# 2024-07-29T17:17+01:00

my own experience of depression
===

# preamble

congratulations, if you are reading this it means you can use gopher and
your gopher client works, i have decided to stop using html blogging as
it leads to wrong people reading the stuff

these texts are pure expression of my mental state, and are chaotic... i
mostly write them as therapeutic method as being busy with something
works, and it turns out, if i think about something and start writing
about it and then it sorta works

=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3LFlWdExvg

# rambling

since i have started my adulthood i have dealt with depression, it could
have been autism related. but truly, it is mainly depression that limits
my sense of reality and leads me to suffer the most. autism is fine,
as long as you enjoy things...

i constantly feel there is a glass between me and reality and especially
people, the reality feels muddy and any attempt at improvement stands
until i receive any amount of stress (and people are the main source)
and i fall back to something that AA people call bottom lines, whatever
that means

i am profoundly tired most of the time, paradoxically, this does not
affect my work. by work sadly i mean labour, and it can be either
academic or paid for, but it needs to be through institutional. once
there is no institution and no possibility of punishment of my status,
all 'does not matter'. self-care gone, living gone, existing gone, i
think i have priorities all the other way around... my self is always
seen as secondary, the role i have as primary. absurd case of this is
that cleaning my own room is probably one of the most difficult 'normal'
tasks i deal with, meanwhile if i am out visiting someone, and there is
a mess, i will be first to clean and i might even enjoy it. i have no
idea what it means, but whatever

i deal with persistent pain, both mental and physical. the pain can have
so many styles that i will only attempt to list them:

- auto-destructive thoughts
- existential crisis thoughts
- suffering plainest in the world
- pain in random part of the body
- more extreme pain from a normal source
- tiredness
- fatigue
- etc

the word tired dominates the most this text, i do not know what i will
do with it. tiredness is the main emotion i feel most of the time, and
even if i am 'more energetic' it is not in a state of wakefulness. i
am sleeping awake all the time, trying to go through the normal day as
i could and survive in some way or another. but it leads to nothing. i
have started running now, and have been running for past 5 weeks, but now
i obsess about my atrophying upper body, no wonder - i had no pullup bar.

but it does not matter, as even in periods where i was a bit more healthy
physically i was still depressed as fuck.

being outside/inside, mess/order seem to be more incidental to my mood
than anything

i have never tracked it though but that's how i feel, if i am not in
painful mood then i hardly care about my environment. if i am in a worse
state, guess what, environment does not even exist

funny thing is with atypical depression you kinda get to do stuff,
but you need to get like minimal momentum and you will still have the
before-mentioned glass kind of feeling...

so you might have actually nice days but you just sleep awake though
them, like physically present, but it all happens through an isolated
space where events are not even there -- happening

so participation in things, doing things can be done, but if it is in
group, then it becomes extremely exhausting, if alone -- well, i am
hardly there - so why bother

and sometimes exhausted state leads to a sort of stasis, that makes being
so easy that i will do anything to burn time. and how can you kill time
without injuring eternity

strangely enough this glass is left over when things become memories,
creating an illusion of simpler and happier past. of course my journals
beg to differ, but it is funny to be nostalgic over a period in which
i even was awardee i was depressed.

the lack of satisfaction with a failed day only makes things worse and
leads to more depression as i try to keep up with the last day

of course, missing 4 hour day when i have not done everything i wished
for, well, happens...

the idea that set of actions can lead to mental improvement sounds
hilarious given my past faring

# why

why am i depressed. part of me thinks it could be just my two
main addictions - food + pornography. these things cause dopamine
overproduction so logically it might be making me depressed

but it is also that i find nothing worth being passionate about, which is
this vicious cycle, where i cannot distract myself in a productive way,
and then i feel like shit and then i feel tired

the tiredness makes this stuff hilarious.

i feel like i am stuck in the wrong reality, like profoundly wrong place,
where i have no way of finding happiness. like elements that i would
need would be somewhere else, in a different world so to speak. here i
get only pain and stress and that's bout it!

i know these are just thoughts, but they feel like normality.

and well, how thoughts feel is well, how you feel

but it could be also the set of some past experiences, but i do not
assign high value to them, like they all feel fairly normal with some
unpleasant and most unpleasant experiences were in the adulthood anyway
where i was already depressed

when the place i lived in got raided i slept until 2 pm which nicely
submits the state of my brain at the time, so it is hard to consider
trauma as the reason for my state

in childhood the main source of stress were parents having arguments
during breakfast so i just stayed in bed to wait it out...

