Hello, you are a depressed man. You have searched the internet for “tips and tricks” to alleviate your depression, and you found out that most of them suck! They kinda seem like they were written for women, right? Recommending knitting and all that, yes? “That dog don’t hunt,” as Dr. Phil would say. On top of that, the meds aren’t working, talking to your friends isn’t working, and you really want to quit your therapist but you’d kinda feel guilty, right? I hear ya. You must feel pretty fed up.
Well shit, it’s your lucky day.
I have a top ten list for you that might be helpful, bro. It is ways I have figured out how to combat a lifelong affliction with a phenomenon I commonly referred to as “Depression.” I don’t actually think I had an illness called “depression,” nor do I think that many people actually have this “disease,” but suffice to say I spent a lot of time in my life as a “sad sack of shit.” Along the way, I generated some strategies that worked for me and seem to work for other men. I am confident they could be helpful for women too, but might not be presented in a way they find as palatable. Who knows? I’ve never “tested” these at all except on myself, and they have most often been delivered by me to other men who have reported good results. So it’s made for men, but open to everyone. If not for you, send them to somebody who might benefit.
It’s a list, people like lists, so I want to get right into it this week. As such, I will keep the intro as short as I can and get to the good stuff. Just have a few more housekeeping items.
I have been a “depressed” person since I was 12 years old. Most of my current opinions on Depression, Mental Health Care, the Pharmaceutical Industry, etc., come from my own experiences dealing with depression, and the many repeated failures I endured in the context of the “medical model” of western psychiatric care. This model is fixated on seeking diagnoses, figuring out which combination of antidepressants (and sometimes antipsychotics) work best for you, tinkering with your dosages, swapping therapists and psychiatrists until you find one that shares your “treatment philosophy,” and generally just buying in wholesale to the belief that you can only treat but never cure this terrible “depression.” Ultimately this approach helped me very little. In fact, en masse, I would say it made me sicker. I would also say that it makes most people sicker.
I have only found freedom from this medical paradigm recently when, four years ago at the age of 33, I made the executive decision to stop believing in most of it. There is a lot of evidence in both directions - both for and against this approach - but I found overall the combination of most of the evidence as well as my personal experiences convinced me that it was mostly bullshit. So, I made the hard shift. I decided a thing that most people believe in was not real. I don’t think the Serotonin-Mood Hypothesis is real. I don’t think therapy should be an endless engagement with no endpoint. I don’t think our current system values recovery, and in fact most practitioners sub-consciously or overtly want you to stay sick. This was my choice. Could go either way, I picked a side. I made my decision.
Such a decision always comes with certain social vulnerabilities, which is why I feel more comfortable sharing it here than with my friends. When I have shared my views at dinner parties and movie nights, reactions have ranged from icy to outright hostile. Sometimes people on antidepressants get really pissed if you don’t think they work. Which I always find kind of weird, because usually I only take things personally enough to become enraged by them when I am at dummy-huge levels of depression. But whatever - if it helps, it helps. Sometimes they do help. I don’t think they help as much as the marketing would have you think, but a lot of people say they help. Cool. They didn’t help me, they don’t help a lot of people I know. This list is for them. If you can’t stop smiling because you suck down your tablets of Effexor everyday and scream at people who don’t agree with you, then good on you. Keep living your best life through chemistry.
I really did want to make this intro short, let me wrap it up so we can get to the list.
Deciding that I no longer believed in this model was a huge shift for me, especially because - in my professional life - I served for close to 15 years as a very important cog in the psychiatry machine. Even more humiliating, I was widely known among my colleagues as having the advanced skill of convincing “treatment resistant” patients to take their meds. I had what they called “the magic touch.” I was what I now call “a pusher.” Either way, I was leaned into this role completely for the time I was devoted to it. Both inside of work and out, I stood for “mental health” above all else. With one limited exception - I personally hated my life. No matter - I’ll just keep doing “advocacy” and eventually I’m sure I’ll be happy.
