I'm making this thread not to ask for advice but to give it. Anyone who's having mood issues and struggling with day-to-day life, I would like to offer what little wisdom I've been able to gather over the years. For background, I would like to say that I've been on and off antidepressants and sleeping pills since I was 16, so for more than 10 years now. While I have nothing bad to say about psychotherapy and medication, they don't always work so well, do they? That and they can be pretty expensive and hard to get. For me, it seemed to be like dialysis, something I had to do to survive, but not really curing me. What people don't get about depression is that it's kinda like dementia lite, and often shows up as the first sign of something serious. Depression means there's something wrong with your brain chemistry, and if there's no obvious external cause like grieving or stress from work for example, this is a good indicator that you're actually causing it with your life choices. You're actually slowly causing your brain to suffer because it's not getting what it needs. Now, this isn't building up to a sales pitch or a cult indoctrination. I'm talking about simple life changes that anyone can make.

FOOD For this, I need to reference my own experiences again: during my last depression a few years ago, whenever someone would say that I need to get out more or eat better food or anything like that, I would get so angry. What do they know about my problems? There's no way something like that would help me at all! The thing is, I was staying up all night and sleeping all day, avoiding most people, my apartment was all messy and all I ate was chips and soda... and looking back at it, I realize that in a small way I was perpetuating my depression. It didn't start that way, but I was actively holding myself back, stopping my recovery. Now that I'm feeling better again, I can see the difference so clearly. When I eat too much or my diet is off-balance (too many carbs, too many additives...) I start to feel sluggish and moody. When I eat homecooked food, whole foods and natural ingredients, especially when I cut off most of my grain and dairy, I feel light, energetic, positive. It's almost a spiritual experience. I notice I feel less craving for things I used to like, because I associate most snack foods with feeling the worst in my life.

SLEEP I'm not really a good role model in this department, but sleep is super important. You burn fat during deep sleep. If you sleep during the day and don't get sunlight, your metabolism slows down. When you get light affects your sleeping pattern, which means that having a computer or cellphone screen blasting that white blue light at your eyes slows down your body's melatonin secretion. Melatonin and serotonin are two hormones that are very closely linked to sleep and mood, and their balance is key. A weekend raid with friends is okay but if you're constantly spending nights in front of a screen, you're bound to have mood issues and other health problems during the day, not to mention you'll be all tired and everything sucks when you're tired.

EXERCISE Me, I hate exercise. I HATE HATE HATE it. But as I'm getting closer to my thirties, I'm starting to notice I really need to get a grip on my love handles and get out there. And for mood purposes, you gotta do it every day. Not super hard. Just make it something enjoyable, like a walk or something. (Enjoying it is kind of important.) On days when I get a good exercise I feel so much better, not just because I'm proud of myself, but also because it really balances out all those hormones that cause a whole spectrum of different problems when you just sit on your ass at home. It's almost like it's good for you or something!

ATTITUDE Thoughts have power. Again this is something I'm not very good at, but you can change negative attitudes into positive ones through thought exercises. Stop focusing on your fears and failures, everybody fails all the time! The you that's whispering all those bad things into your ear, that's the depression talking. People don't really say it enough, but depression is actually a kind of psychosis because it really severely distorts your view of reality. So while you're having your dark, brooding thoughts, that's actually a treatable mental illness you're confusing for yourself, while the real you is buried underneath. And the illness is doing everything it can to keep you from getting better. I'm not kidding, there are a lot of cases where the patient is actually so used to being depressed that they are clinging to it because it's what they know.

That all is hard to make happen all at once. You should start doing little things first. Just... try something different for a change, you know? If it feels like you're going nowhere, don't worry, these things take time. Here's a mental image for you: start viewing your mind, your personality, as a piece of paper, and your thoughts and decisions as a thin lines that you're drawing on the paper with a pencil. Each time you have a certain thought or make a certain decision, you draw a new line on top of the last one, and over time, that line gets stronger and darker. So what you need to do, is start consciously drawing a new line somewhere else, start moving that hand in a new direction. And first the line is very faint and hard to see, and it's easier to follow the big dark line, but you need to consciously draw that new line until it starts happening by itself.

Well, I hope someone reads that. :D

/ramble