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I can’t say I’m 100% cured, but can I say that it does get better. If you keep working at it you will grow and get better at it.

I’ve written a post describing my advice that I’ve learned in my 10 years since my suicide attempt. Here’s a link to it.

As for self love, that’s a little different of road. I had a really bad “hate tape” playing in my mind for the majority of my life. A great place to start is the book Feeling Good by David Burns. The sparknotes version of this book is that we have thoughts that are designed to hurt our outlook (called cognitive distortions) and gives you good tools to identify and address these. I’m not a huge fan of self help books, but this is scientifically researched and written by one of the originators of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This combined with meditation is really potent stuff.

I believe in faking it until you make it. What I’ve realized is that what most people say about self-love is true and unhelpful. It feels inauthentic to say that we love ourselves if we truly don’t feel it. And it is precisely this thought process that kept me from truly loving myself. I force myself to say nice things to myself even when I feel like a crappy human being. Instead of self-deprecating, I over exaggerate my own ability and awesomeness. They end up being the same jokes just reversed (a cheeky “Oh I totally meant to do that” instead of a depressing “see how worthless I am”).

And I’ve found this to work. My brain is in the habit of self-love rather than self-loathing. If you do something enough it becomes your automatic response. Have you ever said ironically loved something so much (like a meme or a song) that you grow to genuinely love it? That’s how I developed a healthy relationship with myself.

What I’ve found is that loving yourself is simple and incredibly difficult at the same time. All those cliches about “just be your own best friend” and “go easy on yourself” are technically right, but ignore the amount of time, effort and failures that come on the way to that point. It’s kind of a 3 steps forward two steps back kind of thing.

Lastly there will be days when you just don’t feel it. This is when I reach out to people I love and care about for external validation. Again my brain wants to say “they are only saying that because you specifically asked for it”. And I say so what? Just because I asked my best friend to say nice things about me doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean it. We have a relationship built on trust; he would say tell me if something was wrong with me just as easy as what is right. The fact that he would do that for me speaks to how much he cares for me. I would do the same for him.

I can’t say that this is full proof or that it will even be relevant to your life (hell it doesn’t work for me all the time), but I hope there is some nugget of information that you can steal from this that might help you on your journey to self acceptance. Even if these aren’t the right answers for you, I can tell you that your answers are out there somewhere. Maybe they’re in you just waiting to be uncovered.

God bless:)

The fact that it's mentally taxing and time-consuming means that it's likely working exactly as intended!

CBT saved and changed my life when I was at my darkest about six years ago. I've gone through some CBT here and there since then, but a lot of the lessons I learned the first time around have stuck with me and have helped over the years. To my understanding, CBT at its core is ultimately about learning to identify, catch, and fix your distorted thinking as it's occurring. This can be quite uncomfortable and exhausting at times, but it's 100% worth it in the end.

Also, if you aren't clicking with your therapist, find a new one! If you don't click with them, try another. That's not to say that you haven't found a great one already - just don't get discouraged if you don't feel like you mesh well. That's just part of the process, and therapists truly want clients they think are the best for each other.

Finally, I would really encourage you to stick with it for at least 8 sessions. It's tough but it's worth it if you really need it! (Although, I firmly believe that anybody could benefit from CBT - even perfectly healthy people who don't have any mood disorders.)

If you're looking to learn more about CBT and maybe try out some therapy in conjunction with what you're doing with your counselor, I would highly recommend The Feeling Good Handbook. This book is all about working through CBT on your own and provides a ton of extremely helpful exercises and overall informs you very well on the whole process. Keep in mind it's best used in conjunction with an actual therapist, especially if you're going through an episode of particularly bad depression or anxiety.

Welp, this ended up being a lot longer than I expected - I guess that's because CBT is very important to me, scientifically proven to work very very well, and I'm super excited for you to begin your journey with it. Keep at it, friend! In any case, good luck with your endeavors, and feel free to ask if you have any other questions. :)

I would love to experiment with GHB.

The history of GHB is one that has always interested me. It was sold without problem as a nootropic in health food shops before being banned (unfairly in my mind) as a date rape drug by the Clinton administration. Obviously be sensible, as others have pointed out you don't want to become addicted.

For various reasons I would love to experiment with GHB.

• Is an antidepressant
  
  
• Is a nootropic
  
  
• Is a sleep aid
  
  
• Increases muscle mass
  
  Here is [a post] (https://redd.it/3b81l4) I made a couple of years ago. I'll clean it up, and add a few more comments if I am more functional tomorrow but I wanted to let you know I think GHB is well worth researching:
  
  –––
  I have suffered from insomnia all my life (either that or sleeping for 22 hours straight). It has had a major impact on my life. One interesting book I found on the subject is Insomniac
  by Gayle Greene, a professor of literature and women’s studies at Scripps College.
  
