i think diet is the hardest and the easiest approach to healing..becasue its not a quick fix at all..all the accumulated crap has to be sorted and pushed out before all the other stuff can happen and the body can start to replace what is missing..

Also when I say diet I am referring to what plants we choose to ingest in that diet..such as things like ayahuasca etc to help sustain healthy brain chemistry...I think ayahuasca is a super food. It's not a drug as far as I am concerned..I mean these things can be called drugs in another paradigm..but to me these things are medicines and foods that I incorperate into my diet along with everything else so that I can have the highest functioning body and mind possible. I dont want to just survive I want to freaking thrive.

2 years ago I was basically slowly dying at 24 years old..I was sick and couldnt get up in the morning without feeling like I would puke..my digestion was basically non existant..I was anxious and all this made me depressed..I saw many doctors and really diet was the only thing that helped me..ayahuasca would help temporarily but then Id fuck it all up eating shit again..I had just started to drink. Finally I just went 100% raw..cut out all meats and fish, all dairy, all cultured foods, quit smoking weed daily..cut out coffee..all alcohol..all refined sugars..wheat, all gluten and I now only drink wild spring water that is living and rich in ormus..I wont touch salt other than pure sea salt or rock salts..it took a while to get past the first stage where my body was just pushing out shit and bringing old crap to the surface, but now I can feel my body actaully comming back to life and every single time I drink ayahuasca the effects just build upon the last ceremony becasue my diet is not introducing anything toxic anymore.

of course alot of doctors told me that wouldnt work..shows how much they know..most just spew out the same old crap trying to medicate you with something other than what evolution has provided. The body knows what to do and how to fic itself..it just needs what it needs to run properly. SSRI's can help for a while I am sure, but there is alot of evidence out there suggesting they are toxic over time and shouldnt be a permanent fix. I really believe the body will just do it's thing if it has what it needs to operate all it's system effectivly..and all of that you can find in plants and foods.

I also think we are need of a shamanic paradigm integrated into this society that adverage people can relate to.

I feel the need to tell people this becasue it is a big problem in this society and I was very sick..and I know that I have done more for my health than probly 95% of people in this society..Im confident when I say that that I am not full of shit. if you are sick in any way you should at least be looking at your diet very carefully and making informed choices. if you drink every day that should be an alarm..if you eat pizza every day so should that..same with cigarrettes, too much refined sugars etc..alot of people are allergic to dairy yet refuse to cut it out..all this chronic disease and all these ailments in this society I think can be reduced mostly to one thing..poor diet. In my case Im my own living proof.

I'm not entriely sure. Frontotemporal rings a bell? They say it's not alzheimers I know that much.



I don't think there's much danger of that. I'm a very forgiving individual but I do have some self respect and all though after 6 years I'm quite in need of a relationship, she's not really my kind of people. I've always attracted people quite similar to myself and was quite excited about the prospect of being close with a very different individual as there's an oppotunity to learn so much, but there should be at least some level of mutual respect which in this situation was lacking.

Speaking of natural remedies. One of the best mood lifting combinations I've found is raw cacao combined with St. John's Wort. You'll probably have to take the St. John's for about a week or so before it starts to have significant effect. After that, two table spoons of raw, organic cacao powder in some warm milk (add some sugar or natural sweetner if you wish), along with your typical dose of St. John's is amazing. It is for me anyhow. The down side is that the effects only last for 2 - 3 hours, so you need to have a regimen if you want continuous effects.

The effects I get are: Feeling of well being, mild euphoria, energy and motivation. No side effects that I've noticed and you get to have hot chocolate every day!

-idt

There's been some really good posts in this thread, some great advice that possibly I should try to follow myself at some point.

My personal story is one riddled with depression and discontent that comes in cycles. On some occasions it got very bad, amplified by situations in my life like drug abuse or relationship issues. Three to four years ago (I had been sober for about 3 years prior) it got so bad I was contemplating the best ways of how to kill myself. I was also contemplating finding a doctor to help me, but didn't think it would do me any good. A part of me didn't want to live but luckily another part kept trying to save myself.
One of the strange solutions it came up with was reading really whacky books that just took me out of my *normal* reality and set me in a different one - which actually helped to some degree... but what it really did was point me in the direction of psychedelics which I had abandoned for a more *normal* life. So as a last resort I decided to try the mushrooms I had left in my freezer, and if that didn't work, I was going to give up.
Needless to say, I'm still here and it did work. I had one of the most incredible experiences of my life with about 3-5g of mushrooms. Felt like my head was beating against a wall of self hatred and loathing and deprecation until finally the wall broke and I launched into the cosmo-sphere where I became reconnected to life.

