well, i do experience my emotions, i'm not a robot...

anyway, did you watch that mental health through mindfulness lecture i posted above? it was really interesting, actually! well, i really haven't read much about mindfulness, but it amazed me how much of the things said on that video, and by Javizy etc are the exact same ways i've come to view & do things over the past few years on my own.

The mindfulness as in the part where he talks about like, eating a raisin with mindfulness, man, i remember when the medication had kicked in & i'd come through the numb stage, and EVERYTHING was like that. It was great!! i was really like a child again, experiencing everything. I guess that's just through the contrast of what things were like before. And the other thing, like just being aware that what you're feeling is just a feeling, i learnt through various stressful situations afterwards. well, i guess i'm just repeating my post from before.

Anyway, i guess what i'm trying to say is, you don't have to learn those things when your depressed. You can use medication to get you to the point where you're not depressed and still learn them. One way is harder than the other, i expect, but either way, you learn the same thing and have the same tool there ready to use another time.

anyway, i'd certainly recommend it to Raschaverak if that's what it's about!! Going by that lecture, it seems like that really could fix many of his problems.

... on the other hand, i really get the feeling that when i talk about depression, and you and some others talk about depression, we're talking about two quite different things. It seems like for many people, these negative emotions and thoughts are all depression is. For me, an acute stressor could cause those feelings & thoughts if i was already depressed, but they aren't what the more central symptoms were for me in the first place. And those central symptoms, unlike acute stressors, i haven't ever felt since the medication kicked in. Those are also the symptoms i would be worried about returning if i did come off medication. so i'm happy to stick with it for now.

Last edited by IceCream (2011 June 08, 12:56 am)

but most psychiatrists aren't on medication either, so it's not really a fair game...

i don't think it really matters who else is happy or not, as long as whatever you do makes you happy (as long as it doesn't make others unhappy of course). you can follow someone else or take bits and pieces from lots of different people, or just find your own way, whatever suits you. i like taking bits and pieces from lots of different people. i don't think there's only one way to be happy, and lots of different people have valuable things you can learn.

Maybe there's no single one of those people who's happier than your teacher, but put together all of those bits from different people, and you might find something even better... you never know...

Last edited by IceCream (2011 June 08, 1:13 am)

well, tbh i've never seen that kind of psychiatrist. i only see my GP. it's their job to make people healthier, not happier as such.

anyway, i'm pretty sure that if you had known me 3 years ago, you wouldn't be likening me to those people on LSD that you know.

antidepressants don't make you high in any sense. They just make you able to live like a normal person. It's bringing you up to what's normal for most people, not trying to give you some special state... the rest is up to you, like it is for any other person in the world.

well, i give up. i guess most people's minds are pretty set on this. After all, it's common knowledge that antidepressants don't work, eh...

well, you guys can carry on battling yourselves or whatever, & i'll just carry on takin it easy, being happy, and learning as i go.

i'm not gonna read these types of threads anymore though, because it's hard to see so many people struggling with something they probably never needed to in the first place, and so many others encouraging them to continue.

Ice Cream,
You have a chemical dependency on the drugs, so the control they have on you may not allow you to see the logic in the anti-medication viewpoint.  I hope you can get off them on your own before circumstances in this ever-changing world force you to.  It is best to take on the underlying causes of depression while you are young and still strong.

IceCream, are you still taking your medication?
It seems to me, if you've beaten your depression, you should no longer need them. If you still need them, then are you really healed? It seems rather defeatist to me to just accept that you need medication to be happy in life, when most people (and the rest of the animal kingdom) get by fine without them. They can enjoy the happy times and somehow manage to deal with the hard times without slipping into depressive episodes. You really need to ask yourself why? What mechanisms do happy people have in place that allow them to deal with stress and hard times?  If you want to be happy, examine how happy people live their lives. I well understand that long-term unhappiness will effect the brain and can lead to habitual and irrational negative thinking, but this can all be reversed. It just takes time and awareness. If quitting your medication leads to feeling awful then I'd say there's still some unresolved issues you're not aware of yet.
It all seems rather similar to people with body weight issues. There are plenty of people out there convinced that they need to be be constantly dieting, doing long workouts etc to lose weight but the fact is the majority of thin people don't need to do any of these things to stay in shape. And it has almost nothing to do with genetics. It's all about habits. Crash dieting may achieve short term results but never works in the longterm if one isn't mindful of how they live and the effects of negative habits.