I had to first overcome the egoic revulsion of rejecting the thing that most defined me, especially if it is still (to some extent) what puts food on the table. Nevertheless, the truth eventually won out over the comfort like it always does. Yes, I had devoted my career to this thing, and yes, I think it is mostly bullshit. My personal sense of my own value was very strongly wrapped up in this identity, and my usefulness to society mostly came to my specific training/expertise in the area of psychiatric care. Perhaps it is this training that leads me now to provide just a small disclaimer before we begin.
Pre-Disclaimer: Most of what people call “Depression” nowadays would more accurately be named “Mild or Moderate Depression” or “Dysthymia.” I have problems with these terms, but for the purposes of this piece, they work fine to describe my intended audience: these strategies are intended for those who feel generally sad and unmotivated and disconnected. I believe that the approaches I describe below will work as well or even better for depression than most antidepressants will. I also believe that the side-effects of most anti-depressants are not worth the small boost in mood that you might get in return. No matter what your opinion is, I humbly recommend at least reading through them to see if they help. Don’t worry - I won't just be telling you to listen to music and lift weights like the rest of these lists do, so your effort won’t be redundant. As always, your own mileage may vary, you proceed at your own risk.
Okay, not sure why I needed to say all that. Here is the actual disclaimer:
Disclaimer: I have treated extremely depressed individuals, suicidal individuals, individuals so depressed they could not get out of bed or remember their spouses’ first name. If you are a person like this - a person whose brain is either telling you to kill yourself or whose brain is telling you nothing at all - this post is most definitely not intended for you (and also you’re probably not reading this anyway because you are extremely fucked up right now). If you are either of these things, you probably belong to a group of individuals who suffer from what I believe is actual, medical, biological, capital “D,” Depression. You still won’t get a good explanation from me, or really anyone, for what is going on in your brain, but I most strongly recommend that you take whatever medications or treatments they give you. Those interventions are actually made for your situation, and no amount of side effects would make it “not worth it” if it helps you to get some insight and step back from the proverbial edge. The providers treating you are going to try a few different meds to see which one is going to make you stop wanting to kill yourself every day. Let me be clear - this “list” that I am presenting is in no way meant to replace the advice of your attending provider or therapist. You have to maintain a reasonable suspicion of the possibility that I am a complete idiot and have no idea what I’m talking about. I am not a doctor, I am certainly not your doctor. Again: Your mileage may vary, you proceed at your own risk.
Okay this is getting ridiculous, I need to get to the meat of it. This is starting to be like those recipe websites where you have to scroll forever to get to the damn ingredients.
Sub-Disclaimer: If you read the above description and reflexively placed yourself in that category (i.e. “oh no I totally have MAJOR depression, this bullshit won’t help me. I’m like HYPER-depressed. Today I could barely even remember where I put my keys.”), just stop for a moment and ask yourself these questions:
Are you actively looking for ways to kill yourself?
Are you able to pay attention to these sentences without being repeatedly sucked back in to your private vortex of pain and suffering?
Are you even able to pay attention to this at all?
If you answered no to one or more of these, go get professional help. If the need to hurt or kill yourself feels urgent, especially if you are thinking about the exact ways you would do it, please just call 911 right now. You can blame it on me. Just tell them a “blog” told you to get help for your suicidality and an ambulance will be there pronto. Who gives a shit what it costs or what anyone thinks or if you “don’t have any vacations days left this quarter.” Just call them and ask for help.
If not, then you might benefit from reading what I have to say here. Which I will be getting to in just a few more moments!
Post-Disclaimer: Most of the advice on the internet for how to relieve depression is a repetition of the same useless shit you’ve been reading your whole life: it’s vague, it’s unrealistic, it has too many ads, it makes you feel bad for not even trying most of the things, and most importantly - it’s hasn’t ever worked! I don’t blame you for feeling like giving up after reading sites like those because most of the things they tell you to try would only work on someone who has an extremely low-level of personal insight. My two favorite suggestion that I see all the time on these sites is to “drink more water” and “have a relaxing night of self care.” Usually this is accompanied by a picture of someone in a bubble bath. This “tip” is literally suggesting that you wallow in your misery.
If your depression is resolved by a bubble bath, then you do not have MAJOR DEPRESSION. You have a “bad day.” By all means, enjoy a bubble bath - but don’t eat the bath salts! And also stop sucking the air out of the room for the rest of us.
