This sounds chemical! Medication helped me, try it!

I take armodafinil. When I won't have to work for money in a few years, I'll still take it, because it allows me to do things I care about.

I think this is a lot like the whole debate around depression: unless you've been affected, you won't understand or know what you're talking about.

Because you're now under a regime of medication, or ...?

And I am glad people are getting help they need. I wish more were.

> All we can do is take our medicines, understand how our mental processes work and act accordingly.

I definitely know that feel. I do think that things will get better socially over time, but perhaps I'm too much an optimist, who knows :)

Sometimes those underlying conditions are brain chemistry though. The pills work for a lot of people. My Bi Polar depression doesn't seem to stem from any trauma or anything. I've done therapy and it did nothing. I've tried exercise, it helps for a short period. I tried diet, seems to help a little. If also tried about 15 different medications before a found a combination that keeps my mood fairly stable.

I almost killed myself before I found the right combination of meds. Meds work for some people we shouldn't be so quick to discourage it.

For some folks this is actually roughly the ailment that they suffer from:

> Anhedonia is a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure.[1] While earlier definitions emphasized the inability to experience pleasure, anhedonia is currently used by researchers to refer to reduced motivation, reduced anticipatory pleasure (wanting), reduced consummatory pleasure (liking), and deficits in reinforcement learning.[2][3][4]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhedonia

I couldn’t even take ibuprofen or daily vitamins at a certain point of being depressed out of fear it would make it worse. There were a few things that helped me calm the storm:

1. Exercise (30 mins elevated heart rate each day)

2. Talk about it (Friends, family, strangers on the internet)

3. Moderation (screen time, work, diet, etc)

4. Read about different philosophies (stoicism, buddhism, taoism, etc)

5. Sleep (Make it a top priority to get the right amount 8+ hrs)

If I was going to be taking meds I would be hoping life becomes a LOT easier, considering the risks to disrupting the body's natural equilibrium. You should be very cautious of any drugs, especially mind-altering that must be taken frequently.

You and almost the rest of HN. I’m uninterested in users of a drug that alters your thinking telling me about other new drugs.

No offense of of course. My point is you are already conditioned that “pills solve problems”.

This is important. When I went on anti-depressants (for pure-o OCD), my intent was to get some breathing room and learn to manage my symptoms better.

I've definitely been able to do that, but it's lead to a few cases of thinking 'hey, I should be able to stop taking these now', which have all gone poorly for me. I think I'm better able to cope now if I don't have access to medication, but I won't be stopping again any time soon, it's too risky for me.

Yes, I meet very many people who take a variety of anti-psychotic meds.

> They go through the rest of their life barely able to grasp new concepts with a drug specifically designed to mute that part of their brain,

This describes a few of them, but not most of them.

I want to add to this a very honest observation:

For many people this is the best path. I see a lot of people often saying they are unnecessary, that natural is best or that they create more problems. But I've realized, for me at least, they are totally necessary. I went off them for about 8 years, thinking natural really is best. All I have to show for it is a lot of white hair from excessive stress. I recently decided to try them again and man for the first time in years I just feel normal. No longer is anxiety the dominating emotion in my head. It's certainly still there-- but I can operate like those around me. I don't get over stressed as easily, and conversations come naturally to me. YMMV but it's worth a shot for some

Could you expand on the ADHD bit? That sounds interesting as its not something I've heard a lot about.

Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. I had a seizure because of medication I was put on for a mental illness I didn't believe I had. I wasn't 18 and my parents essentially forced me to take them. The pills didn't do anything for me besides give me a seizure that easily could've killed me (I was hospitalized).

There's also actual research suggesting these pills can increase suicide attempts.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353604/

There is enormous money to be made suggesting these pills are useful, so I don't just assume it to be true. I also know many other people who feel anti-depressants ruined their lives. I also know many people who feel anti-depressants saved their lives.

It's not black and white. Personally, I feel the efficacy of pills for mental health are greatly exaggerated - but it's easy to see why I might be biased.

I'm sorry the drugs didn't help you, and I'm glad you got better regardless. Please don't talk like drugs helping with social anxiety is absurd on the face of it, because it isn't.

> up until a year ago she had been on 4 different anti-depressants each year. Her doctors would say oh that one isn't working lets try this one and so on.

What would you rather they do? Say "can't be fixed, tough shit?" Say "I don't care that it's not working, you have to keep taking it?"

As long as you keep asking a doctor for solutions, they will keep doing their best to provide one. For some people the first drug tried works; for some people it takes a few tries to find the right one; some people never find a solution. It's not simple and satisfying like we'd prefer, but it's how medicine works. It's how a lot of things work.

I had panic and anxiety a lot, it turned out to be ADHD. My brain wasn't getting enough stimulation from reward and good feelings so it apparently supplemented it with anxiety and bad feelings. It's also where my OCD came from.

Once I started on ADHD meds, all my depression, anxiety, and a lot of OCD just... went away.

So yeah, I also wish more doctors would consider things other than SSRIs.

They often accompany one another. I've had panic attacks in the past, and was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I can't claim that bupropion fixes panic attacks proper, and I'm not a doctor, but it does help me with my depression. (I haven't had a panic attack in a long time.)

It's not a silver bullet; you can still find yourself in mentally stuck states, the difference is the physical side of things seems to be 'gated' at the low end so that your spiraling down isn't as deep as it is before. There's still a lot of work to do to recognize + slow that descent, but it is a tool to help with that.

The individualization of mental health problem misses that there are very likely systemic causes of depression.

I've gone through several severe periods of depression, and at the time it all seemed like something was wrong with me and this is the prevailing narrative. In retrospect all of these were caused by a very real external problem in my life that I didn't see (depressing job, emotionally abusive parents, unhealthy marriage etc).

I have no doubt that had I sought medication in any of these cases I would have been given it. But that would have prevented me from being forced to realize the very real problems in my life.

In a broader perspective there are plenty of wide spread social issues that are very likely legitimately causes depression. The idea of simply medicating this away is akin to simply giving Tylenol to someone who has a abscessed tooth. I'm horrified at the wide adoption of medications (often with adverse side effects) to mask what are very real and legitimate sources of depression.

A better alternative is to openly discuss and challenge the prevailing social issues leading to a mental health crisis.