Sure if someone is getting suicidal maybe some temporary medication is in order. But in the long-run it's better to help someone get their life back on track by being a good friend and role-model. Artificial medication-induced happiness may feel as good as the real thing, but if it prevents you discovering and dealing with the real (and often completely legitimate) causes of your ills, you're ultimately not doing yourself any favours. Physical and mental pain exist because they serve a useful evolutionary function. They inform you that something is wrong.

Last edited by nadiatims (2011 June 08, 9:45 am)

bodhisamaya wrote:

I know a lot of people in Hawaii defend LSD just as passionately, and it does have the effect of making them happier while they are on it, and they even claim a sort of enlightenment.  Over the years I known them, I have seen no personal growth in them as far as control over their emotions or a sense of well-being goes.

I believe that the full benefits and potential of LSD will be revealed only to highly intelligent people with a growth mindset. In other words the benefits increase as a side-effect of a certain person's increasing spectrum of knowledge/intelligence.

FE: You just can't give LSD to a random bum and expect for that bum to become permanently happy or more in control of her/his emotions permanently. That bum probably never accomplished anything worthy enough during his whole life and is used to not giving his best and you can't hope that his behavior/way of acting & thinking will change dramatically anyway. A person who has a mindset of personal growth will grow personally anyway. It's not like LSD ruins already intelligent or growth seeking people or anything.

"No personal growth in them as far as control over their emotions "
Is control over one's emotions a part of personal growth?....

Controlling positive emotions: It's too much like being a robot with no emotions, or controlled emotions. I don't see any benefit in it unless you're trying to lie, deceive or trick people into believing into something that is not true.

Controlling negative emotions: A person should go to an environment where he/she is the most satisfied with life and doesn't have to control one's emotions. After that if that person feels that he/she still has negative emotions, that person has to  just stand up and find one's problems and also solve them, but not bother one's head with controlling one's emotions which would be a kinda alternative way of lying without trying to solve the problem.

bodhisamaya wrote:

I know a lot of people in Hawaii defend LSD just as passionately

Note that all drugs are not the same. In fact they're as different as anything in the world can be.

And of course, nor are all people the same.
No matter what media or monks or news or authorities or FDA might tell to people, I repeat it, all drugs are very different. And just the fact that something is in a form of a chemical substance or medication doesn't make it any less of a probable aid in curing depression and the like! It might work, might not.

But I think that people should try different ways and find the suitable ones. Or, what is better, apply all kinds of different methods at once (with caution of course). Every applied method might add a small grain of rice to help cure depression and if you add those grains and collect them, you will already get a rice meal!

Ps, Bodhisamaya, you are addicted and attached to this forum and it's totally chill and isn't essentially a bad thing at all imo!

Addiction is obviously everywhere in nature, is an essential function, and it causes various reactions in plants. The so said addiction to H20 makes some plants turn their leaves yellow as they can't satisfy their addiction to H20. Addiction to light makes plants turn their leaves in the direction of the sun. Animals? Look at how addicted they are to everything. FE look at cats, they are addicted to being stroked totally naturally

Well nature gave birth to humans and thus humans are part of nature. I don't believe that a human or even an enlightened person isn't part of the laws of nature and thus, addiction is a very important function for humans as well!

Consciously getting rid of negative addictions that you have found that are negative for yourself through your baggage of personal direct experiences which are not based on other people or what they tell you, is only intelligent in my opinion, and is the way to go!

Well, it's just my opinion...

