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It's almost tragic that, perhaps due to the mushrooms, he was able to pinpoint the things that made him unhappy in his life but instead of acting on this newly gained knowledge, points the blame to the thing that made him able to see what the actual problems were.

I've taken multiple times as I find it fun to do but there was this one time I took it when I didn't feel good and just took it kinda out of boredom and it hit me in the face that I was making some major mistakes in my life and I needed to turn these around. I felt awful the entire trip but thanks to the newly gained insights I was able to actually act and change myself for the better. LSD never changed any of my problems but it made me aware what they actually were in a more concrete sense.

To put it bluntly I was unhappy without really knowing why, and after LSD I was unhappy and knowing why. I don't believe psychadelics will ever resolve your problems, you just gain new insights on your issues and it'll still be up to you - in a sober state I presume - to act on these insights.

Brutal honesty at its best. If everyone had the guts to talk this tone to their boss the world would look a lot better.

Well there is a saying "It is easy for a single man to divorce a wife". I am not sure his suggestion is practical also tone is terrible. I hope they can cope with other people who are being "brutally honest" with them being a jerk in real life.

I read love your wife more in the morning because her soliciting other guys in front of you is the most obvious sign she will give before filing for a divorce herself.

If no one tells you this , you can't solve problem number one. Problem number one always results in no sex followed by a system break down hence the princess comment. In the western society women initiate 2/3 of the divorces.

GP is nuanced giving a helicopter view on the personal projection at hand so it doesn't dilute the actual news brought here to light . If this tone sounds offensive we could ask HN to introduce emojis.

Someone once said something about a hammer the same applies for the mushroom.

Edit: your original comment included in Turkey we have a saying.

> In the western society women initiate 2/3 of the divorces.

Interesting. Source?

I found this by quickly googling https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150822154900.h... but there are more sources as well. From my anecdotal non-scientific observational experience it seems completely doable.

Yep I can.

> I am not sure his suggestion is practical

So what's your solution? Just live in misery all the time because doing the easy thing is easier than doing the correct thing? Avoid immediate discomfort in exchange for long term happiness - what terrible advice. No wonder these people are depressed.

You only get to live once, and I cant imagine anything worse than rotting away because you dont have the balls to stick up for yourself - sitting there at 9PM answering slack messages rather than just saying "I'm off the clock, go hire more people if you want 24/7 support".

Make love to her and save your marriage or break up and move on, just don't sit in resentment filled limbo, watching her clearly unhappy and flirting with other men --- then act surprised and betrayed when the thing THAT YOU CAN SEE MILES AWAY happens. He can see the unhappy future approaching and he's still not acting? Why? Because he is in love with misery like my post says.

Except when he does the mushrooms and they cheer him up a bit and give him the clarity and happiness to fix it. He still has to do it himself though

What was good about that post? It sounded like gross generalizations and deep seated resentment, with not a touch of “honesty”.

I found that post aggressive, biased, and kinda missing GP's point.

While this rings true, consider we can pursue this conclusion for just about any instance where depression is reported. We can say: why aren't you drastically shaking things up? Why are you not making changes of extreme consequence that will completely change your life in unpredictable ways? Change frightens people, but some have more to lose than others. A few years before I met my SO, I had broken up with a partner of over 3 years and changed jobs, then subsequently fell into sleeplessness and depression for a year. Change isn't necessarily free, though probably worth it if it's under serious consideration.

In my observation the perpetually depressed are often (no, not always, but very often) home bodies who barely leave their domicile and spend ample amounts of time on social media, staying up late mindlessly scrolling through their phones. There are simple but perhaps difficult changes to be made here.

Yes - and it's mushrooms that will knock you out of this funk.

The mushrooms fixed him for 2 or so months. During that time he should have woken up and sorted his life out. Thats enough time to start exercising, having the conversations at home and work.

You dont have to solve everything all at once, but fixing depression is a cumulative process where even small changes in diet, exercise and environment will compound over time and put you in a better place.