  
  >I can't work, I can't think, I can't connect with anyone anymore. . . . I mope through a day's work and haven't had a promotion in years. . . . It's like I'm being sucked dry, eaten away, swallowed up, coming unglued. . . . These are voices of a few of the tens of millions who suffer from chronic insomnia. In this revelatory book, Gayle Greene offers a uniquely comprehensive account of this devastating and little-understood condition. She has traveled the world in a quest for answers, interviewing neurologists, sleep researchers, doctors, psychotherapists, and insomniacs of all sorts. What comes of her extraordinary journey is an up-to-date account of what is known about insomnia, providing the information every insomniac needs to know to make intelligent choices among medications and therapies. Insomniac is at once a field guide through the hidden terrain inhabited by insomniacs and a book of consolations for anyone who has struggled with this affliction that has long been trivialized and neglected. – source (amazon.com)
  
   
  
  She also has a blog, www.sleepstarved.org containing information for the sleep-deprived.
  
  You can read an excerpt of the book [here] (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/the-wretched-life-of-the-insomniac/).
  
   
  
  In my younger years I had great deal of difficulty falling asleep. Now I fall asleep easily enough but wake at ridiculously early hours – this morning I was up at 2:30am. Anyone have any solutions?
  
   
  
  Edit: One interesting idea to come out of Greene's book was that if bipolar is a spectrum disorder, sleep disturbances may be on the tail end of the spectrum. As a child I drove my parents crazy staying awake at all hours. Now I rather fear that sleep deprivation is making me crazy : (
  
  Another mention Greene makes is of GHB, the only efficacious medication she found. It is purportedly also a potent antidepressant. I used to buy it over the counter to use as a sleep aid (I had no knowledge and no interest in using it recreationally) It was a godsend. Sadly now it is illegal (possibly Greene suggests to protect the lucrative sleep medication market) Used therapeutically, the drug was such a game-changer, in the past I toyed with the idea of a) learning to manufacture my own GHB from scratch or b) emigrating permanently to a country where GHB it is still legal. Has anyone else had any experience (non-recreational) with GHB.
  
   
  
  Edit 2: A review of GHB: The Natural Mood Enhancer
  by Ward Dean, M.D., et al.
  
  http://ceri.com/rev-ghb.htm
  
  From the review:
  
  >Many readers will be familiar with GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate) from articles previously published in Smart Drug News. Many readers may have read the book Better Sex Through Chemistry by John Morgenthaler and Dan Joy, which contained a large and comprehensive overview of the use of GHB as a prosexual compound. Given such exposure, a great many Smart Life News subscribers may be tempted to regard this new book on GHB as redundant. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
  >
  >The authors certainly cover all the pertinent nuts-and-bolts issues of GHB usage. They discuss numerous indications for GHB, including narcolepsy, depression and relaxation. They provide an in-depth review of the scientific literature on GHB’s use in treating drug and alcohol withdrawal and addiction. They also discuss GHB’s ability to stimulate human growth hormone (hGH). One application I found of particular interest is GHB’s use in women to facilitatate labor and childbirth. This use truly speaks to the truth about GHB’s safety.
  >
  >For the record, I have used GHB as a sleep aid and as a prosexual supplement. In both cases, I have found the substance to be effective and safe. After hundreds of doses, large and small, I’ve not a single complaint. I have personally compared notes on the use of GHB with dozens of people and have referred thousands to a variety of sources for the product.
  
  Edit 3: You can get a flavor of Gayle Greene's take on GHB using Google's search inside a book function. For some reason I can't link directly but if you click on the [top link a simple search provides] (
  http://www.google.com/search?q="Gayle+Greene"+GHB) they will take you there
  
  Edit 4: GHB: The First Authentic Antidepressant An article about GHB's use as an antidepressant.
  