childhood-wise i mostly lost my consciousness and had extreme social
anxiety when entering pre-school

by the time adulthood started i was far into depression, i would assume
my onset was around 13-14 if something, but then how can we judge 12 year
old to be depressed, you do not have any responsibilities, but guessing
that i managed to do stuff pretty much sums it up as non-depressed

woah

i profoundly miss the sense of learning about random shit as a child
and not being at all worried by the way i learn, as adult it is always
constant worry if i am doing stuff the right way and need to focus on
one thing

these are not great ideas, but well, gotta live with them

i cannot identify with physical exercise well, as my negative experience
with pe put it into category of stuff i do not do. again, irrational idea,
but god does it make things more difficult

the same gaming became a thing i do, even if i do not enjoy it

how to change these ideas, these associations, that make me enjoy
childhood fun even if it does not lead to my benefit

and make me incapable to make any lasting change in my life

i also absorb negative ideas like sponge and keep them in my brain for
far too long, even if they came from a person with a computer and internet
connection, and meanwhile of positive ideas i am extremely sceptical

i often feel a need to rest

sometimes short highs make me forget about the problem, which is nice

# philosophy

philosophy is of no use. philosophical pessimism at least makes me feel
less alone. stoicism (and Christianity) both are designed for societies
that are distant from ours.

i wish it worked but it does not

people just tire me out, thinking about existence of others is too often
way beyond the ability of my depressed self. in this it is obviously
solipsistic, where am i getting with this - i don't know. online
americans who are selling/showing their lifestyle are worst at this,
their existence is just so profoundly painful for a depressed european
that they are not even aware of how much of a problem their existence
and 'solutions' are. i wonder if people living outside of 'first world'
(what a terrible expressions) have the same feelings about euros. most
probably yes. thank you david bowie for being open about how americans
are uncomfortable as a concept. they cannot even be properly depressed

to quote david bowie again - for fuck's sake

like any life advice space on this useless thing we call internet comes
with an american who starts explaining how in his universe things happen
differently

productivity is just such a sucky concept i cannot get even started on it

who cared about being productive most of the time. like enjoyment of
life matters and some eudaimonia here. just pure protestant bs just
giving me a headache

like it profoundly tires me out even more to see these stories of success
wow congratulation somebody suddenly works ultra efficiently and the
consequence of this is that they made a blog post and/or youtube video

i am depressed and i am writing the blog post, and at least i am
profoundly enjoying it despite my depressive states

all in all, i think the only philosopher who is handy to my particular
kind of depression is max stirner (and its interpreters, ie nietzsche
junger etc) - that is because instead of this HIGHER state and HIGHER
essence that are based upon you fail, or some bullshit genetics 'science'
which always approach perfection and other thing that is not real,
it actually goes back to the goddamn fundamentals. and things as they
are, and not the buddhist things as they are, actual things as they
are. an addiction is just you doing stuff repeatedly cause it brings
you pleasure. depression is just you feeling shit, not some profound
trauma that requires some profound analysis and again constant based
upon reification. why such a hatred towards reification (fancy word for
making something higher/bigger than you), because its default state is
failure. and if you are failing, then shit sucks. i do not want shit
to suck anymore, so i prefer to use stirner to criticise any crappy
idea that comes my way and have actual good time. i have a problem and
i want to resolve it, and it is my property to use any tool at hand,
and do not worry about ethics of it or other higher thing that sometimes
my impede me.

mileage might vary, some people need completely opposite thing which
seems like organisation like AA might provide

# substances

pretty much only times where i did not consider myself depressed were acid
afterglow and some period on zoloft. the rest were just trips from mild to
severe depression and always dropping again and it is dark again. zoloft
had painful side effect with messing with time perception so had to quit

it is hard to remember happiness

of course, when there is a period to get substances easily, then general
environmental problems (like a stable routine) do not exist... oh the
magic of travelling

if over-consumption and trying stuff is bad then also, fuck you you
reified anticonsumptionist

if somebody needs a $500 per day alternative treatment, well that is
fine... why is it my problem? why would it be your problem?

i might be even that somebody

# routines

i think it is critical to have routines in the case there is an issue
with your brain

not even routines, like non-negotiable

i need to write every day to brush my teeth, otherwise i will forget
about it... idk why my brain does that -- it turns out it is extremely bad

just washed my teeth btw even managed to sorta make my room sorta less
of a mess

i also journal my thoughts, and i think due to this my ability to express
stuff from my head has grown, but still it is very different to journal
than to write a blogpost

but i think journaling is critical as at least you can see the garbage
in your brain

# how to get out

i think routine and medication can resolve this

though it by itself feels really just a side effect of contemporary
economics and reality

so the real solution is to get past economics, which of course, has its
own downsides

but the periods in which i was unemployed and had secondary source of
income, were the ones in which i was the happiest in my adulthood. of
course these were well undeserved, as in through government programmes
or other sources of such income. i do not think the current lifestyle
is worth the cost of it, especially that one can live at much lower cost
(check earlyretirementextreme.com blog) and have peaceful existence

i still feel there might be chemical side to it, and of course routines
and exercise might help, but there are as fickle as deeper episodes
(which can sometimes be triggered by secondary causes, like weather)
will of course derail such attempts (of course there might be qualitive
change as quantity of exercise increases who knows)

but then if i am depressed again that theory is proven wrong, which
is something...

the funniest part is resolution is known, but it takes time:
- medication
- therapy
- meditation
- diet
- exercise

just a healthy lifestyle with actual dealing with the root cause, should
be pretty much it

wish me luck guys