I’m not talking about celebrities or motivational speakers who claim on camera they beat it. As we see with celebrities, they often post positive messages, even write books on ‘recovery’ but eventually succumb to the darkness anyway. I’m also not talking about people who pop by SP saying “it gets better”. More often than not they seem to spiral back to depression soon enough.
I’m talking about someone whose life made a real turnaround and they lived a full life and died of natural causes at age 86 with a smile on their face.
Just 1 credible example of recovery might offer a little hope.
I’m actually in a relatively good place right now, but I know it won’t last. It won’t last because it never does, not for anybody. Someone on this site once said “Recovery is easy. Staying recovered is the hard part.” Truest words ever spoken.
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Same. I’ve also been looking for real success stories. Haven’t seen ANY. And yes, the ones who pop on this site claiming ‘things get better’ either go back to being depressed OR they were just lying to us and themselves to begin with.
Exactly. I think the only ‘cure’ for suicide is delusion. That’s why a lot of suicidal people are prone to delusional happiness, thinking it’s a recovery but it’s just a mirage.
Depressed celebrities are even more prone to delusional happiness because they have the drug of ‘success’ to pump them up. But depression never goes away, it just waits. Naomi Judd wrote a book: “My Descent Into Depression and How I Emerged with Hope”
Couple years later she killed herself with a shotgun. What does that tell us about “it gets better”?
…that “it get’s better”- but only temporarily. Until you fall off a cliff again.
Delusion. That’s the thing. The “happiest” people, or rather the standard person which isn’t depressed- are the ones who are the most ignorant, unaware of economics, politics, truth, etc. They either stick their head in the sand (ignorance) or in delusion of reality (won’t admit to how fucked the economic system is in the USA) and how life is great if you just “TRIED.”
Anyhow, yeah, the ones NOT afflicted with depression are the ignorant and/or delusional ones.
So FML for being aware and not delusional. That makes me a miserable fuck.
lol u should do a study of how many people write these ‘recovery’ books and suicided. or climbed back into deep depression.
i mean, in all fairness, not to shit on her, she did manage to get better enough to write a book and be productive, which is more than i can say for myself.
lol that would be pretty hilarious to report how many self help authors end up at rock bottom. But I wouldn’t want to trash their intentions like that. It’s like you said, getting the strength to write a book means they climbed out of the hole and managed to be productive, so that’s a win by any measure.
It’s just what comes after that sucks. I’m reminded of the semicolon girl… you know the one who started the trend of getting a semicolon tattoo to show you’re embracing life. I think her activism was genuine, but she ended up killing herself anyway.
well, there are Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, both had pretty serious depression, I suspect suicidal but no one talked about suicide at the time so it’s hard to know for sure.
Roosevelt is the one I know more about, early in his life he lost his wife and child. He had always been a sickly person, so he moved out west to do some ranching and reinvent himself. Granted, I think we could all get a lot better with a ranch and his money.
Point is he got back to his regular life, accomplished some stuff, and died in his sleep at age 60 when a blood clot hit his lungs.
Churchill lost his two year old daughter, and publicly discussed his “black dog days”, those being the ones where depression overwhelmed him.
I’ve also always been a fan of Churchill for the absurd lifestyle he led. He was a functional alcoholic most of his life, and smoked cigars so much they still put his face on many of the boxes…. but despite all of that he died from a stroke at age 90…. not bad at all.
Many say that both were made more bold and daring based on their losses, when they fought back depression it wasn’t that much more work to fight monopolies (in Roosevelt’s case) or Nazis (in Churchill’s case)…. they beat them too. It took monoplies roughly 60 years to recover from Roosevelt, where as Nazi’s took about 80ish……… I still have meager hope some new champion will rise to challenge the current examples of villains that must be fought.
well Churchill wasn’t exactly a “good” guy- he pushed the Imperialist British Empire agenda, which were none to great for the other countries. Oh yea, and he was a member of WEF. Not a good guy.
Teddy Roosevelt was good. One of the last good presidents, aside from JFK. And they killed him for it.
We do indeed need a new champion to fight the villains. Will it be RFK Jr, or will they assassinate him too?
Idk man, I don’t have any hope left. Even if he did get elected, they will do everything in their power to block him, and if they can’t, they will do to him what they did to his uncle and father.
Yea I was about to say, Churchill isn’t exactly a shining example of a good life. He’s one of those Christopher Columbus or Gandhi characters whom we’re taught to adore for their heroism, but it later comes out that they did some really REALLY scummy things…
Beyond that though, I’m not just talking about depressed people who accomplish great things. Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Beethoven, etc would be examples of people who accomplished phenomenal things under the yoke of depression. But guess what, they all still died depressed.
I’m talking about actually beating depression. Like beating cancer. Making it go away completely, not just learning to live with it.
i heard Mother Teresa wasn’t actually a good person either.
PS omg please don’t look to RFK Jr as our next hero lol. Check out his rants that the Jews created covid. His “proof” Jews didn’t die from covid as much as Christians. The guy’s a fucking asshole alt right moron trying to act like a Kennedy Democrat.
i wasn’t looking at him as our next hero. i agree with him on stopping the endless wars, companies should stop fucking polluting and should be penalized for doing so, i’m for free speech and not censorship by MSM and whatever the establishment tells us is “truth.” the establishment hate him, even more than Trump, so he’s obviously a threat to the establishment. as well as the CIA, FBI, etc.