Last edited by jettyke (2011 June 08, 6:26 pm)

IceCream wrote:

... so, you want to discredit all academic papers as ghostwritten fiction, and then post random articles from the internet written by well, who knows really, there's no credentials at all there, as evidence that antidepressants are simply placebos...? Even those articles you posted don't claim that.

it seems like your world view is challenged by the idea that anti-depressants could actually be helpful for some reason. i don't really understand why...

I'm sure Bodhi doesn't think ALL academic papers are ghostwritten with bribes as you boldly claim.  But we are aware that it happens and people are being naive if they don't think it is a regular occurrence to put  a spin favorably towards drugs.

I need to read those articles and will have more to say later...i don't buy into credentials as much as intent, but credentials do play a positive role. Also forgot that true yogis probably don't need/or wont have credentials, so as long as they're truly happy.

If I extrapolate what Bodhi said about psychiatrists to doctors, all doctors should pass a test that they are healthy before they can tell others to be healthy! lol, so many would fail

Tori-kun wrote:

I feel insecure due many factors, like strict family rules and laws and a very conservative and stereotype-providing soviet-education. (vonPeterhof, can you tell me something about that? I read once you just feel hatred against Russia today. Can you specify why?)

It's quite off-topic, but if you insist

Last year I probably would have answered something like this: "Half the time I am bothered by the fact that my country is ruled by a clique of elitist self-serving kleptocrats who think that the Russian people are mostly drunken bigoted brutes who are not ready for freedom and/or democracy. The other half of the time I find myself somewhat agreeing with the kleptocrats' opinion about the Russian people". Among other things that bother me about Russian culture is our proud anti-rationalism, combined with exceptionalism bordering on the extreme. I am sure that you have heard this 19th century poem:

Афанасий Фет wrote:

Умом Россию не понять,
Аршином общим не измерить:
У ней особенная стать -
В Россию можно только верить.

Here is the proper 21st century response:

Игорь Губерман wrote:

Давно пора, ебёна мать,
Умом Россию понимать!

Anyway, I mentioned last year because I was struggling with my own severe depression a little more than a year ago. These days I am not really bothered that much. Not that anything changed dramatically, it's just that I stopped taking it all close to heart. It also helps that my own family isn't exactly representative of the whole authoritarian culture. I was lucky enough to have been born into a relatively liberal family, part of a close-knit and very supportive Koryo-saram clan. And discovering a hobby I can be passionate about (languages and linguistics) helped me take my mind off the negative thoughts. I guess my cultural cringe is still there, but it doesn't define my life in Russia any more.

Edit: Ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob ich Ihre Frage beantwortet habe...

Last edited by vonPeterhof (2011 June 08, 4:02 pm)

bodhisamaya wrote:

Ice Cream,
You have a chemical dependency on the drugs, so the control they have on you may not allow you to see the logic in the anti-medication viewpoint.  I hope you can get off them on your own before circumstances in this ever-changing world force you to.  It is best to take on the underlying causes of depression while you are young and still strong.

This sounds kinda.........

I'm not on any meds and I can see the logic on both sides.

For the record, I think it's been sufficiently proven that drugs can be effective at treating serious depression long term.  And I also think that meditation, when talked about in a medical context, is bullshit that has only become popular in the western world by riding on the wave of new age charlatan crap.

Though, I don't want to put down meditation in other contexts.

I wouldn't say this except that this thread has been so one-sidedly against medication, with the exception of IceCream.  I tried to bait bodhisamaya into thinking seriously about the epistemological difficulties of this debate, but he didn't really seem to get what I was asking (perhaps I just didn't phrase it well), so I'm just gonna drop my hopes of defending my position.

Also, that scientology documentary is awful.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2011 June 08, 11:45 pm)

bodhisamaya wrote:

If a person is seriously mentally ill to the point they are more animal than human, then medicating the harmful emotions away might be a positive.  If they have enough awareness that they know they do not want to be in that state, there are more effective and proven methods for long-term improvement.

What about people in the middle?

I think you should all stop medicating your need for conflict by expressing conflicting opinions on medication.