Things are becoming more depressing every day and I can’t afford for professionals and don’t want to jump to the last resort or drugs. Is there a medicine that can make me happy if I take it in proper doses and does not require a doctor’s prescription?
Vitamin D3 is a good idea, generally the recommendation is 1000 IU a day. Especially now after the winter (assuming you’re in the Northern hemisphere) your vitamin D storage is probably depleted (the body needs a certain amount of UV radiation on the skin to produce vitamin D.
Regular exercise has been proven to help against depression and I think it’s probably the best and most important thing you can do. While helping your depression it will also help your general health and fitness.
Eat well: lots and lots of veggies, legumes and whole grain products. If unhealthy food makes you happy, don’t cut it from your diet completely. Allow yourself to eat sweets etc every once in a while and in moderation, but try to have a very healthy diet as a basis.
These things are probably hard to implement when you’re depressed in the first place but I guarantee you they’ll help and become easier as you go if you consistently stick to them. It takes about 66 days on average to build new habits. So if you manage to stick to it for about 2-3 months, it will become a lot easier.
Good luck!
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Anyway the big three are St John’s Wort, Ashwaganda, and Moringa.
Do they require a doctor’s prescription? Do they have addictive effects?
St John’s Wort can interact with several medications.
This is anecdotal, but I got horrible nightmares while trying Ashwaganda.
Just mentioning this because I see all the others: spicy food. Your brain makes happy chemicals to help with the pain, apparently.
Adrenaline and endorphins, specifically.
All the people saying exercise… I swear that has to vary across people. I went to the gym thrice a week for two years and hated every gd second of it.
I was going to the gym before getting laid off. Gym helped me with my mental health.
I swear that has to vary across people.
I am sorry it didn’t work out for you.
It really does seem to very considerably. I know a guy that’s addicted to running and will just do it all weekend, because he starts and doesn’t want to stop. I’ve never gotten a buzz from physical activity of any kind.
I’ve heard of the “runners’ high”, but even as someone who used to be very athletic, all I ever got was the “runners’ ‘please fucking kill me right now so I never have to do that again’”.
Depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes it’s fixed through diet/exercise. Sometimes it’s fixed through therapy. Sometimes it’s fixed through medication. OP is seeking a solution that doesn’t involve prescription meds, so everybody is suggesting other possible solutions. While exercise may not have worked for you or me, there are plenty of people who have successful results with it.
In short, yes, it definitely varies across people.
Why not walk outside instead of going to a sweaty gym and being bored and miserable?
going to a sweaty gym and being bored and miserable?
Going to the gym isn’t exactly like this. It helped me a lot with my mental health but I am in a position now where I can’t resume it, so that’s why I am considering the medicines temporarily.
Please reread this chain, I’m replying to someone who literally said they hated every second of it, if you hate the gym you don’t have to go and there are plenty of other things to do.
It probably does vary to a degree, but it also needs to be the right kind of exercise for you. I always hated the gym and thought I just hated exercise, but then I discovered folk dancing. I went from never having enjoyed any sort of athletics to dancing 14 hours a week because I fell in love with it.
I didn’t notice immediate effects, but a month or two after I started, I realized that I was cooking more and staying on top of cleaning and errands much more consistently. Then the pandemic hit and I stopped dancing. I started gradually having less motivation to clean or cook. I haven’t started back up sadly, but I got an active job about a year and a half ago, and it was just like before: not until I was getting regular exercise was I really able to stay on top of things and feel like an adult.
Exercise, sauna, and completing small projects can help.
In terms of mental health, drugs that give any kind of relief should be treated as a shelter from the storm so you can rebuild. This means if you’re not rebuilding while you’re in shelter, your happiness is only going to last as long as your shelter is standing. Drugs wear off, and it is very easy to just want to keep putting your shelter up ad infinitum. This is where the second problem of drugs for relief comes in. The shelter is sub-standard compared to doing the things to build a lasting happiness. You can get stoned as shit, but if you and your life is still in shambles there’s only so much that can do.
All the above being said cannabis can help when you need a break. Psychedelics can help as well and microdosing incurs minimal risk. Neither of these will fix any of your problems, but they can enable you to work on your problems yourself when it was too difficult to before.
