I'm not opposed to medication, it just concerns me a bit the way the medical establishment glorifies. For depression, medication does work, but only if you actually have depression and should never be used without a comprehensive treatment plan. And the medications are handed out in a semi-random fashion, without any understanding of how the patient's individual brain is going to respond. Depending upon the specific neurophysiological make up of a particular individual, one medication might be useless, whereas a very similar medication might be precisely right. And unfortunately, because doctors don't generally order a scan to take a look, you can wind up trying medications for years, when a quick look at what the brain is actually doing would cut the time down substantially.

OTOH SSRIs do not work on people who have insufficient seratonin to begin with. And that's a point that a lot of doctors miss. It's also one of the reasons to exercise as exercise tends to increase the supply of tryptophan in the brain and give the brain the capacity to produce more seratonin.

And absolutely, socializing and exercise are pretty well established to help. Just make sure that the people that you socialize with are helping rather than hurting. Being available to talk about it is fine, but at some point talk needs to end in favor of moving on.

As far as snapping out of it goes, that's really hard to say. People generally snap out of it a lot more quickly than you'd think, once they start an effect course of treatment. I've seen it myself on quite a few occasions where over the course of a few weeks the treatments start to kick in.

The real problem is that the treatments available are often not very good. Leaving people more depressed and more tired from wasting time and energy on things which aren't effective.

Let me clarify myself.

The mind is a physical (chemical as you named) based entity. Wrong thoughts can change the function of the brain, including the way hormones and chemicals work (unbalance), which in turn can affect the entire system (body).

So when I say physical influences I mean outer influences, such as substances added to the system (drugs, poison), which can damage the chemical balance in the body and brain and affect the mind (thoughts, leading to depression for instance).

I see the mind and the body as a two way road, the one can influence the other and both are physical in one form or another (body/brain is the foundation, the mind is the construct).
So when drugs can change thoughts, so can (bad) thoughts affect the body (cause physical illness, affect the brain function).

Same goes for the cure. The mind can cure the body (in some cases), so can the body (medicine added to the system) cure the mind.

This concerns me as well. It's a bit of a generalisation but pharmaceuticals churn out anti-depressants/psychotics and I think it's naive to believe they have peoples health prioritised over profits. It then makes it difficult to know in whose interests pills are prescribed.

Anyway, I just wanted to agree with your point. I'll stop straying off topic as I don't want to take the emphasis off helping the OP.

Yet history shows how people like Stalin and Hitler are successful if there is nothing that can stop them, because of being manipulative and forceful and taking recklessly what they want. Sure, Hitler went down because of his insanity, as a consequence of his actions, but that doesn't change the fact that he was successful and raged for almost a decade freely.

I'd say the weaker the foundation of society, the more go the psychos have. Today, let's say in the West, we enforced a system, that makes it difficult for psychos to emerge (because a ruler can be kicked off his chair easily), but this is not the case in all the places, which shows that if the group (society) is not unified and strong, than anarchy or psychos have their easy go, because they like to take power and rule over people (something most normal people don't wish to do) and they do it best during chaos.

I'd say historically a large percentage of rulers in a non democratic environment, have been "evil", because power corrupts the good souls and the bad souls seek for power.

I definitely agree that the egoistic bastard are not the top of the evolutionary chain, but they like to climb their way up there and they do it very successfully if nothing opposes them. That's a way of survival. And if the psycho is smart enough, he makes sure to make it difficult being opposed (Stalin saw no downfall, injustice was never addressed in this case).

Another element not to forget is the complex social structure of later societies, with their variety of values and ideas. A crazy bastard can be easily supported if his view is shared by the general public or the authorities (Inquisition was the righteous way back in the day, even if it is insane).

In the earlier days, during the stone age, things were simpler and straightforward. A psycho ruler could be splayed easily if a couple of individuals of the group disagree with him. The principles of society were simpler, less crazy religious or ethnic ideologies. It was about the survival of the group and selfishness was a threat to it. Things were pure back then, today we face a mess of different ideas, of which half are based on insanity.

One thing that seems to be helping me is being more active, having more important things to do than I once did. I'm a high school student and I recently started going back to public school. I used to be a homebound student because of depression and difficulties resulting from my OCD and ASD. I did some work online and went to my high school in the afternoon every few days and completed other assignments. Now that I've started going back, I feel much better.

