Hey there,
while my drug use was always motivated in part by curiosity, it was also motivated by a desire to self-medicate my (mostly) low-grade, but long-lasting depression (dysthymia). I assume the same is true for some (or many) others on here as well.
The "good" thing about depression is that there is a very large array of potential treatments, ranging from pharmacological (dozens of antidepressants and related medications, as well as ketamine, psychdelics and possibly other drugs) to nutritional (changes in diet, improvements to the microbiome, etc) to psychotherapeutic (with many competing psychological schools of thought) to neurological (e.g. transcranial magnetic stimulation, electroconvulsive therapy, vagus nerve stimulation) to endocrinological (e.g. testosterone supplementation) to lifestyle changes (increased social interaction, daily routine, meditation, physical exercise, etc) to the realm of the spiritual. When you factor in the combination of several of these approaches, the list of potential treatment options becomes just about infinite.
This is good news in the sense that you will never really reach a point where you have "tried everything". It is also bad news in that most of these approaches have pretty disappointing success rates (which is why we came up with so many of them in the first place), or intolerable side effects, or they lose their effectiveness after a certain amount of time. Also, most of them carry a heavy opportunity cost in terms of the time and effort you need to invest in them, the delay between starting them and when you can expect to see results (if any), the difficulty of assessing and distinguishing their effects (unless very profound) from fluctuations in mood caused by other factors, and the difficulty of implementing and maintaining a rigorous regime of trial and error and tracking of results, especially when being dragged down by depression all the while.
Also, if you search for possible solutions on the internet, you usually only find the cookie-cutter recommendations of "take antidepressants, get a therapist, talk to your doctor", which are certainly valid, but which I assume most people reading this will already have tried without satisfying results. At the same time, you can't shake the feeling that there probably is something out there that would work just right for you, but that something may be just almost impossible to find if you don't respond well to the initial / default treatment options, and if you aren't lucky enough to have a truly great doctor, who keeps up with the latest science and thinksoutside the box.
So, in the interest of shedding some light on what has worked for various people, I would encourage anyone who has struggled with depression to respond by giving a summary of their symptoms and what treatment approach finally worked for them. A couple of suggestions to make this thread more informative / helpful for everybody:
while my drug use was always motivated in part by curiosity, it was also motivated by a desire to self-medicate my (mostly) low-grade, but long-lasting depression (dysthymia). I assume the same is true for some (or many) others on here as well.
The "good" thing about depression is that there is a very large array of potential treatments, ranging from pharmacological (dozens of antidepressants and related medications, as well as ketamine, psychdelics and possibly other drugs) to nutritional (changes in diet, improvements to the microbiome, etc) to psychotherapeutic (with many competing psychological schools of thought) to neurological (e.g. transcranial magnetic stimulation, electroconvulsive therapy, vagus nerve stimulation) to endocrinological (e.g. testosterone supplementation) to lifestyle changes (increased social interaction, daily routine, meditation, physical exercise, etc) to the realm of the spiritual. When you factor in the combination of several of these approaches, the list of potential treatment options becomes just about infinite.
This is good news in the sense that you will never really reach a point where you have "tried everything". It is also bad news in that most of these approaches have pretty disappointing success rates (which is why we came up with so many of them in the first place), or intolerable side effects, or they lose their effectiveness after a certain amount of time. Also, most of them carry a heavy opportunity cost in terms of the time and effort you need to invest in them, the delay between starting them and when you can expect to see results (if any), the difficulty of assessing and distinguishing their effects (unless very profound) from fluctuations in mood caused by other factors, and the difficulty of implementing and maintaining a rigorous regime of trial and error and tracking of results, especially when being dragged down by depression all the while.
Also, if you search for possible solutions on the internet, you usually only find the cookie-cutter recommendations of "take antidepressants, get a therapist, talk to your doctor", which are certainly valid, but which I assume most people reading this will already have tried without satisfying results. At the same time, you can't shake the feeling that there probably is something out there that would work just right for you, but that something may be just almost impossible to find if you don't respond well to the initial / default treatment options, and if you aren't lucky enough to have a truly great doctor, who keeps up with the latest science and thinksoutside the box.
So, in the interest of shedding some light on what has worked for various people, I would encourage anyone who has struggled with depression to respond by giving a summary of their symptoms and what treatment approach finally worked for them. A couple of suggestions to make this thread more informative / helpful for everybody:
- Be precise as to what the specific symptoms / duration / recurrence patterns / (likely) causes of your depression were (e.g. "I have been suffering from low-grade depression with lack of energy and oversleeping as its main features and no identifiable cause in my past or present life circumstances since I turned 18" rather than "I've been depressed").
- Likewise, be precise as to how you got them under control ("I have been injecting x ml of testosterone daily for the last 3 years and been symptom-free ever since" rather than "TRT has helped")
- Obviously, don't take anything you read here as medical advice, but merely as (success) stories from other people that might or might not have any applicability in your situation. Actually do talk to your doctor before trying anything you might have read here out on yourself
- Finally, I think the most interesting stories would be from people who found success outside the very standard lines of treatment. If you took an SSRI and had some cognitive-behavioral therapy sessions and were fine afterward, that is great, and I am truly happy for you, but that is also an extremely well-known approach that most long-time sufferers have almost certainly already tried without satisfying results, so it probably doesn't add a whole lot to the conversation.
