I've noticed that there have been significant stretches of my life, when I was depressed. I'm not concerned here whether I was clinically depressed or just down. I'm not a doctor and I don't have the ability to decide that kind of stuff. I do know that I was really really down sometimes and it would stay for weeks or months. It was like a black hole or a pit with vertical sides that were covered in oil and it was impossible to climb out of that pit. When you're down in the bottom of that pit, there really is nothing that can get you out, least of all yourself. The irony is I think it is only myself that could get me out of that dark pit.
I don't have advice for anybody who's in that kind of a pit. I know what I did. I did nothing. Or rather, I waited. That is the one God said I had inside me. I knew that if I waited long enough things would change. And they did. My depressive fits got better, and then they got worse, rather like a wave.
Somewhere along the way I got to recognize this. And then I was able to take advantage of the high Times. There is all sorts of advice for how to battle depression. None of it is useful when you're really depressed, because your life is black and without power and you cannot move or take action. Your motivation is at 0 or in a negative state.
But if you wait until that passes whether it be weeks or months, you can find a stretch where you can take some of that advice and start to act on it. You're rather like a hunter, and you are hunting yourself. Like a hunter, you have to sneak up carefully on your prey, and then wait quietly until a good time to strike comes. When the good time to strike comes you start acting on the good advice for how to not be depressed.
Maybe it's changing your diet or working on your sleep routine, or getting more exercise, or taking cold showers. I'm sure there's lots of advice out there. Those are just a few that I read about.
The next thing that I had to do was the advice that I got from the American Military generals after the Vietnam war. I heard somewhere that they wrote a small book to give to the president. In the book they said these are the rules that we recommend to follow when we go to war. One of the rules was overwhelming force. What that means is don't fight somebody if there's even a chance that you might lose.
It also means to use all means at your disposal to defeat the enemy quickly. And that's what I did to defeat my depression. Meditation, piled up with cold showers, piled up with good food, piled up with going to bed on time and getting enough sleep, piled up with exercise. Any one of those things will help but it's not strong enough. Real depression is a killer and it's a very dangerous foe. You have to strike with full force.
Let me remind you: I'm not a doctor and this is not medical advice. I can't give that. I can only talk about my experiences, and I've done that. There's probably a lot more to it. For instance I had the belief that somehow, even though I hadn't any idea how, somehow I could overcome my black moods. I'm not finished defeating them. They are kind of like Voldemort from the Harry Potter books. He keeps coming back to life. You have to live vigilantly to prevent those black moods from coming back to life, and striking them down before they gain any power. If you have black moods like I had, then I just wish you the best of luck and I wish you have the belief that I also had.