many of them are simply depressed because they are told that they have depression and this is an innate part of them, making it difficult for them to let go of it. It becomes identity >>85407 >Because there's actual medical dysfunctions of serotonin/dopamine The "chemical imbalance" model of mental illness has been in the trash can for over thirty years. All of that was just-so-story speculation and hypothesizing, and when it came time to quantify and experimentally replicate these claims, nothing ever happened. I can't believe they still manage to pander and market off of this decades-old total LIE

>>85407 >>85409 I.E. nobody who gets diagnosed with depression EVER gets their serotonin/dopamine levels tested in any fashion. And in fact they now usually avoid the language of deficiencies in neurotransmitter "balance" in medicine. It is all based off of interview questions. A cold, impersonal, fifteen-minute slice of a person's life is all they require to diagnose this supposed congenital serotonin malady and prescribe a lifetime of pills. It's all a castle built on sand

>>85409 I only mention serotonin and dopamine (and as another poster mentioned, testosterone and other levels should also be noted) for the sake of accuracy, because although the 'chemical imbalance' model is indeed not applicable to the vast majority of cases, I have personally experienced depression due to neurotoxicity to my dopamine pathways, after a period of amphetamine abuse. But yes, the idea that all these teens and young adults going to psychs for the first time simply have some innate 'imbalance' - which even if they did, couldn't possibly be attributed to environmental factors - is absolutely a scam.

>>85414 >amphetamine abuse Oh haha yes I have been there, that's a situation in which you can be reasonably sure what is going on

there's not a single answer since there's multiple potential causes for depression. Some people will benefit from therapy if the underlying cause(s) are those which can be healed through changes in behavior and working through things. Some people will only come out of depression if their life circumstances improve. Some people have hormone imbalances, brain abnormalities, or brain damage, and will benefit from medical treatments. Some need other things which i have neither the expertise nor time to exhaustively list. And some (most?) need a combination of treatment methods. some cases of depression are definitely curable. i was depressed for many years and doing mdma cured it. i know some people who say therapy helped or cured them. i believe some cases are incurable, too (though that's impossible to prove). For the incurable, or just hard to cure, lifelong medication may be the only realistic option to placate it. I don't only mean SSRIs (which i am not generally a fan of) - Paul Erdos was prescribed stimulants to treat his depression, for example. others, like >>85408 suggests, may just need hormone therapy.

i don't think it is a disease. idk if i'm depressed. i just hate my life, my body. i don't understand how others are able to experience excitement, joy, happyness, etc. all those emotions that can be placed in the "good" or "nice" category. it feels like my body just doesn't have those. is that a disease? some people are born deformed in body, i think others are likewise born deformed in mind. and i'm probably one of those. medicine can only do so much, and at times nothing. i do find it extremely circumspect / strange that psychiatrists will give you quite strong drugs, and even drugs with a known lethal risk, to ppl who they've spoken to for less than an hour. there's no testing. just talking. it feels wholely unscientific. i don't like psychologists either. feels like bs piled on bs. if i could change my perception on things and just feel the good emotions don't you think i would? this doesn't feel nice. it's exhausting, and to be honest i don't think i'll be here next week. i've taken everything the drs have prescribed. can't tell if they're placebos for the most part. i've seen psychologists and all they've done for me is suck my wallet dry. i just don't like life, and i think that's an ok stance to hold. god, i want my refund.

>>85453 All those legal, prescriptable drugs, first of all, can zombify you, kill all your emotions, and generally fuarrrk with your head. More so than most illegal ones, I've found. But they can also have surprisingly long withdrawals, if not cause temporary or permanent neurotoxicity. So - just before you do anything rash - please do consider that, what may have originally otherwise been a relatively brief period of 'depression', could very well have been drastically amplified and protracted by all those meds. *Especially* if they felt 'quite strong' as you say, and if you were on them for months. So if you haven't been off them for at least a year now, please do consider that they may still be technically affecting you, and effecting your emotions, which themselves could be affecting what you may think are simply 'logical conclusions'. I speak from experience here. I remember when I first got into lifting weights and eating healthy, one of the very first things I realized first-hand, after it improved my mood, was how many of my strongest and long-held 'logical' beliefs only felt so significant due to the deficiency of, what I thought was, my baseline emotional state.