One of the conclusions of this experience was that I had to make some changes, that I had to make an effort to reduce suffering. There are many forms of suffering and I'm certain they can't all be done away with, but some are just downright unnecessary, like clinging to negativity, clinging in general. No single thing abides, but all things flow... This should be remembered when the darkness seems to settle - this too shall pass, so long as we don't clutch it and try to keep it.
Another form of suffering is what we do to ourselves and others through our interactions - the cruelty we seem to deal out so casually, even in the tiny details of our interactions, the flickering of our eyes when we aren't paying attention to the person we are talking to etc.
My experience made me realize or believe (since it's true for me, but it doesn't have to be true for you) that all living things are connected energetically, and all the pain I cause in them is instantly reflected in my own being. In fact all pain that exists will be reflected in my being. My wish is thus to reduce and do away with all UNNECESSARY or AVOIDABLE pain. Not all pain is avoidable, I know this. But much of it is. For this reason I decided to become Vegan because our connection extends to all living creatures in my book, and I just don't want to contribute to the suffering the food industry causes.

Now I can't say my life is perfect and I've been happy ever since. After three years the effect of my cure is starting to fade and I'm feeling unhappy about many things, severely so even. However one thing has changed, and this is the fact that I have never once considered suicide in any way since then. No matter what assails me, I have adopted a life-affirming outlook, and I remember that all things flow...

soulfoood, fractal, I can relate to the things you both are saying so much, it's not even funny. Society is suffering from some kind of mass-pathology and sadly we are all contributing to it in some way because we can't really get out of it and we can't really change it either.
Making the lists sounds like a good idea though. I design projects for myself to keep me going, to keep myself from going insane. But I have no long-term plans. My long term plans are surviving the madness. Without my projects I feel lost, with them I feel like I am myself. And this for me at least is the key. To feel connected to my true self, because with that I can master all the difficulties of this life. So long as I have the true self.
And this again is why conversation with people annoy me so, because often I lose touch with it when I speak to others. Like the waters become muddied and I can't hear its voice... I start hearing myself say things that I find downright awful and make me want to vomit. The true self is the key, but it's hard to keep the connection upright.

I really don't have any advice I guess. Just the comfort perhaps of letting you know that you are not alone - in this - or in general as well. Much love to all here!

Strength and courage!
Enoon

Having insomnia tonight gives me the opportunity to share a little on the topic.

Winter's reared it's cold dark self and with that comes some depression of course. People speak mildly of seasonal depression and often don't take it very seriously. Maybe it's just a facade or a defense mechanism, regardless, I have found seasonal depression to be quite the enemy to happiness, peace and well being. In the past it has been a problem. This is a success story though.
This is a story about the amazing effects of low dose mescaline. 100mgs Mescaline Acetate taken for three days and then every other day for three days eased the transition. A few weeks ago I started to notice my behavior changing as I started seeing the sun less. Minor stresses in my life were becoming more difficult to deal with. Now one week on the other side of those six Mescaline doses and I'm doing much better.
It also helped me to be okay with not going out as much because it's colder out. It's only natural to stay in more often than you would were it a cool comfortable 70 degrees. Being incredibly critical of myself, just layering on the guilt, is an old past time for me. Mescaline helps me take it easy on myself. It has a light touch.
Doesn't do much for insomnia but you can only expect so much out of any one thing.

Thank you Fractal for a very good post. It's unbelievable how some people are dying and complaining about it, and then only eat pizza and chips and sodas and candy and shit. Some people have horrible diets. Eat shit and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes all day and then complain that they don't feel perfect.

Unfortunately I have more experience with depression than I wished was the case. I had always thought depression was an excuse for not 'standing up', dealing with your issues and then moving on to something positive. About 10 years ago I wound up with a cluster of troubles including a cruel boss, sick child and the death of my mother (where I had provided the majority of long term hospice care). It turned out I wasn't invincible after all and I really crashed into a good case of hopelessness and despair.

A doctor helped me pull myself out of that mess. Part of what he did is offer the SSRI paxil and I took it. I started at 20mg/day and he bumped me up to 40mg/day. That drug did not make me feel good but rather felt like it interposed a layer between me and the world. It was almost like I was living someone else's life and that layer of detachment allowed me to be a little less intensely emotional about what was going on. It sort of worked but it's not a 'cure' since it comes with a lot of baggage.

