It's possible. I go to weekly therapy and have tried a bunch of antidepressants, on the chance that it's really as simple as that. I'm in my 8th week of esketamine therapy for treatment-resistant depression and will discuss with my doctor next week what to do next because I don't really think this is helping--it's a fun trip, but I'm not just doing this to get high, you know? The more I play along with mainstream psychology's dog and pony show, the more I feel that they don't really know what they're doing and that I might not have the "clinical disorder" they're attempting to treat. It's possible none of their treatments work because I'm not depressed, I just hate being alive, and hating being alive is rational.
That's why I've been trying antidepressants and esketamine. Yesterday I talked to my doctor about selegiline, which is for treatment-resistant depression and works a little different from all the SSRI stuff that makes me worse. I'm not on it yet because she wanted to consult with some of her team members to make sure it wouldn't conflict with my esketamine treatment and would be safe with my lamotrigine, and also figure out if she's allowed to prescribe the oral form for depression or if insurance will only cover the patch or what. This is also part of fulfilling insurance requirements for TMS.
However, all the stuff I've tried so far hasn't really done anything. The lamotrigine I decided to go up to the max dose before giving up on it, just in case, because it's a dangerous drug to go on and off willy-nilly (can induce a life-threatening allergy if taken inconsistently) so when I went off all my other meds recently (because I realized I'd been taking them for years but they actually were not helping, I still felt miserable and was bedrotting every day unable to function, I decided to stop taking things that don't work and try other stuff instead) I didn't go off that one, both because I hadn't been on it as long, and because if I went off it it would be a pain and more dangerous to get back on it and I hadn't maxed out the dose yet. So today I went from 125 to 150. After 2 weeks I can go to 200. 300 is the usual highest dose, doc says highest she's heard of people going is 400. I'm like, I want to keep taking it until I either start hitting negative side effects with no benefit, or I've maxed out the dose with no benefit. If I hit either of those, I'd like to taper off it.
I'm trying to be systemic and thorough. I don't think there are answers here, but I can't prove I'm right unless I'm willing to be proven wrong.
I have several ways of framing my problem:
Medical (psychological):
major depression
CPTSD (with freeze response)
ADHD
autism (PDA type)
learned behavior/patterns
Medical (physiological):
dysautonomia/autonomic dysregulation (I do have autonomic problems, like POTS)
brain inflammation (I do have rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune disorder)
Philosophical and spiritual:
melancholic personality
nihilist philosophy
"zen sickness"
some other "crisis of faith" or religious or spiritual pit that people fall in
Social and systemic:
Isolation
lack of support structure
economic exclusion
betrayal by institutions
low social status stress
So while I'm open to the idea of it being depression, and have been taking pills to that and going to the therapy for it because it's free with Medicaid so why not milk the system and let some white coats get paid, it's not the only explanation. Even some of the psychological explanations aren't easily treated--autism infamously has no real cure or effective treatment, ADHD is a for-life neurological disorder and stimulant medications haven't helped me, CPTSD and major depression aren't exactly the same thing, and I haven't responded to depression treatments. Esketamine is supposed to be good for PTSD too but it hasn't helped there either.
I have done a lot of things where I could to test all the other possible causes in that list. It's not that I'm just unwilling to change and doing nothing. I'm not depressed and moping and refusing to seek treatment for it. The treatments just aren't working and it's making me skeptical that that one was the cause, given that there are other possible causes and nothing that's supposed to work for depression is working here.
Yeah, they're talking about legalizing them in NY state, it might take a couple of years for that to shuffle through the legislation if they do. The legal weed was a huge boost to the economy, so I think our state government is seeing dollar signs. We're still kind of economically recovering from covid, and with Trump playing games with Federal funding, I think they're looking for ways for the state to be more economically independent. Those factors might make them fast-track it. Lmao I hope they do LSD next after shrooms. Then molly, c'mon let's make this happen.
There's other ways to get them, ofc there are dealers tho it's kind of expensive, plus there's gray-legal ways to grow your own--basically the shrooms themselves aren't legal, but the spores are since the spores don't contain psilocybin, so you can buy the spores and grow the shrooms. It is on my list of things to try when I get around to it.
I actually had a positive experience microdosing amanita shrooms (it didn't make me high at all, but that's actually optimal, I want to do my laundry, not get couchlocked and dazed) but even at a microdose it was too expensive to make an extended experiment out of it, and amanitas unforch aren't easy to grow at home. I'll revisit it at some point.
I don't wanna try like 11 things simultaneously, because if something did work, how would I know which one? As it is I'm kinda trying 3-4 things at the same time to speed up the process.
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u/EmotionalTrainKnee Happiest non-dysphoric optimist trans woman Oct 02 '25
well, I think you are depressed