I think I’ve been moderately depressed my whole life, with times of deeper depression. I have just recently gotten myself antidepressants. What the heck I figure, rather than self-medicate let the insurance company medicate me. After 20 years of talk therapy with no drugs, fuggit.
When I went to the psych I did tell him about thinking about suicide. It was part of the diagnostic criteria for depression, so he actually asked directly. I downplayed it, I was afraid that my life would be impacted negatively if he really thought I was suicidal. At the level I told him, I think it was optimal to support my drug seeking behavior.
I’m glad you posted your story. I think the workings of real human minds are important for considerations of AI. I also think it is good that you find someplace you can say stuff that may be in your mind if you don’t have other places to say it.
My own tentative conclusion about depression is that it is a bug, not a feature. As a state of mind, it does not carry information about the universe outside my head, but only information about biases in my head. In this case, emotional and pervasive biases, but biases none the less.
Admittedly this insight, if can be called that, doesn’t cure depression, but it does leave me committed to live with it if I can. I anticipate ways of dealing with it getting better in the near future.
Best wishes for your dealings with your subagents. I’ll look forward to more from you on this topic.
I wish you the best of luck in your own struggles. I want to caution you about drugs; go ahead and take them and see if they work for you, but start doing other things in the meantime. There’s a lot of evidence that antidepressants don’t work over the long term.
For me, SSRIs sometimes improve my sex life, but don’t seem to help with depression. I think there’s a lot of evidence that they don’t work as well as behavioral treatments for anybody.
What does work for me: exposure to bright light early in the morning. I don’t have a light box, so this means going outside for at half an hour every day, soon after the sun rises. As near as I can tell, this may be the most effective thing for me, bizarre as it may be.
Possibly equal in value is exercise. Blumenthal of Duke University demonstrated that half an hour of walking, three times a week, was remarkably more effective than Zoloft. That was nearly 20 years ago; the results have been shown in more than a dozen trials since then. I require more than that to stay healthy, but exercise has been shown to work better than just about anything else for a broad range of people.
Next on the list is personal connection. Studies have shown that face time is enough; I personally have found that I need physical contact. Ranging all the way from friendly hugs to partner dancing to sex, all of these have a remarkably grounding effect and pervasively positive effect on me.
Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, better sleep habits, meditation and cognitive behavior therapy round out the list of things that work for me.
I strongly encourage you to develop habits around these behaviors, and I urge you to contact me if you think I can help you with anything.
I think I’ve been moderately depressed my whole life, with times of deeper depression. I have just recently gotten myself antidepressants. What the heck I figure, rather than self-medicate let the insurance company medicate me. After 20 years of talk therapy with no drugs, fuggit.
When I went to the psych I did tell him about thinking about suicide. It was part of the diagnostic criteria for depression, so he actually asked directly. I downplayed it, I was afraid that my life would be impacted negatively if he really thought I was suicidal. At the level I told him, I think it was optimal to support my drug seeking behavior.
I’m glad you posted your story. I think the workings of real human minds are important for considerations of AI. I also think it is good that you find someplace you can say stuff that may be in your mind if you don’t have other places to say it.
My own tentative conclusion about depression is that it is a bug, not a feature. As a state of mind, it does not carry information about the universe outside my head, but only information about biases in my head. In this case, emotional and pervasive biases, but biases none the less.
Admittedly this insight, if can be called that, doesn’t cure depression, but it does leave me committed to live with it if I can. I anticipate ways of dealing with it getting better in the near future.
Best wishes for your dealings with your subagents. I’ll look forward to more from you on this topic.
I wish you the best of luck in your own struggles. I want to caution you about drugs; go ahead and take them and see if they work for you, but start doing other things in the meantime. There’s a lot of evidence that antidepressants don’t work over the long term.
For me, SSRIs sometimes improve my sex life, but don’t seem to help with depression. I think there’s a lot of evidence that they don’t work as well as behavioral treatments for anybody.
What does work for me: exposure to bright light early in the morning. I don’t have a light box, so this means going outside for at half an hour every day, soon after the sun rises. As near as I can tell, this may be the most effective thing for me, bizarre as it may be.
Possibly equal in value is exercise. Blumenthal of Duke University demonstrated that half an hour of walking, three times a week, was remarkably more effective than Zoloft. That was nearly 20 years ago; the results have been shown in more than a dozen trials since then. I require more than that to stay healthy, but exercise has been shown to work better than just about anything else for a broad range of people.
Next on the list is personal connection. Studies have shown that face time is enough; I personally have found that I need physical contact. Ranging all the way from friendly hugs to partner dancing to sex, all of these have a remarkably grounding effect and pervasively positive effect on me.
Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, better sleep habits, meditation and cognitive behavior therapy round out the list of things that work for me.
I strongly encourage you to develop habits around these behaviors, and I urge you to contact me if you think I can help you with anything.