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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
