Ask Lemmy

I haven't actually worked through anything. My life is equally as shit as it was when I was wanting to kill myself. But I don't feel like killing myself. I still have the issues, they just... don't affect me as negatively. I'm not as sensitive to them as I was. My nervous system is clearly stronger, fortified. So I have to deduce there was something wrong with it, as I always suspected (and had evidence of as well.)

Now I won't get too into anything and understand opinions differ, so please keep that in mind as I might assert some of my opinions and I do realise they're opinions, but I want to share mine. Not asserting any facts or suggesting any behaviours (even when I suggest things), as it will just be my opinion, and I offer it because I understand that even if I suggest something, you'll still reflect on it yourself before doing it. I'm just saying this for a disclaimer because I usually come off as a dick (it's not just your interpretation, it's a problem I have, being sort of too neutral which often comes of as straight up aggressive or offensive.)

So, first off, I'm not a healthcare professional, let's acknowledge that. These are opinions I hold, even when some are arguably on facts, these are still my opinions from those facts. I am however trained as a supply core non-commissioned officer by the Finnish army. This essentially means we're trained to uphold the fighters capability to fight, outside of medical problems. Ie water, food, supplies. Well, nutrition is a big big part of this. Basically, I am expected to know how a person who doesn't have any medical problems should be able to keep up their physical capability for a fight that lasts two weeks, with a final escalation of a big fight that lasts 72 hours (during which rest is extremely limited.). Anyway, I don't think people realise how big of a deal nutrition is. Have you been to a nutrition therapist? Like an actual, proper one, not someone just calling themselves a therapist for Facebook. When you tried gluten-free, did you keep it up for at least 2-3 months? And if you did, I would then suggest doing either GFCF or low FODMAPS if the former doesn't work. It takes patience, and money, but it can help. Not everyone, obviously, I'm not saying you don't have something like lupus, what do I know, but at least from what you write, your body is running on reserves, ie on a deficiency, which is why you're losing weight. Now unless you're an expert in nutrition (which I'm not either, but I do have some idea) it's highly unlikely you're getting all the required vitamins you need from your restricted diet. And even if you are, running on reserves makes the body go into a "powersaving" mode, which also limits pleasure, because the brain is highly energy intensive. Your brain isn't getting enough energy to feel good, so... you won't. I really wouldn't worry about being overweight as much as being extremely depressed. It's not like even if you had an objectively perfect body you'd do anything with it with major depression, right? So might as well have a little less perfect body, which actually is preferred by most people, by the way, unlike the culture would have you understand. Average-looking people honestly fuck more than very good looking people, who get into their heads, or who average looking people don't hit on, because "they're probably out of my class anyway."

Anyway, everything I'm saying is on the assumption that you don't have some underlying disease none of this would help with. But I would point out that lupus is an autoimmune disease. And relating to autoimmune symptoms was something I had as well. What I did was to pretty much exclude everything, just in case. So I ate rice and gluten free fish sticks, had a vegan gluten free protein drink and some gluten free candy. The candy because the brain needs energy to function. I always had this weird desperate need for candy when I woke up. I tried describing it several times to doctors, but they never listened or took me seriously. Since I was a kid. Now since I did the exclusion diet, I've not really had it, unless I've exposed myself to gluten, after a few days of which it feels like my body just can not absorb nutrients properly. I understand we are very different and I'm not trying to say you have the same thing or would be aided by the same thing. But I'm saying I was so desperate as well that I just went full exclusion diet, because I felt it was an autoimmune issue, and I felt strongly it was related to diet, or at least my sugar metabolism, (with the hankering in the mornings and other such things), so I excluded tomatoes, anything with allium (onion, garlic, leek, etc), gluten, dairy, and even beef and other meat proteins at one point, even when a beef protein allergy is very unlikely.

After weeks of that shitty simple diet, but definitely giving my body more than enough as calories and making sure I also get a good variety of vitamins with either supplements or drinks like the protein (which have added vitamins), getting all the vital macros and micros, but making sure to avoid pretty much anything that could be an allergen, I started feeling better. I never knew you're actually supposed to want to eat three times a day. I didn't know you're not supposed to be able to burp three hours after eating a meal to still taste the meal.

Anyway, your problem does sound different, but if it's something to do with autoimmune or nutrition, it might help to try that. When our dog had allergies, the vets just went "rice, potatoes, chicken and fish, that's all you'll give him, he should be fine". The point being it's so hard to chase after an allergen that it's easier to give a simple exclusion diet. For dogs it's obviously easier as they don't spice their food or whatnot, but can you say you've ever went even a few days of avoiding the allergens I just listed? It's essentially the low FODMAPS diet for IBS. Here's some quickly googled John Hopkins article on it.

From my very objective and masculine solution focused emotion ignoring Finnish moronical mechanical point of view, I would say that you do that diet for a few weeks and have a caloric surplus (yes you might gain weight, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make) but I don't excpect that you to make you necessarily feel better at all. I expect it to prime your body to be able to feel better. If you do that, and then the next thing, and you don't feel good, I would be surprised. I'm not saying I don't think it could happen, but I would put money against it. So what is the next thing? During that few weeks, or a few weeks following the first one, whatever you feel like, if you can, light exercise. If you can't, it's fine.

But then, a serotonergic substance, but with set&setting in mind. It's a complex issue, because doing ecstasy at home doesn't necessarily feel good, and you're not probably ready to go to a rave or anything. So maybe... LSD and movies? That would be my suggestion. If you want even more introspection, mushrooms. But if you've never done any serotonergic substances, I would go with LSD, as I feel like it's much... "easier"... than mushrooms. Mushrooms feels like conversing with a deity older and larger than the galaxy, whereas taking LSD is sort of like being visited by a mischievous demigod.

Anyway, that's because despite fixing your body to be able to feel good, you also need to prompt it to feel good, and that's just something a depressed person might literally be incapable of doing. You know how memory is contextual? Like how a certain smell can just... unlock a memory you know you knew you had, but you just didn't sort of have... access to? Well, memory is contextual not just in regards to external stimuli, but also internal stimuli. In a certain mood, we more easily recall other times when we were in that mood, and it's harder to remember things which you experienced in a wildly different mood. This can get so bad that you're essentially depressed for so long that the default setting gets so far from happy that you literally can not access happy memories anymore, so you don't experience happiness, and because you don't, you can't, ad infinitum.

That's why the importance of the serotonergic substances. SSRI's work with the same assumption; "increasing serotonin levels should help". But serotonin isn't happiness. Happiness is very much just the other side of the coin from anxiety. So SSRI's just don't work, because the idea behind them is flawed. They never get you to unlock those happy memories. Which is why ecstasy, LSD, shrooms, anything serotonergic (ie working on the serotonin system) taken at a sufficient dose will crank up your brain to a very anxious/happy (sometimes it's hard to differentiate which, which is where the "bad trip" 'myth' comes from. not exactly a myth, but it's not a "bad trip" as much as it's "too big of a dose for that specific person in that setting causing too intense an experience they don't have the experience to handle"), which then unlocks all the memories of times when you experienced happy (and possibly also anxious) states of mind.

Once that intense experience of a night or a night and day is over, then you'll have the capability to remember those things, which is assumed to be the reason why shroom therapy can yield benefits of warding off depression in the terminally ill for up to months.

https://broadview.org/magic-mushrooms-are-helping-terminally-ill-patients-go-out-on-a-high/

And the benefits are that if you do actually still want to kill yourself, you'll basically have peace of mind over it, and if you really did come out of a trip explaining how you've just seen it all and don't need to exist anymore, I'd be way more likely to believe you than now when I know you have a caloric deficienc