My list offers some different ideas, some of them will work great, some of them won’t, but none of them will work if you sit here and expect the reading of these tips alone to make you feel better. So get up off your shlubby depressed ass and do a few of these. If they don’t work, if you think they’re moronic, if you’re offended by them - FINE. Let me know in the comments.
Alright, I did a really bad job with the “short intro” thing. I’m sorry. Let’s dive in. But first (I know I’m sorry I can’t stop) but FIRST, if you haven’t already - would you mind subscribing? I usually post twice a week. I was going to put a paywall here but I didn’t as it felt pretty “uncool” to deprive people of things that could make their life better.
10 Ways To Stop Being “Depressed,” or whatever you are:
Stop thinking about yourself as “depressed.” A huge thing probably going on behind the scenes in your brain is that you are “implementing” your vision of you as a depressed person. “The tail is wagging the dog,” as it were, and you are subtly making room for boundaries to be drawn around the possibilities of who you are. You feel like shit, you are sad, you hate yourself, you want to be alone - FINE. But plenty of people do plenty of fun, engaging, and useful things when they don’t feel their best. If you continue to think of yourself as “depressed,” then before you know it, you will no longer be able to go back to the idea of yourself as just “feeling like shit” today/this week/this month, etc.
Even if you have dipped into this identity, don’t submerge. Keep always in your back pocket the idea that you are just “going through something” right now and will eventually bounce back. You absolutely do not want “depression” to become part of your identity because it sticks like super glue and soon you will convince yourself that it’s the most interesting thing about you (it’s not, it sucks to be around. It’s not your fault, but I’m being honest with you. People prefer you when you’re funny and droning on about your weird Epstein theories. Remember: depression is something you should want to fight, not take on as an identity. Don’t give into the propaganda.
There are lots of losers and whiners out there who want to call depression “just a part of who they are.” This is absurd and infuriating - feeling depressed feels like absolute shit. No serious person would want to wear that shit like a badge of honor, you want to rip the badge off and throw it into a river. To anyone who has experienced it, you know that this “Depression as Identity” thing is about as ridiculous as someone whose shirt catches on fire while cooking salmon and instead of doing the stop drop and roll thing, they instead turn to you and say, “well - looks like I’m one of those “on fire” people now. It’s just part of who I am as a person. Let’s fight the stigma against burning people!” Don’t buy it. Dump the proverbial vase of water over your head the moment you catch fire.
Give up on the advice that hasn’t worked and move onto something else. Stop trying to journal. You’re not gonna suddenly pick up journaling at 31 years old. Stop trying. Save money, save paper, save your time. Move on. Start thinking about coping skills and distractions that you will actually do. If you’re a person who is lazy and disorganized at baseline, then you’re not going to suddenly stop being that way when you’re depressed - especially at the outset. Can’t write in a journal? Fine - how about recording some audio journals on your phone? How about writing down one sentence a day? How about throwing away this notion of journaling altogether and trying something else. Journaling is one of those things that you’re supposed to be doing, and then when you can’t hack it for more than three days, you suddenly use it as proof of why you’re “never gonna get better.” Fuck it! Fuck journaling!
Are you a music guy? How about listening to an album and doing some weird little free-form sketches with a graphite pencil for each song. Do you like video games? Go to Google and type in “my favorite game to play when I’m feeling really depressed.” Here, here’s the top result: Elude. I don’t know, game looks dumb to me but maybe that’s your thing. It’s free so why not. You can do a million different things other than journal, but if you’re stuck on the idea that you ought to be journaling, figure out a way you can what journaling tries to achieve. Journaling is a way to organize your thoughts to make them seem less chaotic and more manageable. For my money, you can do the same thing by making a bulleted list on a dry erase board every day. Record a video of you talking about how stupid and shitty your day was. It’s better than not doing something at all.