Alternatively, if you want to avoid drugs altogether meditation can be an option in some circumstances. This is barely a recommendation because meditation is a skill that you have to practice in optimal form consistently before you’ll get anything at all from it. It’s impossible to actually know whether you’re doing it right until you start to feel relief from it and so many things can make practicing mediation as a beginner almost impossible if you’re in crisis. If you attempt mediation with absolutely no expectations other than that you will fail at it until you happen to approach it in a way that works you may eventually get some relief from it. If you get it working consistently, it is far stronger than anything you can get legally without a prescription in terms of providing relief. I can give you some guidance if you’re interested in this path. Secondarily, Kava can help a little in that it dulls the pain.
Vallerian root, kanna, ashwaganda, etc. might work if you believe strongly that they’re working. Avoid depressants like alcohol because although they provide temporary relief they also make things worse when they wear off which can be a terrible cycle.
Exercise boosts endorphins.
Physical contact boosts oxytocin.
Sex does both.
Chocolate helps produce serotonin.
Capsaicin-heavy foods will make your body produce adrenaline and endorphins.
Caffeine is a drug but can give you a long hit of dopamine — but overdosing will make anxiety worse, and can fuck with your sleep cycle. It’s also rapidly addictive and the withdrawal symptoms include malaise and depressive feelings.
A stable sleep cycle is A#1 for happiness, though. It won’t make you happy on its own but screwing it up will make you unhappy on its own, so it’s the foundation to build everything else on.
Sex does both.
I wish I had someone for that.
It won’t make you happy on its own but screwing it up will make you unhappy on its own, so it’s the foundation to build everything else on.
My sleep cycle is currently from 4 am to 11 am. Think I should sleep earlier? I do coding at night and surf social media during the day.
Nah as long as it’s always 4am to 11am you’ll be fine. Consistency is the main thing.
Try to reduce social media. I did and feel much better without the constant input from others.
What the above commenter said is generally good advice, but I would add on limiting your social media intake. Finding an online community to interact with (with voice or video chat kinds of things involved) is a better use of online time. For the coding, you could try moving that to the morning, and socialize in the afternoon/evening, and that will help you get on a more normalized schedule. If your leisure time is spent mostly with other people, it’s a lot easier to sign off and go to bed when everyone else does as well.
Edit: Also throw in a multivitamin and 2000-5000IU of Vitamin D3 because nutritional deficiencies can cause psych problems as well as exacerbate or prolong said psych problems.
Cats
15 years takin perscriptions, now a shrink like ‘i dunno, maybe get a kitten’
-Aesop Rock
Medicine won’t really help if you’re feeling depressed due to external factors. People who feel depressed because of their life situation typically benefit more from therapy both to learn how to cope more effectively and for guidance/support on making life changes. Look for sliding scales or low/no-cost therapy options in your area
If your emotional distress is related to inflammation then even ibuprofen can give you some relief.
As for solutions outside of pills, exercise has always been the most effective thing for me in improving my happiness.
The line between medicine and drug is largely arbitrary.
Start with the basics of diet, exercise, water, sleep, social interaction. They’re consistent and have very low harm potential. It’s also shocking how much each of them contributed to a sense of well being, or how much a lack of any one of them can cause a downward spiral.
Supplements and vitamins also aren’t super risky, although they aren’t well regulated and many do nothing in their pill form. One or some of the vitamin Bs seem important for me personally, although I’m not 100% certain and I don’t know which one(s) and to what degree. But I’ll drink a monster energy regularly because they have 200-400% dv. Omegas from fish oils may also be good. L-tyrosine and things like it are commonly discussed in nootropics boards, I can’t vouch for them personally.
As far as medications, it’s unlikely you’ll find an easy and risk-free solution, unfortunately. Even well-studied prescription medications aren’t guaranteed to work for your specific needs and have potential to make things worse, which is why in an ideal world everyone would have access to a medical professional that can oversee their use. And often the ones that work aren’t immediately obvious, but demonstrate marginal improvement over the longer term. In fact euphoria and hypomania (which in the moment feel like “oh my god this drug is working”) may be signs the drug isn’t a good fit. Very difficult to gauge on your own.
Online prescription mills are fairly painless if you have a good idea that a specific medication might work for you. I used them to get on a specific antidepressant after doing my own research.
Kanna and St John’s wort both have SSRI compounds I believe. Be careful, just because something’s a legal plant doesn’t mean it can’t interact negatively or have harmful effects. But these are probably the closest to what you’re asking.
Kratom is legal and can boost mood but has high addictive potential. In my experience not worth it except to get off more addictive substances.
Dex/dxm/dextromethorphan is an active ingredient in some cough suppressants that has antidepressive potential. Can be purchased with no additives at some pharmacies and online. Tripping on this isn’t fun at all in my opinion, I’d rather do salvia, but small doses seem to have some mood improving effects that last a few days
Stay away from diphenhydramine (I mention it because it’s often spoken of in the same context as Dex). Its use has been linked to dementia.