No, people who look at depression from a sociological, moral, or philosophical point of view are unlikely to improve. However, people who look at depression from a medical point of view often find treatments that help them overcome it. Now back to the endless stream of ignorant bullshit that always appears in threads like this.

>>85455 From what I've seen, neither of them improve. They both cope and say that their methods are working (which they have to maintain all their lives) while still obviously being just as depressed the entire way through. Damn it feels good to not have depression

>>85381 Cynicism, stoicism, and hermetism, if you can stomach it esoteric abrahamism is pretty good too.

>>85455 You just another peasant preaching blood letting cause the village elder said so.

bioenergetic study and application has permanently resolved my lifelong depression (of ~20 years), alongside other symptoms. It was pleasurable, cheap, and easy. I have left it behind and I am no longer "that depressed guy", it is not a part of my personality. Besides the many hours I spent reading, I guess, instead of interacting with the world, so I'm more erudite than most. https://raypeat.com/articles/

I think a lot of peoples depression have a personality disorder component that maybe develops from a result of having the brain chemistry, and I think that is very treatable. For example when I feel the worlds falling apart all of a sudden or that some minor failure of mine was disastrous I can go through a mental checklist and make the executive decision that things are fine, but I do still feel like something is deeply wrong or things are going to go really bad. Before when I was comfortable in my depression though my coping mechanism might be to destroy things or myself even more, to create these unsolveable reasons why things were going wrong, etc. The only treatment ive seen that was able to completely and rapidly cure that base depression was TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation. Its bizarre and mildly controversial and expensive but two seperate people I know have said it was the only thing that helped their depression, and one of them said that each subsequent session every so many years or whatever actually worked better than the last one. But I also know someone who said it didn work at all for them, but its really hard to know from person to person whether their depression is a result of some brain imbalance or a personality disorder or just a series of bleak outlooks and beliefs about things. I guess its tough because say for example this question you asked, a depressed person is just way more likely to say no I dont think its ever treatable. Part of the depression is low optimism, a tendency to be more moved by how things might go wrong and being avoidant of thinking about how things might go right for fear of being dissapointed and getting sent into a spiral. Ive had a lot of therapy and I can say that there was a point in my development where that depressive attitude and personality and sadness I had went away but I started getting that apathetic depression because I started being able to function and do things and there was this very real fear that if I let emotions that were too strong creep in I could spiral back down to the bottom and possibly end up suicidal again. A lot of my depression started being offloaded and transforming into anxiety. So something is up with my brain for sure but like with just regular dbt therapy alone and a period of a few years being on antidepressants I now feel like im on course to beat the depression. Ive started to feel things again and express feelings in small safe steps to where im not worried about it all crashing down, and I have my series of mental sayings and beliefs to calm me when things do go wrong or I am dissapointed. If it ever suddenly comes back full force despite my best efforts I may try the TMS thing to be honest, but im trying to avoid it. There is something that I like and is useful about how my brain thinks and I know its related to my depression and I strongly feel if I can find my own coping strategies and ways out of this I could have my cake and eat it too.

>>85466 Checked. It is a literal philosophical issue in my personal experience and opinion.

>>85486

>>85487 kek. aged like a fine wine.

The better question I think is: how aren't more people depressed? Most people are unattractive, have equally unattractive partners, work a job they hate or tolerate, barely have any free time, don't own a house, don't achieve anything meaningful... depression feels like a logical response to being born a pleb and not one of the lucky few who are born into wealth, good looks, high iq, talent, passion.

