Comment by flog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flog | Hacker News Reader

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I went through a solid year and a half of depression after a cheating girlfriend and rough, isolating startup lifestyle. For me, watching videos of successful entrepreneurs would be horrible advice. In fact, HN, social media on the whole are very biased mediums and not at all representative of real life.

Exercise is great, go and do that. If it doesn't work, at least you'll put on some muscle when you do get out of it.

I am definitely against any sort of drugs, and I dont think labeling things is particularly helpful, but my suggestion is to get over it. Recognise you can take a beating and survive.

The best advice I can give: change. Change something. Change jobs, hobbies, places. Go looking for new things to excite you again. I'm about to take my own advice and go on a cycle tour - I'm starting with Holland, then may try the west coast of the US. (It took me a year and a half to get to the point where I even bothered setting goals like that, but it's something good to try and do)

I think stories of entrepreneurs can seem biased, because those are all success stories on the whole, but if you dial down deep into all of those stories you can hear from the entrepreneurs of the years that they struggled and the years they thought they were at rock bottom. That is what I think he, and anyone else, should take away from the videos, the fact that those entrepreneurs struggled in obscurity before finding success.

I am pretty anti-pharamcetuicals, but I am very pro-supplement and nutrients. Simply not getting enough of certain amino acids can cause depression or other things. An example is dopamine, which is built from tyrosine in the body. is the neurotransmitter dopamine. The evidence is that it has to do with motivation and not pleasure. I recently wrote an article about that change here ( http://matznerd.com/dopamine-is-not-about-pleasure-anymore-a... ) but the main takeaway is that if you lack the nutrients in your body to make dopamine it can result in depression...

I have to say, I think asking someone as deeply depressed as the OP to find the perspective to hear the stories of struggle amid the trumpeting of success is asking an awful lot. That's tough for anyone to do, never mind someone who is struggling from a severe lack of perspective in the first place.

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