I personally hate journaling. But I’m not bad with writing notes. So what did I do? I started writing a short sticky note with every miserable memory or interesting thought I had and just started sticking them on my bedroom wall. By the time I was recovered, I just tore them all down and threw them away. They served a purpose. You don’t need a memoir, you need to feel better. You don’t need a moleskin, you need a $1.25 legal pad. Hemingway liked moleskins and look what happened to him - he blew his brains out by pulling the trigger of a shotgun with his toe. Talk about triggering! Ha! Come on, it’s a joke! You can take it! After all, you’re not dying! Which leads me to my next point:
Stop treating yourself like you are a person who is dying. Start treating yourself like you are a stupid little toddler. A dying person gets all the treats they want because it won’t make a difference and they should feel as comfortable as they can before they have to go. This is not you. You do not have terminal cancer. You don’t get to eat a whole sleeve of Mint Oreos. You don’t get to sleep in as late as you want. You don’t get to beg your ex for “one last go.” Right now you are not like someone who is dying, you are more like someone who was born two years ago. You are crying and screaming and fucking around with your toys and - even though you’re a perfect little angel - you need some structure. Baby boy needs to get his ass out of bed. Little boy needs to eat some healthy num nums. Mommy’s little angel needs to go outside and play.
Your depressed mind thinks you need comfort and pleasure right now and let me tell you - you do NOT. Trust me on this one, I spent the first three decades of my life running away from discipline and values and running toward comfort and relief. Finally I realized that I was holding a daily funeral for myself inside my head, and running around like a fat little toddler outside my head. You need some limitations, mister! Start setting your clock and dragging yourself out of bed. Write a list of what you need to do today/this week/this month. You’re gonna fucking hate it. You’re going to resent it. You’re going to sob and whine and beg for snackies and cuddles. But guess what - the less you give in to “Little Billy,” the more he behaves. When you can get him to fall into line, you’ll find yourself feeling more effective and less like a useless infantile piece of shit. That right there is probably 1/3 of most “depressions” you see in the wild. Men feeling useless. Stop giving into the brat.
Call a bunch of people you trust and ask them what the most frustrating thing about you is. Write down their answers. Don’t react to them. Don’t get mad. Act like you’re asking about someone who isn’t you. Act like you’re a magazine editor gathering info for an upcoming profile on some depressed asshole with your same name. You are stuck in the hall of mirrors and smoke inside your head and it is almost impossible for you to see yourself as you actually are. Your insight is clouded by narratives and fantasies that you have crafted to protect yourself from the reality of your life. While being someone who knows you doesn’t automatically give them God-tier insight into you, they often see some things about you that are completely locked away in your personal blindspot.
Ask them what changes they would make if they were you, living your life. Ask them what behaviors or things you do that make them feel sad for you. Ask them what they wish you would with your life. If you’re really brave and not just being completely self-indulgent, ask them why they love you. You may be very touched and even humbled to understand the reasons why people love you. One of my best friends told me that they feel relieved whenever they know I’ll be at a party because “it just means the whole night is going to be a lot more fun and a lot easier for me and everyone else.” I almost cried when I heard this. I wasn’t even aware of the level of joy I brought people, I was so fixated on the misery I spent most of my day swallowing into myself. Ask the hard questions! Really take time thinking about the answers. Thank them for their honesty.
When your thoughts get really dark and depressed, immediately do the following: turn on music so that you can hear it throughout your home, pick up all of your laundry off the floor and put it in the hamper, do all of your dishes and put them away, take a shower, complete one project in your living space that you have been putting off. Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club author) wrote this piece years ago that I think has since fallen into internet obscurity. Like what I’m writing here, it didn’t fall within the favored confines of cadence and themes of most internet writing, so it didn’t get much play after 2008. But it is simple and brilliant. He talks about his own battle with suicidal thoughts, and that any time he really gets into these dark places, he decides to go ahead and “plan his suicide.” He fully commits to going through with it. And since he has fully committed, he wants to do it right. And since he wants to do it right, no way is he going to let people find his body hanging from the ceiling in this filth. So he mops, vacuums, cleans his sheets, dusts the blinds, rearranges his furniture, cleans his body, etc. etc. etc. As you might be able to guess, by the end of it he feels a whole lot better and decides to put it off til tomorrow. Rinse and repeat.