>>85490 Depression is when you can't enjoy being alive. It is very different from having a soykaf life... even people who have had the worst lives imaginable are capable of finding joy. Not so for the depressed, who are often attractive, have attractive partners , have jobs they like, have free time, own a home, and do achieve something meaningful.

>>85490 good/bad is relative to your perception of normal which is what you grow up in. So you cant get depressed over being poor if you start in poverty and everyone around you is also poor. Allegedly depression did increase thanks to social media because it reshaped perception to "everyone is doing better than me" which didn't exist before.

>>85507 Depression as we know it today is largely the consequence of a Godless nihilism, at root it is a philosophical fallacy and a matter of perception. Depression wants, it does not accept, you can not be depressed if your accepting, accepting first of your humanity, then of others, then of the nature of life itself. Depression rejects and says "im not satiable or pacified because of X" "im not going to accept things as they are because of X" "i wont settle for allowing myself to be peaceable with life because of X". For anyone whos seriously struggling, check out the book The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, its a solid refutation of depression on a philosophical basis.

>>85571 >>85507 >>85493 >>85490 Jesus. You will never crawl out of the thing with this mentality. Depression is a brain-metabolic disorder caused largely by improper glucose metabolism. It can be helped by restricting PUFA and with substances like thiamine and caffeine.

>>85572 Frankly? I find myself capable to crawl out of it daily. I would not allow myself to live as "constantly depressed" even when I feel depressed I correct it, even if it takes time, and I do so by using the "Golden Sayings", b vitamins, and caffeine. Its not just a matter of chemicals, its also a matter of perception.

>>85573 materialists often annoyingly fail to see how, if the mind is just chemicals, then thinking changes your brain chemistry. Free will is real if you don't define it to be the same thing as causality.

>>85574 Based replier. Your point about free will has peaked my interest. Although the free will debate is a slippery point which makes people touchy because I notice that people get very defensive when it comes to frank discussion about predestination, but thats for another thread I suppose.

Imagine a "depressed" persons reaction, when they wake up one day, only to realize it was all necessary. When you learn the necessity of what people call depression, you will find it easier to fix, but just as painful to deal with. The truth of life is, its supposed to be sad and painful at times, for a necessary reason, and all necessary things are necessarily good. After living as a suicidal person for many years since youth, I can tell personally with full confidence that the only correction to be made when it comes to depression and anxiety is a philosophical one, tailored with some natural chemical adjustments (droogs, vitamins, and supplements), but the key is the philosophy. I know a lot of people who died because they didnt have it, and a lot more live a slow death every day. Perception is everything, and philosophy is ultimately a study of the proper use of perceptions.

>>85578 They will learn to love their chains...

>>85578 ive also live as a suicidal person for many years but what important to realize is that other people also have sad and painful times they dont just have massively more mental weight than the good ones which are sometimes just straight up unrecognized with depression because you are too fixated on whats gonna go wrong. Which does not save you anymore than someone who also can think about things going wrong but not only think about those things, in fact id suspect someone without depression is likely to live longer on average because they wont among other things kill themselves. Im not saying it doesnt provide anything or that you cant learn to work with it but theres not really a point to comparing yourself to an idiot who metaphorically thought they could fly if they jumped off a cliff and saying see my depression would have never allowed that to happen.

>>85571 If peace is found in "acceptance", i.e. complacency and a lack of ambition/imagination, I'd rather not have peace.

>>85588 If thats what you really believe acceptance is your not looking at it right. Far be it from me to say more on this issue though, the Golden Sayings speak for themselves. You were given this life, accept it or don't, you will find out no one really cares if you do or not, but you.

Depression is simply a facet of our shadow manifest. I've struggled for many years with depression, feeling guilt and remorse for things I've done. While pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. That said, I wouldn't characterize myself as necessarily unhappy, but I definitely had a lot of unresolved issues. You have to confront the shadow because they are aspects of the soul; work with them and understand.

