How To Get Over Depression
5 steps to wellness
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I’ve written about my struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts here.
Just a few years ago I was often carried away by feelings of self-hatred and pain.
I always felt like I wasn’t good enough.
Usually after a massive failure; like not getting a job I’d worked hard for.
Or failing at yet another startup.
Or even going through a breakup.
These depressive spells would last for weeks.
Leaving me in a state I can only describe as “Utter Suck”.
I would lose interest in almost everything.
Even food tasted wrong.
And at my lowest points, the thought of how peaceful it would be to just die would enter my mind.
At these moments, the pain of negative emotions would be greater than any positive experience I could imagine.
The present was so painful it was difficult to see a better future.
These days I’m doing better.
I feel free from the chains of my past.
Through a combination of tools, practices, and mindset shift.
I no longer experience those absolute lows.
My emotional state is positive neutral.
Like a gentle breeze.
And negative emotions are just cloudy periods I observe and wait out.
I’m not carried away by them as before.
Here’s a bunch of things I did to see this much progress:
1. Exercise
One of the first things you realize, when you start exercising—especially intensely—is how it clears your mind afterward.
I think it works because exercise is so stressful that it creates a momentary plateau of pain in your life.
And everything else seems milder in comparison.
My first choice was running.
And I loved feeling the Runner’s high.
When all your being is aligned with moving forward.
And the pain of running disappears and you emerge into a magic dimension where nothing can touch you.
Suddenly you’re an efficient machine working at peak capacity.
A well-tuned biological engine.
But even something as simple as a walk can be beneficial.
The trick for maximum wellness is to exercise outside.
This way you not only get the physical benefits of exercise.
But also sunlight exposure, which works miracles on its own.
If you’ve ever been depressed before or visited a depressed person?
They live in an underworld of their own making.
A gloomy hell blocked from all sunlight.
Like vampires hiding from the sun.
Ironically, the sun is exactly what they need.
2. Meditation
Until I started meditation, I saw myself as my emotions.
If I feel sad, I am sad.
If I feel hurt, I am hurt.
When I started meditating—first with the Headspace app.
I realized there were really two of me.
There was a version of me who felt all these emotions and identified with them.
And there was another that simply observed what happened.
A useful analogy is to think of a car with two people in it.
One person is the driver and the other is a passenger.
One person leans his head outside the window to curse other drivers who get in his way.
While the other just focuses on the destination.
The thing is, the passenger is quiet, so most people don’t even know he exists.
And we just let the angry driver take us anywhere he pleases.
Meditation unlocks this awareness of the passenger.
The “you” who simply observes.
I realized I didn’t have to go wherever my emotions led.
I could simply just watch these emotions from the passenger seat and not get too involved.
We’ve all been through moments so terrible they made us sick to our stomachs.
And eventually, that moment passed.
We’ve also had moments when the world was happy and perfect.
And eventually, that moment passed.
This too shall pass.
Don’t get caught in the wind of your emotions.
The passenger might be quiet but ultimately he tells the driver where to go.
Observe and act.
3. Fasting
You probably didn’t expect to see fasting in a list of ways to deal with depression.
But you might be surprised to learn it’s one of the most powerful things you can do.
I only realized just how powerful it was after my father passed away.
For the next couple of days, I would have moments where the whole thing would just seem surreal.
It was the first death of an immediate family member and it felt different.
My mind was stuck on human mortality.
On the briefness of it all.
And more than once, I questioned if life was even worth the pain if everyone ended up dead.
It wasn’t that I was seriously depressed.
Compared to episodes I’ve had in the past this was mild because I had already made much progress already.
Still, it was like a cloud that hung over my life infecting every thought.
Then seemingly out of nowhere, I decided to fast.
I do intermittent fasting regularly.
On most days, I eat once a day and I’ve been doing so for years after watching this TED video on the health benefits.
But every so often I fast for a stretch.
This time I decided I would go 3 days without food.
If you haven’t fasted before it might seem extreme.
But three days is pretty mild as the human body can go a long time without food.
David Blain went 44 days without food.
In fact, when people fast it’s not the lack of food that’s dangerous.
Our ancestors went through periods of starvation regularly.
If they couldn’t live without eating none of us would be alive today.
No, it’s not fasting that’s dangerous.
Ironically it’s eating after you’ve fasted that could kill you.
The longer you go without food the more dangerous it is when you start eating again—refeeding syndrome.
Because your body has stopped processing food the usual way.
It’s like cold starting an engine you’ve left idle for years.
After a fast, you have to eat very little to give your body time to readapt to food.
So anyway, I decided I would fast for three days to see if it would help my mood.
I’d done it before and knew I could handle it.
The first 24 hours are always the worst.
You realize that food isn’t just something you need for energy.
It’s a big part of our daily habits.
It’s tied to so many other things you do that its absence is a literal hole in your stomach.
Watching your favorite shows doesn’t feel the same without a snack.
The idle TikTok scrolling feels painful to do.
Nothing is the same without food.