This is important but there are a few things that make all the difference. Being active is excellent as it allows you to differentiate between fun time and work time. When you have too much time to have fun it really eventually gets depressing. Its good to have time spent where you are doing something you don't want to do.

Also this has helped me-Spend time with positive people. If there is someone that is opinionated/racist or hard to deal with in general, spend less time to no time with that person. It sucks because sometimes this person is a family member but spending time when you are in the mood too is key.

Another thing that is bad is when parents/friends expect you to do things they consider normal/are the norm. I hate to fucking break it to them but there is no fucking thing as normal. This is usually parents/friends urging people to date/get married do things that go against their principles. This causes problems as people put aside their real goals just to listen to someone else. I usually just listen to them and do what I want.

The worst thing you can do is live your life based on someone's set way. It fucks things up and causes confusion/depression.

Whenever they try that, I go in my car and blast slipknot's people equal shit. Works all the time, haha.

It kind of is sometimes, in a way. You don't choose to be lazy but the physical symptom is avoidance of activity and socializing, which is similar. The solution to get back on the road to balance is to force these natural remedies.

I guess "snap out of it" implies some kind of quick decision to just stop being depressed, which I did not mean. We're talking about baby steps, and one of them is to get out there, to involve yourself, but it's hard to make that decision and do it. So forcing it can help, getting into a situation where you have to do something to survive can kick those natural abilities into gear.

It's hard to describe to someone not experienced with it, I guess.

I'm feeling a bit the same. and having done night work before sometimes it can really screw you up in the head. Having a forum like this where there are people 24/7 is pretty good because there's always someone around to have a chat too.

Currently for me, I don't have many friends, mostly just acquaintances and my career just makes me endlessly sad. I found this site mindspot.org.au last week. I'm not sure if it's specifically for Aussies but they have an online course so maybe not.

I'm starting their 'Wellbeing' course tomorrow which is about retraining yourself when you get down and how to bring yourself up when you feel terrible. Maybe there is something similar around you that you could do while at work/during the day and also gives you access to someone to talk too.

Just one more thing from me. I'm not sure if there's a scientific explanation for this but try keep yourself hydrated. I find if I don't drink as much water as usual, I can feel lethagic. Just a small thing that's easy to do but may contribute to feeling a little better.

To a degree, but the human mind is not like the protagonist of a Japanese RPG where you can level it to level 99 and be a god.

Yes, your mind affects the chemicals body generate and can re-establish an equilibrium in a well functioning body.

Problem is that your body is not the end product designed by God that some fundamentalists would have you believe. Rather, it is but a transient step in a very long stairway and it can malfunction in scary ways.

For some people, the chemicals the body produce (or their brain's affinity or lack or thereof to them) are so out of sync with the norm that their mind can't cope. For a comparison, imagine that you ingested some really potent downers and then tried very hard to be happy and negate the downers with the power of your mind. It will not work.

A man needs to know his limitations.

#1: Hitler started by helping the German people quite a bit without which the remainder of what he did wouldn't have worked.

#2: There was not one psycho, but several in this scenario. The way other countries treated Germany after WWI was pretty bad and generated the level of discontent necessary for WWII. In the end, none of the agents who acted in a psychotic manner (Hitler or the winners of WWI) benefited from their selfish acts.

#3: Hitler didn't just go down because of his insanity. Like many conquerors before him, he got too power hungry and ultimately alienated a coalition of countries that were too big for him to handle.

Had he been less psychotic and more risk adverse, he would have stopped after his pre-WWII early gains or worked out something with the Russians.

Yes, you can definitely have a social framework that is more or less likely to produce psychos or otherwise enable them.

Honestly, I don't buy the power corrupts argument. A wise ruler will spread the power around. Those who tend to become all powerful and hoard all the power were rotten from the start.

btw, overworked, insecure, uneducated people are not very smart. It's not that hard to hijack democracy in such an environment. Democracy is not a silver bullet.

On a smaller scale, but you need to look at the bigger picture.

The egoistic bastard was successful within his context, but ultimately, the context that produced and enabled the said egoistic bastard collapsed.

That natural selection applied at the macro, social level.

We are experiencing that very natural selection of societies in the West right now. We are not well adapted at all to survive and thrive as our society evolved in a context of military dominance and constant expansion due to colonization and leeching our resources from other parts of the world. We never really developed a stable self-sustaining social model. Whichever culture manages to pull this off will be the alpha dog of the future.