  > GHB is a remarkable molecule because it can suppress depressive ideation and anxiety, sometimes within less than 30 minutes. It also seems to be immediately active on the most severe and treatment-resistant forms of depression. Because of such remarkable properties I jokingly used to call GHB "Or Potable", which means "drinkable gold" in French! Indeed a molecule which can block your depression and suicidal ideas, anxiety, etc, in such an efficient way is as precious as gold because it can save your life. GHB saved my own life many times when all other antidepressants failed. For years I suffered of depressive episodes which did not react to conventional "antidepressants". Why? Because, in fact, most antidepressants (an antidepressant is also called a thymoanaleptic, which is a molecule that stimulates mood) are not really "antidepressants" per se but thymoanaesthetics. A thymoanaesthetic is a molecule which anaesthetises emotions and which thus blunts feelings. For instance, if you give "antidepressants" to, say, two lovers together, you will notice that their love feelings towards one another become anesthesised, blunted. Clearly, a molecule which blunts rewarding emotions is definitely not an authentic antidepressant but rather a "mind Xylocaine" (xylocaine is an anesthesiser). A thymoanaesthetic takes away a part of your personality and makes you a bit similar to people suffering from negative schizophrenia. On the contrary if you administer gamma-hydroxybutyrate to a pair of lovers you will notice that it will enhance their love feelings because it stimulates sociability.

I would recommend a high quality Omega 3 supplement as most "standard American diets" have too much Omega 6s and too little Omega 3s. Look up Steve Ilardi on YouTube, he talks about a program called Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes for Depression that involves sun/bright light exposure, vitamin D supplementation, supplementation with Omega 3s, and fostering social connections. I would recommend his book/audiobook titled The Depression Cure (iffy title TBH) but if you watch the lecture posted above you'll get the gist of what he talks about in the book. I know that my attempt at incorporating the aforementioned changes has helped me with my day to day moods and overall wellbeing. I have also started supplementing SAM-E Examine.com and have noticed improvement in my energy and ability to focus (more than Adderall even, which surprised me).

I've also been (loosely) following an intermittent fasting eating schedule and find it's much easier when I'm limiting processed foods/sugars and choosing high protein/high fat meals. Some days when I fast I feel so much more alive and alert, it's really quite interesting and something I intend to experiment with further. There's lots of interesting research out there regarding intermittent fasting/"time-restricted eating" and diets like low carb/keto/elimination/carnivore and their effects on mental and physical health.

As others have mentioned, have your thyroid function checked (TSH), check for anemia (CBC with or without differential; a differential evaluates the levels of various white blood cells that may indicate an acute or chronic infection/disorder), vitamin D levels (kind of an expensive test FYI), testosterone levels if male (also likely pricey). Testing for other vitamin/mineral deficiencies could get pricey. Look into self-order labs through companies like Quest Diagnostics or Lab Corp, you may be able to find decent pricing vs going through a doctor/insurance.

Depression is quite a slog, just know that there is always a negative and a positive side to your day to day choices and try to make the choice that imparts positivity. Each positive choice builds upon each other and snowballs (just like negative choices can lead to negative trends/outcomes).

I wish you the best in your journey towards peace, good health and contentment!

I understand. This suggestion might seem crazy, but I really implore you to check out the organ supplements (grass fed, freeze dried cow and lamb organ meats) by Ancestral Supplements. Even with a good diet, exercise, yada yada, organ meats are a nutritional powerhouse. As long as you're ok with eating animal products, I can't say enough about these. I myself am mostly plant-based, but I recognize that these organ meats are the greatest multivitamin one could ever take. I have had a severe chronic illness for many years and their products help and rather quickly (just start slow!!). Liver is recommended as the first one to try and you can read all about it here. Im happy to talk to you more about it (same goes for anyone else reading this). It's not about one diet being better over the other, its about nourishing our bodies with nutrition.

​

Check it out, super informative site - https://ancestralsupplements.com/desiccated-liver

Order on Amazon. Peep the incredible reviews. Best wishes. https://www.amazon.com/Ancestral-Supplements-Grass-Liver-Desiccated/dp/B01MSBZYQW

you need to listen to the below comments , if you have this problem go see your doctor, is really important. But if you want to stop taking it then that is great but be sure to be controlled by your doctor. After that start working on yourself, you can cure this shit without any medical help, i would strongly recommend to you this book ''https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748 '' where you can find out why this is happening and how to stop it naturally. For me it was morning ritual, meditation, yoga, kickboxing, pushing yourself to the limit, have you meaning in what is happening . As well great book to anchor your day is Miracle Morning.

it depend on you if you want to take the easy way ( prozac) or the hard way ( working on yourself ) that will create character and life without depression

They did, however, that was a year and a half ago with no updates since, and it seemed more like a business move rather than anything else IMO. NSI failed to reach statistical significance in the primary endpoint, namely the clinician-rated scale MADRS. Earlier this year they also announced that they're expanding their pipeline. By all accounts, though they haven't explicitly stated so, it seems clear to me that they're not pushing it forward for MDD.

