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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

Have you been depressed? I can tell from experience that a depressed mind is quite active. In a bad way - constantly hurting itself with dark thoughts and hence reinforcing the bad stuff constantly.

You can't exercise depression away. At least for those situations I am familiar with.

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Active is a bad word to describe what I meant. I don't mean to say that a depressed mind is not thinking, just that it may not be able to get itself out of the place it is in without "active" effort (as in therapy - self-therapy or mediated by others). The conundrum is that putting in that effort may not possible because all energy is already spent - as you pointed out. My suggestion is that psychedelics opens space for these thoughts to be actively dealt with in a productive way.

There is also mounting evidence that depression is a symptom and not a single disease, and the symptom may be originating from multiple causes. This view is supported by the extreme between-subject variability seen in imaging studies [1]. That being the case, maybe not all causes would require an "active" approach, just as maybe not all will respond to psychedelics.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-00789-3

To me the point being made is that there will never be a "cure in a pill" for many things, including depression. Medication may help, but really getting past it will also take active effort.

If you're overweight, you can't get lean and fit by taking a pill (much as many would like it to be true). You will have to make some effort by eating less (actively resisting feelings of hunger) and getting more physically active.

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