And that will be the downfall of the said society. Read my comment above.

Actually, I find the interconnected more social evolution we are subjected to right now more interesting.

I find it is more conductive to ultimately producing a truly social, co-operative forward thinking master race.

My only regret is that if we manage not to self-destruct on a global scale and it comes to fruition, I won't be around to see it happen. Evolution is a very slow process unfortunately and very painful for those subjected to it, even if the end result is beautiful. The endless number of less well adapted living organisms who need to suffer and die in order to produce a better one is a bit scary.

A wise ruler is the one being less corruptive by power at the first place. :D

Explain, what will the alpha dog be like exactly?

I guess a bit like the Star Trek utopia.

Personally I don't buy into the whole "human self-destructive nature" thing. There is no unity in what we describe as "mankind", so the mankind as such cannot be one way or another, it is all ways at the same time.

Those doing the destruction are doing it for personal gains and they do gain a lot. They will probably not live long enough to face the consequences, the next generations will, but the past destroyers had lived in luxury and enjoyed their lives.

Mankind as a whole will answer for the mistakes done by the powerful and ignorant few, who did nothing else but profited from their ill deeds. Again, because nobody was there to stop them (speaking about other kinds of psychos, the greedy ones).

My believe, call it faith, is the trust in what I call "pure technology". Technology developed and controlled by wise minds to cure our illness and clean the planet. I don't see technology as just building machines, it is the unity of science and consciousness as a whole.
We can't go back to the stone age and we can't remain where we are, we can only go forward from now on. The future is our escape. I see myself as a realist, but I have faith in an optimistic future.

If we have to invoke Godwin's Law, I think we can call the discussion DEAD.

Seriously. End it, at this point it's needless pandering and padding. Anything that the OP needed to be told would have been said in the first page, and if it hasn't he needs to start asking people who've actually suffered depression directly.

Na, Star Trek is too inflexibly hierarchical and militaristic for my taste.

Furthermore, I find some of their policies such as total non-interference are ludicrous.

And finally, I don't think we are biologically capable of a fully utopian society yet though we could definitely improve a lot of things. Atm, just being sustainable would be huge.

We are still very much cavemen trust into a modern social framework that we are not well adapted to deal with.

If we follow that idea to it's conclusion, we might as well give up on trying to categorize anything.

There are trends categorized by extremes and then there is the mainstream.

Sure, if you take the best specimens we have, it's not bad (but still very improvable), but the best specimens won't run a society by themselves. In the end, the middle of the bell curve dictates what will be in the longer run once all the dust settles.

And we let them. If all the middle and lower class got in the streets tomorrow and required nothing less than a substainable society from the elite (both economical and political), a lot of things would change.

We are plagued by both an immoderate power-hungry elite and a self-centered complacent middle class.

People say they want change, but then turn around and complain as soon as someone start protesting (without being violent) in the streets. See the paradox?

You can't blame it all on the elite. The complacent social context we live in enables them too.

I think mankind will survive them, but it won't necessarily be pleasant. A lot of natural selection will take place right there.

Actually, the problem that I see with technology is that it evolves faster than our ability to use it properly.

I'd compare it to giving a gun to a 6 years old.

For those interested in how the brain operates and some of the technical details of what you can do to get it working a bit more efficiently: Magnificent Mind at Any Age: Natural Ways to Unleash Your Brain's Maximum Potential by Dr. Amen.

After reading it, I finally understand why my temper got so much better after I started taking anti-convulsants as a teen and why I have so much trouble with seemingly little tasks, that just require long term planning.

Apart from your body being like 60-70% or so water, water itself is used in cellular respiration. Ultimately, without adequate water, your cells have issues generating sufficient energy to go on. One of the reasons why you would die of thirst before hunger is that without water, you can't metabolize anything, and you very quickly run out of energy to fuel the muscles.

That's certainly one problem. Another is that it tends to evolve more quickly than we do. Humans developed agriculture like 7 000 years ago or so, and we still haven't adapted to eating grains properly. I was very much surprised last year to discover just how unhealthy that wheat and dairy crap is and how much better I feel with out it.

Not to mention that humans are healthier when we aren't eating regularly. I was surprised by how calm I feel when I don't eat for 16 or so hours between meals. Same calories, just less frequently.