Psychedelics can help deconstruct old assumptions and mental structures that may be contributing to your depression. I’d describe the experience as rediscovering the magic of existence. Many of them also have antidepressant qualities-- a sort of afterglow that may last a week or a month. Microdosing is said to tap into the afterglow without tripping. LSD and shrooms are fairly well-studied. Mescaline acts similarly and may be easier to find. Morning glory seeds are legal and contain LSA which is similar to LSD. Salvia acts differently than any of these, often leading to bad trips, but is generally legal. None of these are addictive, but may be risky for people with certain mental illnesses.
There are a variety of legal and grey market stims that can improve mood, but they may have harmful effects and addictive potential. You’ll find a bunch of them if you browse nootropics boards, but keep in mind anonymous comments are not scientific and may undersell risk and negative effects. Nootropics boards will also discuss other supposedly cognitive enhancing substances. Lions mane is a common one. Some are natural supplements or things your body already produces (though this doesn’t guarantee they’re safe or pure). Many are addictive, many are probably snake oil. Search a drug/supplement on pubmed before trying it.
Adjacent to nootropics and more dangerous is research chemicals. Half of them are attempts to make “legal” but identical/similar analogues to illegal drugs. Some are novel. Almost none of them have been studied and purity is never guaranteed. I Honestly don’t recommend unless you’re at a point where it doesn’t matter. At one point for me it was “find a happy chemical or commit suicide” and I think that’s the only level this kind of experimentation is truly justified. But well-studied psychedelics are preferable.
Tesofensine is an antidepressant with weight loss effects that can be purchased online without a prescription for research purposes.
It’s fairly expensive, usually running about $250 for a one month supply, but if you need a temporary break from your depression then it might work for you.
However, because it is a research chemical, all of the side effects of the chemical are not known and you would be taking a risk in using it even for a short period of time.
Chances are it is likely safe but there is still a risk and you have to weigh that against your mental health and your finances and the costs and difficulty associated with getting put on a traditional antidepressant prescribed to you by a competent doctor.
Vitamin D
A lot of people, especially those who don’t go outside, have a vitamin D deficiency. This is especially prevalent this time of year as winter is just ending.
A lot of depression symptoms can be tied to Vitamin D deficiency. Go out and get a supplement and take it for a week, see how you feel.
Seconded. A lot of people don’t realize just how piss poor their nutrition is, and how its impacting their mood.
I don’t know about that kind of medicine, but resolve your repressed anger and depression will disappear.
That’s common, and why therapy works in a lot of cases, but not universal. Sometimes a chemical imbalance is only balanced with chemicals.
but resolve your repressed anger
how to do that?
Sorry for seeing the comments now, but it’s never too late hopefully.
Therapy helped me. Looking back first important step was noticing that I am angry. It is strange how hidden and unrecognizable anger can be.
Second part is discovering why I was angry. As soon as we discover why are we angry, we stop being angry. When ai asked my shrink how does that work, he said “I don’t know, but it works”. And it really does.
Now when someone says “I am angery and I know why I am angre” I am sure they have no idea.
And I haven’t found other way to resolve that, than psychoanalysis as therapy.
I don’t feel angry, all I could feel is hopelessness about the future. I have no plans, no job and my girlfriend is going to break up with me but I don’t know when exactly she will and I don’t even have a clue what is the reason. I don’t hate anybody, on the other side I just don’t feel loving anyone, especially me. I wish I could have wings and fly across somewhere. That should clear my mind.
this might sound like a joke but this is pretty true. my anger issues were also the peak of me being known as a basket case by everyone I knew, i was so openly depressed back then. but once everything resolved, I felt a lot better and to this day even though I can be stoic at times I’ve not quite felt depressed like I used to severely be. yes I can be sad sometimes but it’s nothing like the disdain I felt for years.
I would say weed but im not sure thats helping, on contrary.
I want to say, try taking the sun, just go seat in a park with chill music or a book.
If you are an overthinker, try to focus only on things that you can change or have an impact.
If you cant, stop to think about it, its either “to late”, or useless.
Ruminations are not good.Im really bad on theses advices, but when i do that, thats working.
My feelings often drives me,Identify the bad feeling, understand it, accept it, embrasse it (even external factors that you cant change), and go next.
Life is a slut in a way yeah, but you can be “the slut” too,