I hate this drug. There are horrible side effects and withdrawal symptoms. I started tinkering with lowering the dose and also tried stopping many times. It is really, really hard to stop. The Big-pharma companies say that these SSRIs are not addictive but that is complete bull-poop. The problem with this mis-information is that the docs tend to believe what the Big-pharma companies say so that many docs are ignorant of the difficulty of stopping SSRIs when the depression subsides. I only know about the SSRI paxil and there are several web forums devoted just to helping people get off paxil (complete with loads of horror stories about those that tried). Withdrawal symptoms include electrical shock sensations, vertigo, rage, confusion, suicidal thoughts...and on and on. It is that bad.

I've tried to stop many times and just couldn't do it. Some enlightened docs say that a long term dose taper over a period of weeks or months is effective, but I just couldn't manage it. As soon as I would get down to 4 or 5 mg/day, I'd 'loose it' with too many withdrawal effects. What I've had to settle for is a steady state dose of ~7mg per day and I'm fine as long as I keep taking that dose. The Big-pharma companies say that paxil doses less than ~20mg/day are not theraputic so either they are correct (and I'm eating placebo every day) or they're full of crap about the drugs they push.

A large part of my motivation to stop paxil revolves around aya. Even though I only take a small amount of SSRI, I'm concerned about MAOI interactions and that has prevented me from the aya experience. I have taken microdoses of capii with daily paxil as a way to test the waters. To be honest, a few grams of capii feels like it might allow me to wean off the paxil and I'm planning to test this idea shortly. If that works it would be helpful to many, many people who struggle to get off SSRIs. That's motivation enough for me to try it. I'll post about this after I figure out a plan.

Anyway, I leave this with a few more thoughts:

a) If you think you might need to start taking SSRIs, talk to your doctor about how he plans to get you off of them at some point. If he seems ignorant or casual about that topic, you might want to find a new doctor.

b) Making lists of things you WANT to do (and then DOING it!) sounds like a great idea. One item to consider for the list is to find a way to help those that are less fortunate than yourself. This works on many levels to benefit you. I wound up working for a wildlife rehabilitator group that cares for wounded and orphaned wildlife. Feeding a baby opossum who wouldn't be alive except for your effort is a 100% reliable way to make you feel better without a drug.

I used to get depression when I was younger. My dad had it strongly to, so there could be a genetic link to some degree, I'm not sure. I think a lot of this came from his childhood...but I do know it had a lot to do with his death. When I was younger it was like a black cloak used to envelop me, and I would have a strong desire to be alone, a dark pit of despair. No light or hope down their, while it lasts anyway. But I liked what Miss Manic Minx said about her ayahuasca revelation...it's JUST a mind state...it isn't you.

I think we all get down sometimes, that's life. And yes SAD syndrome during the winter may afflict us all to some degree. I agree with fractal's post on the importance of diet and life style. "You are what you eat." Hard to express how much wisdom is contained within those few words. I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of SSRI antidepressants. I see how they can help people sometimes, and if so, that's great. But I don't trust them. They will alter your brain chemistry in the long term. I think they should only ever be a last resort. And they are certainly not a magic bullet. My sister gets depression, and she is on an SSRI called citalopram. I'm trying my best to be a good brother to her and get her through this. One of my main objectives is to wean her off these revolting pills. They don't seem to help her, and a few months ago now, she ever tried to OD on them! Surely that's got to be the best evidence going that their effectiveness is definitely open to debate! I'm hoping to wean her off, let her detox and move on to Iboga TPA tincture drops instead. I feel these will build her up and make her stronger rather than smothering the problem over.

As for me, it's still strikes and gutters, ups and downs. But I would say I'm the happiest I've ever been,a nd life continues to open up on more interesting levels. I don't really get deep depression or feelings of despair though. I think this might be since Iboga. I just can't stand to be down in the depths of despair...it's REALLY BORING!! So I can't stay down for long. Iboga seems to have installed a psychological spring board in me, or maybe I'vm just maturing a bit, I'm really not sure. My mum is adamant that these plants/drugs/medicines have changed me, and for the better. Relationships change things...for good or ill. On that note though, give that girl a wide birth man. You deserve so much better than the likes of her. I have met an amazing girl here at uni, she ticks all my boxes and we have a consistently great time together. I know she's keen on me because she has said so, but a relationship isn't feasible right now...maybe in the future. But for me, to feel love for the first ever time, and be denied to act upon it...well it's a pretty hard situation. Just gotta ride it out I guess, be patient.

I'm not sure how helpful any of this is dude, but many people get down in life, it is very common. I really hope you feel better, I really like your presence here, I think seem like a very safe dude, and I hope that if we did know each other you'd be a friend of mine. Keep on truckin' though dude, hope things pick up.