It's an interesting case, I was really hoping NSI would succeed as it seemed to have the potential to do, the self-rated scales don't lie, people actually felt better and stayed better until the last follow-up. Neuralstem made a good point about the MADRS and HAMD scale being 4-decade old scales designed primarily with tricyclics in mind, and they also do not capture atypical symptoms of MDD. It does seem a bit silly testing such a novel drug with ancient scales, and perhaps it would have succeeded otherwise.

I took it for about 2 weeks and it gave me severe neuropathic pain in my foot. I was almost limping around for a few days. You made a good point about these shady Chinese sources. On the other hand, most of the synthetic nootropics people are taking are synthesized in China.

I'm going into my 4th year of a Pharmacology degree, and I have been seriously thinking about going into mental health, precisely due to the reasons you stated. It's clear that our current understanding of depression is lackluster, and our treatments are really poor. I think there's so much potential for discovery and improvement in this field, and the movement has already started with the likes of esketamine, and the large number of new compounds currently in clinical trials (the article that I linked in my previous reply), many of which work through novel mechanisms.

Check out the highly influential study by Irving Kirsch in 2008: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18303940/

This book is on my list as it seems to be a very comprehensive resource: https://www.amazon.com/New-Mind-Body-Science-Depression/dp/0393706664

Revitalising monoamine oxidase inhibitors: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cns-spectrums/article/revitalizing-monoamine-oxidase-inhibitors-a-call-for-action/32497C0FE4F08D0D4C07E6350A91B0EE

This happens to me every month or so (at least). my hair is straight and thick but I think my lil system I came up with will work for any hair type.

Materials:

• OGX conditioner - the blue Argon Oil one
  
  
• The Wet Brush. Doesn’t hurt nearly as bad when brushing out knots and is easier on your hair.
  
  
• any hair oil. I use Marrakesh oil with hemp and argon.
  
  
• any leave-in conditioner
  
  

1. Put oil throughout hair and focus on the knots
   
2. Put conditioner throughout hair- again focus on the knots.
   
3. Let products sit for awhile. I’ll usually take a nice relaxing bath while my hair is marinating in oil and conditioner lol
   
4. Shower. Shampoo your scalp and rinse out the oil/conditioner. After everything is rinsed out, use the conditioner again the same way you did in step 2. While the conditioner is in your hair, you can use the Wet Brush to start brushing some out.
   
5. After 10min, rinse out the conditioner and make sure it is ALL out.
   
6. Towel dry hair
   
7. Put leave-in conditioner allllll over your hair and massage it in
   
8. Use the hair oil again on your ends and in the knots.
   
9. Start brushin. Start brushing from the ends and work your way up- it’s much easier. Sometimes I rub some of the hair oil on the tips of my brush to give a lil more lubrication to it lol. You can keep applying oil as needed.
   
   You may have to shower one more time if you used a lot of oil and/or if your hair looks greasy
   
   I hope I helped!!!! It’s definitely an undertaking and this is what I use every single time!!!!

It is safe and healthy. If GABAergics help you then it will as well. Personally I think Ashwagandha is a better supplement overall because it is an adaoptogen.

My recommendation regarding lithium orotate was not that you should stop. I said you should only use it with medical supervision. To be clearer (as I realize I was not) - get a blood test to determine your lithium levels. Even if you don't currently have side effects from it, it would be very prudent.

That being said, if you have good reason to believe your issues are caused by nerve damage, then raising nerve growth factor would make sense.

Most cost effective way to do this is with near-infrared light therapy.
https://selfhacked.com/blog/my-review-of-lllt/

Probiotics are also useful (especially if you have digestive issues). I recommend a fiber supplement with this as well.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AH3RT9Y/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Not the answer you're looking for, but I think I do, but I also can't confidently say probiotics are the sole reason for my wellness:

I generally feel better on probiotics, but maybe it's because when I'm well enough to remember to take probiotics, I'm also doing other good things for my health (exercise, eating healthy, meditation, other supplements, the universe aligning in such a fashion that my brain has just decided on its own to be less depressed).

It's not cheap, but I use this product.

This is a bit dense but if you want a summary of actual evidence, including some strains, it's helpful.

do you have some money to spend? SAM-e is a pretty safe supplement and starts working within two weeks. any kind that comes in a blister pack works. drs best is usually good value for the price https://www.amazon.com/Doctors-Best-Support-Enteric-Tablets/dp/B0011FTJZ0 take one in the morning and one before lunch, on an empty stomach. if you tolerate it well increase to 2 per dose, if you get stomach upset, back down


EDIT: don't take it if you are on SSRIs or are bipolar

TL;DR: Try adding niacin and lithium orotate, and look into tDCS or even TMS.

