Thank you HN, sorry HN
1. Thanks to everyone who offered help of any kind. I do really appreciate it. 2. Sorry that I did not respond to everyone who wrote in. I found out that reading all those email made me even more depressed somehow. I will send everyone who wrote in a personal thank you note once I am better.
With some of you I had a longer chat and one person even sent a teddy bear from the USA to Germany (where I am from). I made a picture of the teddy bear [2].
As I mentioned I got a lot of advice - even though I was not able to respond to everyone who sent me an email (sorry again). In the meantime I saw another doctor, changed the medication, changed my lifestyle and now I am feeling a bit better. I would not say that my life is worth living right now but it became better and you guys certainly helped a lot.
I would love to give something back to you but I am not sure what that should be. During the last couple of weeks I thought long and hard about that and I really would love to do something: Found a help network for hackers, somehow improve the current situation for crisis/suicide chats or something like that. So what do you think would improve the current situation of (depressed/suicidal) hackers. Please let's discuss that. Not everyone will make it on the front page when help is needed - or am I wrong?
[1] My original request for help: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4928031 [2] My new friend: http://i.imgur.com/nQQAVuc.jpg
60 comments
[ 1462 ms ] story [ 2073 ms ] threadI was once asked what I was doing to live up to a certain person's life with whom I was associated. I said I was doing what I could for myself today so that I could do anything at all for others in the future.
Depression comes from not keeping up on tasks and losing your streak. That's when you start questioning yourself and the cycle keeps happening. There is definitely a niche need for a mentoring / motivational network for depressed people. This whole thread, and your last one, plus the momentum that came with them is proof.
I think you mixed up cause and effect. Depression mostly leads to not keeping up with what you're doing, which is the starting point of a downward spiral. Depression isn't "solved" by motivation. Depression is complex, but most times a common source is a overwhelming emotional event, which is re-felt in every down turn.
How about telling us what helped you the most? You mention you "changed your lifestyle"—what things did you change?
You might want to help depressed hackers, but in the mean-time I'd suggest you can give far more than you'd guess. Each day, find someone you can "help" ... hold the door for someone with full arms, smile at someone who's scowling or tutor someone who's having a hard time understanding something you know well.
You'll certainly brighten their day, but you'll also find the satisfaction in being helpful (with no expectation of any compensation) will improve your mood too. Don't believe me? Try it for 30 days ... and if at some point you believe your life isn't worth living right now, think of what the people you've helped would say about your life.
For hackers suffering from depression, please don't resist getting help because you can't find resources specifically for hackers.
In the case of support groups, it's nice to be with people who share a similar background as you. But I think you'll find that the shared experience with depression will massively overcome what shared experience you lack on the job or as a hobby.
Please get help. It's not an exaggeration to say it could be the difference between life and death. The path downward is often a long, gentle slope. While you're on it, it feels like flat ground. You don't realize you've hit the lowest elevation until... well, you just stop walking.
Being given to or cared for unimaginably often makes us feel like sharing it, be it giving it back, or doing it for others. Whatever you do, know that there's probably more than a few people that would probably be happiest if you join them in being a giver and keeping kindness and goodness fashionable. In other words your gratitude is not a debt to repay, but maybe another chance to participate in our universal responsibility for our human family by helping others not feel alone, and maybe a little more understood.
Depressed people need head doctors in much the same way that physically injured people need body doctors. For mild cases "walk it off" might work (in both head- and body- problems), but depression is more like a broken bone than it is like a mildly sprained ankle.
Vitamins (every morning with food): Vitamin C 1000mg (energy and health) B-12 3000mcg (happy energy) Magnesium 400mg (focus and mood moderation) Fish Oil - EPA 120mg + DHA 900mg (memory + mood moderation) L-Carnitine 200mg (precursor for acetylcholine neurotransmitter) Time release caffeine (8 hours of stable energy with no spikes)
This has helped me completely conquer my mood swings (depression as well as ADD) and has made a huge impact on my enjoyment of life.
More important than anything else, if you're having depression issues, it's important to remember that you can always change your story. You're not locked into anything (well, most things) in your life. True, some things are harder to shed than others, but if you're depressed enough where it affects you on a monumental, daily basis, just remember you can change it. Stop engaging in activities that make you feel like shit. Cut acquaintances (even family) out of your life that bring you down. Drop out of life for awhile if you need to - the people who truly care about you will understand. Anything is ultimately better than the alternatives of a quick demise or a bleak existence, both for you (primarily) and the people around you.
It gets better is an overused cliche, but it holds some merit. You can make it better.
(on a side note, time release caffeine sounds incredible.)