Soulfood, i could have (although not as well) written everything in your orig post except "dont be a dick ed" is what i used to always say to myself. what you mentioned about always smiling i developed from being a really annoying cheeky kid and it would be in jest of whatever someone was talking about. though over time its turned into, i spose, something to cope. to hide from peoples judgements and questions. When im in a situation where i feel uncomfortable, or shy i just smile. but on the inside its a different picture. and i can never express anything because almost all the people i know have a completely different way of thinking and would just brush me off and call me a pussy. nobody really cares enough to ask me relevant questions with substance. it started when i was around 15 too (im 20 now) and i feel like, even if i did improve everything in my life. whats the point? everything in the system i live in goes against ideas that would support my passion for information (life). I dont have the drive to finish what im going on about. and Ive got yet another 13 hour day tomorrow in this shithole of a place. Take care, it gives me comfort that there are people out there with similar problems and feelings as me. pm me sometime if you want to talk about things.

I feel like I need to put a bit of closure on this one.

All this negativity I've been feeling kind of hit a peak at the weekend. All last week I've been pretty much awake until 5am head-butting my pillow out of frustration from not being able to sleep because my head had been completely overloaded with bad thoughts and feelings. Anyway I started using gin to medicate an allowence of sleep. Then all through sunday I pretty much didn't get a moments peace of mind, then it got to about midnight and then I started to say the word "stop" out loud everytime a negative thought entered my head. To reinforce this I made myself smile.

Anyway I watched a few of my favourite shows for a couple of hours to keep my mind from wondering into that area and get me into a more positive headspace. Afterwards I had a small dose of DMT out of my VG, not so it was intense, but just enough for that slight tinting of vision and serene calm. After that I went outside for a cigarette, as on occasion this helps me think. I had this realisation that I've been worrying mostly about things that are out of my control and that I haven't been depressed as much as frustrated. Ever since I was very young I'd often start thinking about a pleasant scenario and I'd think about this to the extent that I actually believed it was true. For example, winning a large sum of money. I'd then start thinking about all the things I could do with it, then without even realising it, I would be living this new life inside my head to a point where I snap back into reality and feel a sadness that this life I'd just been fascinating about wasn't so.

Anyway in the last few months, there have been some almost situations where good stuff looked like it was about to happen to me, then at the last minute they didn't. Almost girlfriend/almost job etc. So rather than facing the reality of it completely I'd slip into my little fantasy in my head once in a while just to feel those good emotions I was missing out on. I swear there were times where I'd be in this full on denial of truth for hours, so you can imagine when I finally dropped the bullshit, the truth snapped back at me pretty hard.

So I've come to the realisation that by using this form of denial, I wasn't as much giving myself a moments peace of mind through innocent fantasy, as much as I was setting myself up to have to deal with the pain of the truth over and over again. Everytime the truth came back, it hurt even more.

I think I've now experienced my first 24 hours of peace of mind that I've had in months. I have no urge to drink and I'm feeling a little more proactive. It's funny because nothing in my surroundings has changed and doesn't look like it's going to for quite some time. I still have been finding myself daydreaming in that style, but rather than feeling crushed by it when I come back I've just been shaking my head and giggling to myself.

So yeah, I got me a grip

the way out of depression is never a straight line up. It's up's and downs. Remember that, everytime you experience a down.

Plan somehting exciting bro! You done any travelling? Perhaps flyign by the seat of your pants for a while is all that you need. Figure out how to save enough money to get a ticket somewhere, sell everything you can live without and store the rest... Then gooooooo!

just the thought of it gets my blood flowing. The only thing standing in your way is time and balls. And the only way to start it is to action something right now i.e. make a list of where you want to go, jobs you could handle doing for the next 6 months in order to save (they dont have to be great, its six months and thats it). Put that list on your wall and I swear by the great magnet in the univers you will feel like a roman warrior with every step you take towards that goal.

Your young mate, youve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Thats the one thing about entheogens for me perosnally, they offer my soul a great back rub and the contemplative frame of mind is a real belssing... But action and doing in my life is often put to one side by their use. It all of a sudden becomes so unneccesary to want for things and want for change. Indeed the whole concept of want seems to dissappear, which is a very good trait to have less of. But I need personally to stay away from Entheos's for long enough that my action and doing side of my personality and ego can drive my life into something new again, I stay off everything for a year or so and then I might have a week of exploration.... If I dont keep a balance I slip into overly contemplative states of living and I find that often its hard to get a grip

Balance soulfood, balance. Do the opposite of what youve been doing for the last two years and see what happeens!

good luck bro! May the force be with you!