Eckhart Tolle wrote a book called “The Power of Now.” It’s one of those books that people tell you changed their life. It’s about being like…in the now…and shit. I’m sure it’s fine. In fact, it’s probably the thing all of us should be doing. But let’s tap into the power of something more remedial right now. The “Now” is a big ass thing to sink our teeth into. How about the power of not seeing a pile of dishes with dried lentils stuck to them in your sink? How about the power of crawling into a clean bed? How about the power of washing your balls for the first time in four days? Yeah, I mean it’s not the sort of power that’s going to move mountains, but it certainly will make you feel like a human being instead of a fucking goblin. The first step is to de-goblin yourself. Then we can “focus on the breath” or whatever. Sweep your floor. Clean up the calcified puddled of syrup stuck on the third shelf of your refrigerator. Become human again.
Pick a dumb hobby that you have no interest in. Just pick one. It doesn’t matter. Stop trying to find the perfect hobby. No hobby is going to be “that great” or else it wouldn’t be called a “hobby.” It would be called “art” or “my job” or “a professional sport for which I am paid.” It’s a hobby - it’s something to do when you’ve got nothing else to do but do not wish to fall into an idle bout of gloom and self-loathing. Go to a hobby shop and pick something. Who gives a shit. Make a model Gundam Wing. Learn how to play chess. Go to Meetup.com and join a Gaelic conversational group. When you get there just keep saying “Is duine mé a choimeádann mo chomhairle féin.” According to an online Irish Gaelic translator, this means “I am one who keeps my own counsel.” No one will argue with that!
I don’t want to keep making assumptions about you, all I’m doing is making assumptions based on myself. And as for myself, I needed to get better at being alone. Right now as I write this, I am so pleased to have spent this evening alone. I used to find this agonizing, a complete fucking failure. But not anymore. I trained myself to learn how to be alone to the point that I started to like it. The thing that will help you break through is figuring out a thing that can reliably distract you with notable exceptions of alcohol, drugs, porn, online gambling, and anything else that degrades and erodes your masculinity in exchange for various types of mental and physical orgasms.
Try to think beyond the usual sixth-grader answers for this. Go beyond reading a book, listening to music, or “chilling.” You already know those things and don’t do them when you need to. Try something different, do something you haven’t tried before. Think of something that makes you feel embarrassed and consider why it makes you feel embarrassed. Oh, you’re embarrassed to join a boardgame group? Yeah - that is pretty embarrassing! You know what’s even more embarrassing? Sitting at home and stroking yourself off to a 2016 video of August Ames filmed two days before she killed herself, and then eating a bowl of Golden Grahams in your bed while you search the internet for any new updates on your ex and her husband. Damn, still not divorced. Maybe next year. Anyway, am I hitting close to home yet? I bet you I’m not so far off. Like I said fellas - I’ve been there! I know! You can’t fool me! Go to the fucking board game meetup! Or the model train one. Or the “milk shake sippers of Maine” group. Anything is better than what you’ve been choosing, which is suffering.
Plan something. Doesn’t matter what, just something concrete that you can look forward to. You always need something six months or less to look forward to so that you can talk yourself down when your life feels like an endless loop of boredom and disappointment. The thing is, it is! Even when you hit milestones you’ve been working toward for years, it only feels “triumphant” for like a week. After that, it feels “normal.” It feels like your life. Your life always feels like your life. You’re not a jet-setter, an influencer, and international man of intrigue. You are Jeff. You work at 3M in the newly combined “Compliance and Corporate Stewardship Department.” Your job description sounds pretty good, but really all you do is send emails all day. Congrats, Jeff! You’re a member of the 99% of humans who do soul-incinerating bullshit work all day so that they can eat and pay for their son’s hospital bill when he breaks his femur.
It’s okay, though! Your name is Jeff. Your name is not Lucius Q. VanDerkroft. You do not own a boutique “Home Envisioning” firm in Encinal Bluffs right outside of LA. You live in Steubenville, Ohio, Jeff. You haven’t “always had a passion for helping new homeowners imagine the living space of their dreams.” Not you. You wanted to be a lifeguard when you were growing up. Then you found out that’s not really a job that you can sustain yourself on and also - once again - you live in Steubenville, Ohio. The beach is open for 9 weeks a year. I’m sorry Jeff. You don’t get to be one of those 27 people in the world who “feel excited going to a job I love each and every day.” You don’t run your own artisanal quiche shop or make vintage shoes out of sustainable, locally sourced materials. You are a paper pusher. You don’t look forward to coming to work. So you need to find something else to look forward to. You need to plan a vacation to somewhere warm, or get tickets to a concert, or reserve front row seats to the Monster Truck Show coming to town. Anything, Jeff. Anything to look forward to.