In Day 1, your body throws a tantrum about how much it really wants to eat.
Many people fold here.
They give in to the body’s desire and satiate the hunger.
But if you have a strong enough reason you can get past this.
You either find something else to occupy your mind or sleep so the time passes faster.
After the first night of fasting, you wake up and strangely the hunger has largely disappeared.
Yes, you still want to eat.
But the need is more like an alarm on your phone and less like a heroine addict banging on your door for a shot.
You daydream of the things you’ll eat once you break your fast.
The thought alone makes your mouth water.
The hunger builds until it feels like hands reaching out from your stomach.
It feels like your body is eating itself and in a way it is but that’s good news.
It’s called autophagy and allows cells in your body to be recycled.
If you get through day two then you’re out of the woods.
On day Three, your hunger is now a dull ache.
Far from the fist fuck it was on the first day.
Already your body has started to adapt.
You’re now doing what your ancestors have done for millions of years.
Your body reasons:
“Well, I’ve thrown my worst at him. If there was anything to eat, the bastard would have eaten it by now.”
So your body optimizes for survival.
On day three, the strongest emotion isn’t hunger but sheer boredom.
By now your mouth tastes funny no matter how many times you brush.
And everything feels 10x harder than you remember.
Smiling, walking, and talking require more energy.
It’s like someone just turned up the gravity on earth.
So you take everything a step at a time and just watch the time tick wickedly slow.
At the end of my three day fast, I remember thinking:
“I can still go on.”
Then I thought:
“Fuck that!”
And started planning the best way to break my fast.
A light meal of meat or oats is always the best.
Now is the time to hold your ravenous hunger in check though and not eat how you feel.
This is where things can go wrong—refeeding syndrome.
As I ended my fast, I realized that the dark cloud that had been there for weeks after my father’s death was gone.
Yes, I still felt it was sad.
But during those three days, food was the #1 priority on my mind.
As humans, we all need only the basics to be happy: food, shelter, and social connections.
Depression really comes as these layers stack and become a complicated mess of desires between yourself and the outside world.
During fasting, you revert back to a basic survival state.
Like a computer in safe mode.
All the complicated programming causing your mental problem is gone.
And only the bare essence of life remains.
At the end of the day, like every animal, what you mostly need is something to eat and a place to rest.
And everything else is extra to be grateful for.
So yeah, if you’re going through a rough patch, a sour mood you’ve had for weeks or months or years.
A good fast will reset you back to baseline.
And you’ll realize happiness can be as simple as a slow roasted chicken.
Not a promotion, the girl you broke up with, or fame.
Just chicken.
4. Drugs
If you’ve read my previous writing then you know that this post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning chemical aids.
There are common drugs people take to improve their moods: SSRIs, LSD, Cannabis, Mushrooms, and even Alcohol.
But what if I told you there was a legal drug you could take that worked almost instantly, was relatively safe, and dulled the sharper edges of your depression?
That drug is Piractetam.
Not really the sexiest of names but it works wonders.
Piracetam is a nootropic, which means it boosts cognitive processes.
When I was on my whole Bio-hacking phase it was one of the aids I used.
I only came to it because Reddit recommended Piracetam would help improve cognition.
I didn’t know what to expect really but I ordered it online.
After using it for a few days, I didn’t feel like it was accomplishing anything, so I stopped.
It wasn’t until almost a year later that I went back to it and gave it another go.
This time I noticed that even though I didn’t feel a shift in mental performance.
My mood was noticeably better on the days I was on it.
I smiled at more people and things just glowed a little brighter.
So I logged this in and waited for a situation that would allow me to test it fully.
I wouldn’t have to wait too long.
A few months later my father passed away and I was in that dark cloudy space for days.
Here was an opportunity to test my theory.
I took two 800mg pills and realized hours later my mood had lifted.
I could laugh and smile for the first time in days.
I still felt the sadness but I could also see past it.
The presence of this negative emotion didn’t block all positive emotions either.
When I went back home, my sister had been crying nonstop since my father’s death and not eating.
So I gave her Piracetam.
And she smiled for the first time since and was able to sleep after.
It was like magic.
Part of me couldn’t believe it was real.
Except I had just witnessed it myself.
Let’s just say during this period I quickly ran out of Piracetam.
But I was happy I had it to help my family see through the grief.
5. Choice
All these methods I’ve written about are great.
But they all stem from choice.
I never would have discovered them and certainly would never have tried them if I wasn’t serious about being happy.
And that’s the thing you realize about most depressed people.
They don’t want to be happy.
Depression becomes a part of them like an arm—a diseased parasitic arm—yet they keep it.
It’s been with them for so long that they can’t imagine life without it.
But you have to choose.
To stay sad or be happy.
If you truly want to be happy, then everything I’ve written about will help you on this path, as it helped me.
And if you want to stay sad, then perhaps you need to understand why that is first.
It all stems from this choice.
What you as the passenger decide to do.
And no one can make it for you.
I wish you the best.
See you next time friend ✌
