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Thanks for the perspective, and ditto. It sounds condescending, and obviously physical brain damage (e.g. CTE) can cause depression completely separately from l
by themgt 11y ago
Thanks for the perspective, and ditto. It sounds condescending, and obviously physical brain damage (e.g. CTE) can cause depression completely separately from life circumstances, but I would venture that for a majority of people who say "My life is just fine but I am depressed anyway", their life is not actually fine.
It's not even that they are lying, but we humans are very good at hiding truths, even from ourselves. It can be very hard to truly admit that one is unhappy about one's life, and frankly many people have never really experienced a true sense of fulfillment, peace, belonging, purpose and happiness, and don't know what it would feel like or understand how lacking the feeling is in their lives.
"My life is fine" generally means "I've checked the right boxes: 'success', 'friends', a relationship, but I still feel empty." Don't use drugs to numb that feeling. Listen to it.
- retbull 11y agoBut drugs are awesome :D Seriously though, compared to being depressed when you can't fix it because you don't have any idea that something is wrong, drugs are fucking amazing. The shitty part is people end up trapped now as the drugs can fuel the negativity which lead to the depression in the first place.
- themgt 11y agoI actually agree drugs are useful for treating mental issues, I just disagree that people need a daily drip-drip-drip of e.g. serotonin or dopamine to function. Drugs can be extremely helpful in treating acute mental issues and helping people "break through" or inoculate themselves against episodes of illness, see e.g. psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine for treatments of e.g. anxiety/depression/PTSD/psychological health in the terminally ill, cluster headaches, etc. The common thread though is that a single dose of the drug offers long-lasting protection, weeks or months or years. It's not about chemically changing the brain day after day, it's about using neurochemicals to jolt the brain out of a rut. It's about occasionally kickstarting the brain back into normal self-regulation, not using externally supplied chemicals to permanently supplement dysregulation.
- cnp 11y agoFor more information on trials being conducted using the drugs described above, see MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies): http://www.maps.org/ http://www.maps.org/.
- ross-life 11y agoBut drugs are awesome :D Completely depends on the drug, person and context. The painkillers when I dislocated my shoulder and they had to reset it? Wonderful. The antidepressants that after several weeks (so once they'd started "working properly"), made me feel "not unhappy" but like a robot and then also gave me vivid, real nightmares in which I died horribly over and over again? Not so great... I'd never touch antidepressants ever again. For some people they do work, but for others they don't. Yet we still push them on everyone.
- pyre 11y agoYet your experience doesn't necessarily match the experience of everyone. It's just a anecdotal to say that your issues with anti-depressants (all of which work differently on different people; even drugs within the same "family") are the same for everyone as it is to invalidate someone else's depression with some BS "I was depressed once, but I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and got better, so that's what everyone needs to do" story.
- cnp 11y agoI think what they're saying is: "side effects are real"
- nommm-nommm 11y agoInaccurate. These symptoms can be caused by trauma that happened in the long ago past. Your current life situation could actually be fine but you have symptoms of past trama. Seen too many people running around making drastic changes in their lives in an attempt to feel happy but each change just brings more depression because it doesn't work. "Just make a change in your life" is some feel good bullshit. It's not that simple.