Confront your bullshit in an aggressive manner. I fall just short of saying “bully yourself,” as I know is sort of too spicy of a take that’s also dumb advice. So instead let’s just say “talk to yourself like you’re a little whining bitch" for a few minutes a day. When you hear yourself complain about something you’re disappointed with about your life, go ahead and say “Oh yeah? You’re disappointed? So what are you gonna to do about it?” Say it pretty forcefully to, like you’re drying to back this other guy down. And then listen to the little bitch respond in the “well…actually…it’s not entirely…” and before he can finish answering hit him with it again, same way: “I said - what the FUCK are you gonna do about it?” Watch him squirm and sputter out a response and you’ll quickly see how this dude is really all about complaining. He doesn’t actually want to do anything other than feel sorry for himself and fantasize about a world where people just give him automatic respect for how smart and cool and interesting he is. But the thing is…nobody gives a shit. So once again: “What. Are YOU. Going. To do about it?”
You already know the answer is jack shit. Let him know you know, too. It’s about time we stop letting this rat get away with his little song and dance, don’t you think? Okay, you’re mad that no women will talk to you? Well when’s the last time you shaved your eyebrows. Passed over for a promotion? What about the fact that you have ZERO leadership skills. Are you just going to sit there and wait for the world to discover you or are you going to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Let him have it. If he won’t quit his shit, kick him out of the house until he can tell you a viable improvement plan without mumbling.
Seriously consider make a bombastic change to your life. Radical freedom, etc. Riddle me this: if your life is so meaningful, and terrible, and disappointing, then…why don’t you make a big change? Why not switch careers? Live on a boat for a year or castrate bison in Montana. What is your explanation for that? Let’s hear it. Unless you would be putting your family in physical, economic, or social danger, why are you not switching your life up? Why are you not moving to a beach town or applying for a consulting job you have no idea how to do in Prague?
You see if you are really being honest about just how much your life sucks, and how little you care what even happens to you anymore, then one would assume that you wouldn’t hesitate to shake things up. If your response to that is you “don’t want to lose your health insurance,” or “it’s kind of nice living close to family,” or you “just don’t feel like meeting people all over again,” then lemme ask you the obvious question: how is all that working out for you? If you are so resigned to the fact that your life is irredeemably bad, then that sort of gives you total freedom to do something completely unexpected and different. Again - if you have a family this algorithm is a bit different. But if you don’t - then I ask again: are you really just staying here because you “can’t find an apartment at this price with a garage parking spot anywhere else”? Damn man. That is fucking weak.
Play the waiting game and wait for your moment. I know this is a weird thing to end a top-ten list with, i.e. “try sitting around and waiting.” But I do want you to consider this. Many of us are heavily influenced by the not completely wrong idea that we are “men of destiny.” Our role models growing up were men (both fiction and non-fiction) who altered the course of history by their own sheer will and ingenuity. This idea doesn’t hold as much water anymore out their in the “culture.” But I know that many of you still believe this. What you have to remember is that so many great men were nothing before their moment came along. They were just like you and me. But they waited. They built their skill, cultivated relationships, earned social capital, and hardened their body and mind. And when it was time - they were ready.
You may yet have your moment, somewhere out there in the hazy horizon of the future. Your focus should not be on making that moment happen, it should be on making yourself ready for when it does happen. Your circumstances might be depressing now. But you have no idea how depressing they will be if you spend your whole life sulking and wagering nothing, and then one day seeing your moment fly right by your face and disappear in the distance.
Your moment may never come. Life isn’t a novel about you. But you’d be amazed at the pride you can feel in yourself when you make yourself ready for the moment when you suddenly join the main plot. You are depressed not because you lack value, but because you believe you lack value. Time for you to prove yourself wrong. You just might start to feel like it’s not so bad.
You might just find out you were never depressed. You were just going through some shit, and you’ve moved past it now.