I can relate to what you're going through. I've been on Wellbutrin (300mg/daily) for the past 9 years, and I know it helps raise the lower floor of my depression. (I know this because, at the end of a 6-month hiatus to see if it was having any effect, I was worse than my worst days 20 years ago.) But it doesn't seem to do a whole lot more than that for me. I'm also on Vyvanse (40mg) for ADD, which it seems to help, but even though its a stimulant, it doesn't have much of a stimulatory effect on me. (This was true on a prescription for Adderall, as well; often were the times I'd take an Adderal with my morning vitamins and Wellbutrin and just go back to sleep for a few more hours.).

In addition to Wellbutrin and Vyvanse, here's what I've done or am doing that has helped incrementally with each addition. Your mileage may vary:

• B12 (10,000mcg sublingual)
  
• Caffeine (200mg in morning and afternoon)
  
• Garden of Life Mood+ Probiotics
  
• Phenibut (750mg, followed by 500mg 4-8 hours later)^1
  
• Niacin (500mg 4x/day)^2
  
• Lithium Orotate (5mg/day)^3
  
• tDCS: DLPFC F3+ and Supra Orbital Fp2- at 2mA for 20 min^4
  
  ^1 Phenibut: only on days when the barometer is dropping appreciably below mean sea-level atmospheric pressure. I'm serious.
  
  ^2 Niacin: I learned of this one in this subreddit, I think. I titrated up to 2,000mg/day over the course of a week, and I try to take it with food in my stomach. But it has to be the regular niacin that causes the flushing the first week or so until your body is used to it, not the "extended release" or "no-flush" varieties.
  
  ^3 I only recently learned this is available as a mineral supplement. Anecdotally, 5mg is about what you get from lithium occurring naturally in some well-water supplies. My psychiatrist said 5mg isn't even one percent of the amount they give people to stabilize them in a clinical setting, but he also said I was welcome to try it if I wanted. I've only been on this for a week and a half and it may only be helping me sleep, but at least that.
  
  ^4 Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Did my research, including lurking on /r/tDCS, ended up getting that SSD model I linked to above. My psychiatrist wants me to look into whether Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) would be covered by my insurance (for example, from one of these places), and I said I would, but I first wanted to try this lower-cost, easier-to-implement method of tDCS -- since they are related therapies and target the same neuron areas of the brain, basically. He told me to go ahead and give it a try.
  
  I have to say the last week, with the lithium and the tDCS, has felt mostly different for me. I think it's everything on the list, cumulatively, probably, but it feels especially like it could be the tDCS making the bigger difference, which I've only been doing for a week now. The device could be little more than a "Placebometer 3000," but I know that I tried a lower amperage (1mA) on Sunday and then tried a different montage (placement of electrodes) on Monday, and neither one seemed to be as effective, but today, returning to the initial one I listed above, I feel back on track.

I would definitely try to get at least one comfy not-bed piece of furniture — if you can’t afford new, then check Craigslist and garage sales or ask friends or family members. Just one comfy armchair so you can do stuff indoor relaxing while Not In Bed (this will also do good things for your sleep, and make you feel better about not being bedbound all the time)

My personal trick for this when I was living somewhere that had no living room was to just buy a big cheap reclining folding lawnchair — the long lounge style, with a blanket over it. Worked as well as a couch for me, and kept me out of my bed while still in my bedroom.

When I was at my absolute most depressed/immobile/agoraphobic, I decided to try attaching something healthy to the things I was already doing all the time.

I did gentle stuff like walking in place while I binge-watched Netflix, used little hand weights in a chair, etc. Eventually I bought one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0016BQFSS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mH-WCb9KG8PAQ

And a little stationary bike off of Craigslist. Those helped a lot since getting out to a gym was too overwhelming.

I know the cold is brutal there, but if you can — pick a nearby “hangout” and walk there, just for an hour a day. Starbucks or a library or diner.

The natural light thing is big. Get a sun lamp/mood lamp if you don't get a lot of natural light at home or work. I take meds - I am on the severe end, and meds get me about 85% of the way to normal, but the above tips definitely help with the other 15%. A sun lamp makes all the difference in the world in the wintertime when there's not a lot of daylight and most days are grey anyway. This is the one I use.

I’ve read that antibiotics are not good for fungal infections. I found an antifungal treatment on Amazon...wondering if it’s any good.

Dr Tobias Candida Support - Extra Strength Candida Cleanse - with Herbs & Enzymes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YCPY87U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_x.FXCbMEFQW2X