Also, for a friendly critical comment to your anti-depressants philosophy -- when I read your first post when you started on them, and felt a "constant underlying sense of energy", I thought "great that it works for Ben now, but what long-term?". Because my personal experience from a couple of people I knew using them, they weren't that happy overall, and spent a lot of their energy figuring out the exact cocktail. And then I didn't read your blog for 2 years, and when I opened it again, the first post I read was you writing about dealing with antidepressant withdrawal effects.
Another personal story -- my former roommate was married to a guy with depression, and he was going through different antidepressants, was stuck in a dead-end job. They divorced, and somehow 2 weeks later he got a new girlfriend, 2 months later new job, and his depression seems to have disappeared. She told me that just before they divorced, he switched to a new antidepressant, and she wished she knew it would work so well before divorcing him.
I looked him up and saw that his new wife was much better looking than her!
Hmm I think my situation is pretty different. I've had depression ~my whole life regardless of circumstances. I wouldn't say I've had a hard time with withdrawal effects. The bigger problem is that the side effects (impaired sleep, dry mouth) make it hard to sustain in the long run.
For instance I recently been noticed a strong correlation between my number of steps walked and productivity using exist.io to aggregate https://ibb.co/K7q1VcC
Regarding your chemical experiments, have you considered tracking objective measures of performance? Or is it not a goal for you? For instance, I use Rescue time, and then see time in various areas correlates to other changes
I've used RescueTime in the past but found it not to give me more useful data than "vibes". Sleep is the most important thing for me and I use my Garmin watch for that.
Also, for a friendly critical comment to your anti-depressants philosophy -- when I read your first post when you started on them, and felt a "constant underlying sense of energy", I thought "great that it works for Ben now, but what long-term?". Because my personal experience from a couple of people I knew using them, they weren't that happy overall, and spent a lot of their energy figuring out the exact cocktail. And then I didn't read your blog for 2 years, and when I opened it again, the first post I read was you writing about dealing with antidepressant withdrawal effects.
Another personal story -- my former roommate was married to a guy with depression, and he was going through different antidepressants, was stuck in a dead-end job. They divorced, and somehow 2 weeks later he got a new girlfriend, 2 months later new job, and his depression seems to have disappeared. She told me that just before they divorced, he switched to a new antidepressant, and she wished she knew it would work so well before divorcing him.
I looked him up and saw that his new wife was much better looking than her!
(PS, your wife is really good looking)
Hmm I think my situation is pretty different. I've had depression ~my whole life regardless of circumstances. I wouldn't say I've had a hard time with withdrawal effects. The bigger problem is that the side effects (impaired sleep, dry mouth) make it hard to sustain in the long run.
For instance I recently been noticed a strong correlation between my number of steps walked and productivity using exist.io to aggregate https://ibb.co/K7q1VcC
Ooh looks cool, might give it a whirl.
Regarding your chemical experiments, have you considered tracking objective measures of performance? Or is it not a goal for you? For instance, I use Rescue time, and then see time in various areas correlates to other changes
I've used RescueTime in the past but found it not to give me more useful data than "vibes". Sleep is the most important thing for me and I use my Garmin watch for that.