>>85594 >Unironically Based and jung-pilled

>>85455 Everyone is ignorant ! :-) >>85486 I know this is just a funny little meme but it’s even funnier that it depicts coffe and tobacco as ultimate spiritualism as if the truly enlightened is accelerating (coffee) towards death (cig). He knows where the light is and how to quickly get there. However the light in this case could simply be the toilet since he’s gonna soykaf himself. And this begs the question that many depressed people ask: who gives a soykaf about me? The answer is normally nobody - a great reason to accelerate the soykaf by means of cig and coffee [spoiler][/spoiler]

>>85601 people think about life while smoking & drinking coffee. Its the one quiet moment modern people tend to have that forces them to be distraction free which leads to thinking and its used frequently in movies/literature as such.

>>85574 In a culture that prescribes talk therapy for depression, a materialist perspective is sorely underemphasized.

>>85601 That is quite far from the meaning of the meme my friend, >>85607 this is a lot more what its implying. I would say the way I interpret the meme from personal experiences is that when you begin on the journey to spirituality you want to investigate all those various avenues of it that are shown in the above section, but once you've had plenty of those avenues if you still stick to an interest in spirituality it will lead you to a place of minimalism and quiet contemplation over every day small things like coffee and cigs, which oddly enough is more of a sure fire marker of someone who has truly stuck to the road of "spirituality" than someone who is excitedly looking into all the above portion and thus portraying that they do not see the spiritually advanced in the "ordinary and mundane" because they themselves are spiritually green.

I wish I knew how to stop being depressed. I stopped smoking and drinking and now I have nothing to make me feel good anymore. I started playing videogames again after giving them up 11 years ago and once I'm tired I just go back to feeling bad again. I used to draw all the time, but I don't anymore because I never get any inspiration. That bothers me a lot and makes me feel even worse. Should I just stop caring about inspiration so much? I feel like an idiot wasting his time if I'm not making art. I want to feel good doing nothing like weed and alcohol used to make me feel. Everything used to be so interesting and worth it. I know that means everything is still worth it even if I don't feel like it, but not feeling good is torture with no personal gain.

>>85490 I agree. I know people who have pretty depressing lives, but they come up with so many coping methods, and they tried to convince me to cope the same way. My favorite examples: >there's fresh air/nice weather outside >"I don't need [things], unlike other people" >"actually, people with nice lives can be unhappy too" >religion/spirituality bs So, I'll be completely honest, I think it's more fulfilling to be "depressed" in a nice life situation than be "happy" in a bad life situation and delude yourself. In the first situation, you might still experience negative emotions, but at least you're in a good place on a mental level. You know rationally that everything's fine and so easier to just dismiss negative emotions whenever you have them. In the second situation, not so much, you have to cope constantly.

>>85740 i dont really understand this because the people coming up with copes usually are the ones with depression like I know people who have it diagnosed and do that. im not sure if maybe just everyone you know is depressed or your interpreting something as a cope when it isnt. a non depressed person doesn't have a cope to not be depressed they genuinely dont understand why they would be in their situation so if you ask something along those lines they might say something like "well theres nice weather outside" but this isnt a cope this is just an afterthought reason because you asked for one. There isnt (usually) fundamentally some difference in reasoning except that with depression you invent reasons as to why you should be depressed. If depression was the norm, or when a depressed person asks a normal person they feel obligated to invent reasons they arent depressed. These reasons can reinforce feeling one way or the other but what im trying to get across is that when you ask a non depressed person why they arent depressed they simply arent but because you simply are it presents a dissonance and so their brain start cooking up reasons why they might not be. I have diagnosed depression and so do my parents and my grandparents but what you are saying here and I dont mean this badly also sounds like a cope to me (like many posts in here) to like mythologize depression as a superior rationality or something. In practice ive watched my parents and grandparents do this and just deevolve and grow increasingly isolated and say the same things you say people who arent depressed say which is why your post confuses me. "I dont need xyz to be content" or "at least im alive and healthy" is something a depressed person says as a cope just with regards to things like friends or community or happiness or wants in my eyes.