My Guide for Curing Depression

Ever since I was young, there had been a sense of wrongness built in me. A sadness, an anxious feeling. A rise and fall from the heights of power. The energy of happiness was ever so fleeting. I didn't want these feelings to define me. I wanted them to go away. I ignored them, focused on other things, let my mind wander. I felt a sense of superiority. None of it showed me the truth. None of it made me stronger. These "cures" made it worse.

As I had grown into my teen years, I had taken my sense of angst and used it on those around me. Not only was I suffering from this, but I had felt so damn important to let those around me know of my suffering firsthand. It wasn't apparent to me. I only did what I felt. 

It had gotten to the point where I just completely ignored myself. I focused, instead, on things I felt gave me gratitude. I focused on things I thought I had a love for. Things like videogames, to help shield me from reality. Eating bad food to give me a sense of happiness. I became antisocial. I became unaware. I lost my sense of self that I had had when I was younger. The me that I wanted to rediscover.

My hatred for people grew and grew as I felt disconnected. No one understood what I was going through. I knew this. My sense of self was grand. I had grown a narcissist.

I thought of just how much worse people had it than me. But that didn't make my problem go away, it just made it worse. You see, I never addressed my problem. Only said it shouldn't be doing what it was doing. I was ignoring reality.

Senior year, I knew something was wrong. I didn't have a solid identity. I needed something to help. I looked for ways to solve my problems, and did fairly good for awhile, but it all came collapsing as I couldn't keep up with just how demanding I was.

As I moved out of my parent's house, I left with a woman I had fallen in love with. She made miserable, but also very lovely. We loved eachother, and when you love eachother, things get passionate. I had grown violent. No harm was done to her, but my passion wasn't without a few holes in the wall. She believed in change. She believed in help. She believed in me. That's what I needed to finally get me started. Someone who believed in my goodness.

While I had support, I still didn't know who I was. I had been experimenting with drugs for awhile then. The drugs were a huge hindrance, all except for one that is. Acid helped me know myself. 

I had gone to my parents house one day and saw just how productive everyone was being there. It made me jealous, but I didn't recognize it. When I got home, I decided to take acid, and during my trip I became super obsessed with finding something productive to do. I couldn't help but feel super anxious. It had pretty much made me go crazy. After awhile, when I started coming down, I looked back at what had just happened. I had no idea just how much I felt like that. I sat by a river side and cried just realizing how much of my life was wasted simply wanting to be productive.

On one trip, I decided to be around a lot of people. This trip made me very social. Understanding just how much I love people helped me get out of my antisocial behavior. It gave me hope.

Another trip made me question what I ate. I had been conflicted after hearing tons of arguments before about veganism. Knowing me back then, meat was pretty much the only thing I ate. It was my favorite food. But I felt so bad for what animals had to go through to get to me, and the arguments for it were so plain and simple, that I could no longer continue eating meat.

And finally I learned to be more compassionate, and quit drugs. During one trip, I listened to my body and realized that being compassionate to people makes them relate to you more. I couldn't help but think of just how aggressive I usually acted, and how much energy was probably wasted acting like that. Just how much negativity I gave out made everyone's lives miserable. I felt bad. Drugs were a contributing factor.

After my experiences with acid, I couldn't help but try to get my life on track. I noticed just how well formulated my logic was for everything else besides myself. Every little thing I thought about myself was unfounded. The previous framework I built of myself was to be torn down and redone, this time stronger.

~

These steps are based on my experience.

Steps:

1. Create a healthy mindset. The right mindset is truly the most important aspect. What are you looking to accomplish? If you aren't motivated, know yourself well, or know the truth of your situation, nothing will ever happen. Paying attention to your behavior is key to learning about yourself. You're a very complex acting agent, it takes time, so make sure you're being truthful with yourself.

2. Find a support system. Your support system will forever be your main method of feeling safe. People are so very very important in our lives. Never discount it. You need to make sure your support system is there for you, not there to criticize you, or make you feel like shit for even attempting to better yourself in the first place. Healthy relationships are super important to better knowing yourself.

3. Meditate. Meditation takes tons of practice to get right. Meditation also takes tons of time to be effective. Meditate for about ten minutes a day, everyday. If you miss a day, keep going. Don't think about it too much. Make sure that even if you can't focus, you're able to sit and do it. There are tons of lessons I learned from meditation. Meditation helps you become calmer, understand those around you, and helps you acknowledge your feelings truly. Meditation has been shown to help with pain resistance, decreases depression, improves overall mood, increases focus, and increases empathy.

4. Don't underestimate the power of drugs. Drugs can be very positive, or very negative. Using things like antidepressants could be the very thing needed to make you feel better, and to give you the kick to get your journey started.  Psychedelics have been clinically proven to be helpful towards depression, and increase openness to ideas. Psychedelics help tremendously with step one, but aren't necessary. On the other hand, things like weed and alcohol create more problems. Sometimes a drink or a little weed makes you feel better, but obviously using it everyday can cause withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety and irritability. If you want to get your life straight, then you NEED to limit these.

5. Workout. Exercising is literally the best thing you can do for your body. It has been shown to be as effective as antidepressants in some patients to lowering depression and anxiety. You need to workout in order to live longer. Working out helps mood, muscle gain, intelligence, fat loss, etc. Exercising once a week isn't going to cut it. You need to do weight training three times a week and cardio five. This needs to be a priority, this is super important. If you can't make it 3 times a week, do what you can until you're able to.

6. Diet. You need to make sure your diet is in check. This is crucial, and very difficult. Luckily, the steps taken before have been leading up to this. Take this little by little, but eating whole fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and consuming less saturated fats and sugar. On top of that, using a calorie counter, make sure you are paying attention to what your calories are, and be truthful. That way you can lose or gain weight whenever necessary. 

7. Don't be hard on yourself. Whenever you fail, never consider yourself a failure, or quit then and there because of it. We're human, we make mistakes, the point is to learn. If you feel some sort of negativity, feel it. Don't ignore your calls for a break. Take as much time as needed, but don't procrastinate. Your life is worth living well and it's worth living well now. 

I hope this has helped.