Honestly, I believe that if you're
NOT depressed as fuck about the state of the world right now, something is wrong with you. Something much worse than depression. I don't think it's fair to say that I have a (((chemical imbalance))) when I can
perfectly articulate exactly why I feel (or worse,
don't feel) the way that I do about things. I could seriously write a Tolstoy-length book on why life is a duckshit brownie. It looks like a brownie, it smells like a brownie, but you know there's duck shit in it, and the harder you examine the brownie, the more duck shit particles (sharticles?) you see. I'm not going to pretend as though I know the exact ratio of good to bad in this world, but no matter how great that brownie could taste, it will forever be tainted by a simply unacceptable level of duck shit. No chocolatey aroma or sugary taste is going to make up for it.
I could be the richest man on earth, have everything I ever wanted, become grand poobah of the universe, and I'll still be spending 16 hours a day in bed. I'm still going to die and everything I will ever say, do, or think will have been for absolutely fucking nothing. There is an overabundance of malice in this world, and it's getting worse every single day. There are still people who deserve to be yeeted from the mortal coil, and they're still walking around the crust of the earth as we speak. Most people are still retarded as fuck, and being led by people who are evil as fuck. All is temporary, and in turn, worthless. Realizing these important facts about the universe we live in should not condemn me to the label of "mentally ill". I believe I have earned my right to be upset.
Taking the good with the bad, keeping your chin up, obsessively forcing yourself to think positive, and practicing breathing techniques, is all a cope. They are several different ways that you can use to deceive yourself into believing that maybe things aren't so bad. Much the same as with any other lie, it is unsustainable. I think, in a twisted sort of way, it's a little bit healthier simply to accept that you are miserable. Do what you can to make things better, but don't try to trick yourself. That can never work.
Given the state of the world is not exactly hard to think of countless reasons why people would be unhappy. I've begun to question the chemical imbalance side of the debate - why are our brains so poor at maintaining a base line of homeostasis? If there is a chemical imbalance causing depression, then it must be produced in response to stimuli. I don't believe the brain just goes haywire for no identifiable reason, unless you really are that unlucky when it comes to the genetic lottery. But there are far too many cases of depression for that to be the case.
Very much on point, but I think there's a little of both columns, there. There is depression in which you have unfixable brain problems, and there is depression where you realize, "Holy shit, life really is this fucking bad!".
I suppose its the nature of my own depressive attitude, but I lean ever more on that theory that depression is actually a biological self-destruct mechanism designed to kill off people who are unsuccessful or otherwise a drain on the resources of the larger group. There is precedent for this sort of behavior at the cellular level, apoptosis, or controlled cell death. Its not much of a stretch for me to think that this kind of thing can be upscaled into a desire for a person to end their own life and/or be debilitated to the point where something else ends their life. We don't hear about depression in nature since anything that gets depressed in that kind of environment wouldn't survive for very long.
Medically speaking, you're pretty close to the mark, but I don't think depression necessarily exists to weed people out.
If you have MDD, your brain is damaging itself. Major Depression causes the loss of neuronal density in the dentate gyrus, and the hippocampus (there's some debate as to whether or not they're two parts of a whole), by way of inducing apoptosis. I'd argue that function is built in to try and kill off a particularly traumatic memory engram (or the formation of more traumatic memories), as the dentate gyrus is where the first steps of memory formation begin, and the rest of the hippocampus is where your memories are consolidated. The problem is that this mechanism is completely unregulated, and is basically like chemotherapy for your brain. Worse yet, loss of hippocampal density on its own
causes depression. This creates a feedback loop of your brain trying to kill a problem, by worsening the problem. There are drugs for this, like Psilocybin and NSI-189, which release Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor and Nerve Growth Factor to stimulate the proliferation of new neurons in the hippocampus, but it really seems like an uphill battle in the grand scheme, even though they do appear to help.
I have background in pharmacokinetics, so I can say with some degree of authority that you should probably NEVER take antidepressants (ESPECIALLY first-third generation). The way they work is simply ineffective, and their mechanisms of action are almost always directed towards the wrong systems (serotonergic/dopaminergic). Trying to modulate/inhibit/enhance those systems is a fucking FANTASTIC way to permanently medically retard people, or give them heart valve damage, but it's not going to make you any less depressed, just more dull. Apathy, anhedonia, and sadness are symptoms, not the disease. It's not like Big Pharma actually wants you healthy, anyway. Where's the money in that?
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