The mushrooms will show you the answer, but it's up to the individual to act.

Did you notice in his post he didn't describe what happened when he was cured in those two months? No, straight back to finger pointing and blaming everyone else.

He needs to hear the blunt truth : maybe, just maybe, it's his fault. Then he can take more mushrooms and work on fixing it, rather than expecting them to be a magic bullet.

I've tried shrooms, I'm not sure they show anything much the same way anti-depressants don't show anything. But they may be a useful stepping stone to spur change and eschew learned helplessness. No one can alleviate your depression but yourself.

Also, drugs only work in combination with talk therapy. It's amazing how many people argue for everything under the sun except talk therapy.

Why do you say that?

Talk therapy is expensive. $150/HR is about the base rate for my city. An average treatment regimen is 3x1hr/wk or $1,800USD/mo. That's 68% the 2016 individual median equivalent annual income. Therapists qualified and stable enough to treat severe illnesses are exceptionally rare. Rare enough that they can charge a multiple of the rate I quoted, while maintaining a calender as full as they like and a waiting list of willing clients, and can choose to accept or refuse insurance on a whim.

It's amazing how many people casually bring up the wonders of talk therapy without noting any of the confounding factors the patient must watch for while they pay out the nose for therapy that may end up having detrimental effects. An average or worse therapist for anything but textbook cases are liable to cause more harm than good.

Not having thousands of dollars you may have otherwise to use for various productive purposes had can also have a detrimental effect on health.

Thanks! That's certainly one of the confounding factors I had in mind when I was writing this. The same goes for traveling to and fro meetings. This is especially painful for hardworking yet poor mentally ill and unskilled workers trying to get their life together. Overcoming mental illness, childhood abuse, medical issues, witnessing or being a victim of a crime, and bettering oneself, oftentimes several of these at once, is a Herculean feat. Asking for help does not mean someone is lesser. In fact, by not helping someone in need they're less likely to ask for help before they do something permanent. For some all this work proves too difficult. For so many reasons.

Most Americans are scraping by with medical, addiction, or mental issues on top of being underpaid, under educated, overworked, and priced out of necessary services like mental/health/child care, housing, and transportation.

It's no wonder so many articles and studies bemoan the current state of affairs.

The scheduling is even worse for free services where hours the services are offered are limited especially if you're holding down a job, and once you make it work by waking up a couple hours earlier thna normal and jumping through a bunch of hoops... the care is temporary and you need to find something else in a few months.

If anything I think part of the value of seeking out mental healthcare is symbolic. I.E. it's so difficult and costly you convince yourself that you must really want to get better, can work hard, and that something so burdensome must work or nobody would bother with it (a sort of placebo effect). Yet it's easy to get jaded and easy to find yourself going through some ineffectual therapy at great personal cost.

I also think that people are really hung-up on two specific approaches, namely talk therapy and drugs, when they can simply not be cost-effective. It's really costly to put a specialist through years of school, and heat up those counselling offices, and all of that. If you're poor enough that money can make a HUGE impact on the diet you can afford and the exercise you can get. People seem to have this funny idea that somebody living an impoverished miserable life will be happy if somebody says some kind words to them and drugs are altering their neurotransmitter levels.

You're getting at what's known as rotten life syndrome[1]. The themes are consistent across every demographic. When someone is underemployed, overworked, under housed, impoverished, starving, a victim of crime/persecution, etc then they will manifest the symptoms of various mental illnesses depending on what's going wrong in their life. Therapy cannot be useful if the basic life of a person is unstable. Yet these people are told they aren't working hard enough, they deserve what they get, etc. It's absolutely ridiculous. We have the means the house, clothe, feed, and care for everyone. Our electorate has, and probably will, continue to get away with, misappropriating these resources for their own gain, at the cost of countless human lives.

1. https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/mental-health/

You sound live you’ve never done this, let alone any other shit.