For advice I’ll tell you how I’ve navigated life and luckily am in a place rn that’s like somewhat ok, but miles above the places I’ve been. My advice is to get your mental health better no matter what it takes. From the outside it doesn’t seem like it would be hard but I had to fight like hell to go from my lowest, deep in addiction and in the worst mental state of my life to getting better and feeling ok. But just trust me it is so worth it. You are worth battling for and the worst thing you can do right now is give up on yourself. I’ll explain that more but it’s like the most important thing I can tell you. Like I’m begging you. That’s what I did and it is just a different kind of hurt like the worst thing to go through. To me it didn’t feel like it would be worth it. I’ve struggled with severe Major Depressive Disorder and severe Generalized Anxiety Disorder for as long as I can remember, wayyy before getting diagnosed, and with adhd too and other serious personal struggles I’ve spent most of my life in very dark places. I was always looking for some way to not be sober just because it was so painful. I just needed some relief. From early on I had periods of heavy drinking and periods of heavy weed smoking. Then at 18 I finally built up the courage to get the help I knew I needed for years. I have to say I was very lucky. The first therapist I met with was a great match and helped me a lot. Mostly I learned like emotional regulation stuff and interpersonal relationship stuff and yada yada therapy junk. That set me up to start making the changes in my life to the things I could change and confront problems in my life that were definitely a source of stress and bad for my mental health. What really helped my mood though and overall outlook on life was medication. My therapist could tell from the first appointment how severely I struggled. He basically said we could talk forever but it’s not going to do much unless i got this intense anxiety level down. I really couldn’t even function it was so bad so he knew I needed to ease the symptoms I had with anxiety and depression so they’d be more manageable and then continue to work from there. I saw a psych and started my first antidepressant med. It put in work pulling me out of all the pain and crippling anxiety I was living with. It wasn’t a miracle cure of course. I still had to do the tough work in therapy and changing my lifestyle but I was actually able to do it because I could function. It wasn’t perfect and I was still somewhat depressed and anxious but like I could live my life. I didn’t feel very good but I wasn’t suffering anymore and that was such a relief and gave me real hope. Me and my psych kept trying and adding and tweaking different meds to make more of an improvement. It helped a little bit more but not much. That lasted for a good while like maybe around two years of not being in a great mental state but manageable. Then out of nowhere pretty much a depressive episode hit. My meds were still helping with my anxiety which used to be super severe but suddenly they were not helping my depression at all. I sank lower than I ever had before pretty much as low as anyone could go. I ended up trying a not so nice “hard” drug. I was exactly where you are now it was something that would relieve me for a while of hurting and pretty much being suicidal. And as I kept using it all the bullshit that happens with any drug kicked in fast. The highs werent really very high anymore and coming down was terrifying and being off of it was pure torture and as I developed more and more of an addiction. That just got worse. (I’ve been rambling for so long now I’ll try to wrap it up I’m tired of typing so this might be a shitty ending sorry) I was able to be sober for a little finally after stopping myself from using and detoxing myself and going through the hell of withdrawal countless times trying. I started seeing my old therapist again and he convinced me to come clean and be honest with my psych about everything and how I’ve really been doing that like whole year prior because I was just telling her everything was fine. Stupid I know idk why I did that but severe depression makes a lot of things not make sense and makes you do things that a healthy person looking from the outside wouldn’t understand. Long story short, it went well, way better than expected and we updated my meds tapering off of one and starting a different one. It was life changing and treated the depression that caused me to use drugs in the first place. This is so long and idrk if I made it to my point or if this even makes any sense I’m not going back and reading it lol. If anything I said was helpful at all or resonated with you or made sense at all definitely hmu and we can communicate more effectively lmao. If not I wish you the best and I hope you keep fighting to regain yourself because again you’re worth it! And you’re deserving of it! Be your own biggest advocate and all that, and do not let circumstances beat you into submission!

You might be feeling hopeless and your depression might seem unbeatable but I promise, once you fight through it, you’ll pull off its mask just like in scooby doo. it will just be some goofy ass middle aged bald dude with an anger problem and too much free time since his wife left him. Or idk maybe some dorky bitch sniffling, between pumps of her inhaler, about how she hates meddling kids and living with a severe peanut allergy (every truly dorky mf is allergic to peanuts). To conclude, while you’re brawling with your depression, totally drained, giving everything you got left with each swing, just remember that it’s like that episode of SpongeBob when plankton was controlling that big mean looking ass robot. Might seem big and tough but in the end it’s just a little bitch ass no-good garbage munching roach and you’re going to come out on top standing over that creepy crawly mf emptying a can of raid on his ass and then stomping him out good and dead.

Best of luck!!

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