That said, I also agree with what dandrews says: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5348693 Don't overexert yourself trying to help. If you think helping others will help you, then sure, go right ahead! But please be focused on your own recovery. We'll need a stable leader if we want to do this right ;)
I would worry about creating an obligation that would require you to have anxiety and other issues by not being able to fulfill the obligation. While it's nice and might make you feel good to give back it's hard to believe that it wouldn't be better to simply try to get yourself stronger without the obligation of doing for others. For now.
After all even the simple act of "replying to all that wrote" appears to be more than you can handle right now. I'm sure some of those people would want to be acknowledged for taking the time to write.
In any case, I would add that the set of actions that matter and make a difference is not a perfect subset of the actions that feel like they're important. That is to say, you never know when something that seems like a small act on your part can change someone else's day...
So, to that end, though I missed the OP's original post, I'd challenge him or her to simply believe in some purpose – find something every morning that makes it worth interacting with others (and try to do so in a generous way) and you're likely to make a real impact, even if you're never aware of it.
I want to share a bit why I wanted to help with the rest of HN. I throughout my life thought many ailments were my "problem", ranging from simple depression, bipolar, alcoholism, drug dependancy and tried the methods successful for each one to "cure me" to no avail.
A couple of years ago however a psychologist gave me his opinion of ADD. Just simply knowing what it was has helped me enormously. It gave me a set of tools to fight the issue. It turns out that all of those other things were epiphenomena of the ADD, parts of the vicious cycle of the upswing when you start seeing the light, elation with a new achieved high you get from some measure of success, followed by the eventual downfall and depression when you see that you are still not making headway. This cycle would repeat and still affects me a bit.
In my case what helped was a stricter regiment of food supplements (especially D, Omega, B6, B12 and calcium) and using Mountain Dew (yes, I know it's a horrid substance) to elevate myself in the afternoon. This coupled with Mindfulness meditation allows me to stay relatively productive. I'm in the process of getting medication for ADD after reading Flower for Algernon and realizing that refusing medication is akin to Charlie refusing the operation (read the book if you haven't, it's remarkably well written).
Before this realization and change in behavior I was flunking out of CompSci @ University. After that change I managed a whole year of full coursework and graduation. I managed to get a job and am managing to achieve the goals we (me and my boss) set for my work.
My point is: You might think you have a specific problem but in reality you might have another problem, but the symptom is what you notice. ADD should really have been obvious when you look @ my life a certain way (having studied everything from medicine to economics to accounting to philosophy and finally CompSci). I had seen many professionals and only one of them hit the proper diagnosis. The funny thing was once I knew the problem, I had tons of tools I had learned about elsewhere to combat it and the only reason I think he was right is that the methods worked!
One of the things that keep me focused is helping others. It kinda gives me a good reason to maintain myself in fit spiritual condition (agnostic, spiritual here simply means connected with my fellow man). A friend of mine is graduating this spring and he tells me he wouldn't be, if I weren't helping him with his maths. Once he graduates, I need to find someone else to help. It gives me strength to know that the help I received, I can pay forward. I'm glad far_far_away is doing that too.
It's nothing that I worried about but I didn't want to keep neglecting suggestions and missing an opportunity for something that can turn out to be a benefit that increases the productivity of my lifestyle.
Sometimes that's what it takes, the only way you'll figure out if you don't need them is by trying them out.
They (any.do+evernote) are still the same data dump and nothing really beats off my current set up which is simply google calendar, post it notes on mirrors and walls, behind doors and other places. That's the reminder and keeping in focus part. What I'm really looking for is a Google Glass AR app to visualize statistics and basically the game of life and to have it in my field of vision at least turned on every 15 minutes throughout my whole day.
It's funny that people with ADHD, or any other mental condition are more prone to accept transhumanistic technology without worrying about dehumanization.
I'm completely fine walking with a Vegeta-like scouter to stay on task. Eventually it'll become habit, like the post it notes.
I can also completely accept some sort of solar powered tattoo, in the shape of a watch or anything that'll allow the tattoo to create a hologram, that beams like a simple pager of my next thing to do, powered with an API transmitted through my phone through Bluetooth.
You know one of these days I'll tackle funding a project that helps ADHD people with different ways of learning and tackling tasks.
Every life is worth living, you just need to ask for help at the right place, and people will help you see how important your life is.
Yes, their can be a separate tag SAVE@HN for threads from HN users in distress, If it even helps save 1 life, it would be damn worth it!
The first rule of search-and-rescue is "don't be a victim." Make sure you are taking good care of you.
Also, thanks for being so open. Continuing that openness and building a support group for yourself through that is something which helped me through a similar situation.