I haven’t heard anything about him blaming covid on Jews- that sounds rather odd- so I can’t comment on that. What I agree on is that covid vaccinations are, and were, bullshit, and so were the lockdowns and mandates.
the MSM is smearing him, so what you read and see isn’t necessarily the truth. they have an agenda, and it is to smear him and character assassinate him.
Well I won’t get political because I fucking hate every last politician. But in RFK Jr’s case it’s his own words, his own posts that tell me who he is.
Kinda like Trump who amassed a huge cult by whining about MSM… But the MSM didn’t make him say it’s ok to grab women by the *****. What a fucktard, I don’t need any smears to show me who he is.
All politicians. ALL. They fucking suck dude. Idolize no one.
i do not idolize any human. i’m far too cynical for that.
all i said was i agree with rfk jr on the things i’ve heard him speak on. he’s the only democrat saying we should get out of the endless wars while the rest of them are fucking warhawks. i believe in free speech and the rest of the democrats want to suppress independent media. i sure af don’t want fucking biden.
anyhow, you can believe whatever you want and vote for whoever you want. i, for one, don’t even believe in voting anymore bc it does nothing.
Bingo… I don’t vote because our entire political system is fucked. And why play along with a fucked game. Democracy? Yeah every 4 years we get a multiple choice test:
A) Asshole #1
B) Asshole #2
It’s been this way as long as I’ve been alive. So these days I just sit back and watch the country burn.
I applied this trick once: collected email ids from comments of SP (we can search comments from wp-admin area), put them in facebook search bar. Many times they lead to a profile. Noticed that person’s recent posts. I can say that many people who were on SP once and were suicidal, later on were leading better life. I can’t get in their head to be sure but their fb posts do indicate that. I even friended one or two of them and chatted with them thru message and yes their lives improved. True that history cannot be erased and may become permanent part of our personality but that doesn’t mean it cannot create positive life.
[Note: Trick should not be used for privacy infringement or negative stalking]
Unfortunately social media posts are the worst indicator of a person’s true life.
Look no further than Lee MacMillan
https://www.instagram.com/maxandlee_/
Judging by her posts wouldn’t you say she was one of the happiest humans alive? Always glowing smiles, talking about overcoming adversity through positivity, traveling the world and posting about the magic of life… Then one day she posts “I’m taking a little bit of time as I plot out my next steps…” Some time after that she caught a train without a ticket if you know what I mean.
Social media’s purpose seems to be create an idealistic dream life you wish you had, usually the opposite of reality.
I will say though, if we’re talking about SP users, there was just 1 a while back… SeeSmith. He died but not by suicide, it may have been cancer. But one of his family members posted that he had found peace & happiness in his last years. And looking at his last posts, they seemed genuinely positive, humorous and uplifting. Wish I knew him, he might be the only one who made it out of this alive.
lol no one posts how shitty their real life is on FB. It’s all presenting an image of a great sunshiney awesome fun-filled life. everyone has a million friends. everyone has their best photos, photoshopped, makeup-ed, smiling, laughing, etc.
just bc someone posts how happy they are on FB doesn’t mean they’re actually happy. how many ppl can we really tell about our depression? most of us hide it in the real world.
I would view with a healthy skepticism any stories of ‘ recovery’ from suicidal depression. Mild depression might be possible but suicidal depression I would seriously doubt. The late Sinatra springs to mind, he would be the last guy one would imagine to fighting suicidal depression but the word is the man made two serious attempts, wrist slitting and by gas oven, both episodes were apparently covered up by organised crime and were not revealed until after his death. Apparently he just ‘ had to live with it’ until passing on by old age.
Seriously?? I didn’t know that about ol blue eyes. That’s a shame.
Honestly though, I had my suspicions after watching his movie The Man with the Golden Arm. His performance in that was a little too real. I’m like, that dude aint just acting, he’s showing us something deep within his soul…
More I think about it, that really fucking sucks about Sinatra. He really was the ideal success story, achieved everything anyone in his profession would ever want, not just fame/fortune/power but artistic integrity and respect from his peers. If that can’t save a person from depression idek what can. We’re fucked
Great movie ‘the man with the Golden arm, one of the first unflinching portrayals of addiction.
More I think about it, that really fucking sucks about Sinatra. He really was the ideal success story, achieved everything anyone in his profession would ever want, not just fame/fortune/power but artistic integrity and respect from his peers. If that can’t save a person from depression idek what can. We’re fucked
EXACTLY! People aren’t distinguishing “mild depression” from “suicidal depression.” There IS a fucking difference. Lots of people bounce back from a minor bout, and I fucking HATE how dumbass people are constantly saying “hey, i had depression and i made it out so you can too, you just need to stop thinking negative!” I LITERALLY had that told to me just an hour ago. FFS.
So many people claim they have “depression,” meanwhile, they are just very sad for a little bit, or it’s situational, like school or bf/gf issues, etc. There’s “being sad” and being depressed and being fucking suicidal.
I’ve been ok-ish, sad, mildly depressed, depressed, and deeply fucking depressed throughout my life, and NO, they are not all the same “depression.” To say it’s the same is a slap in the face.
And yeah, like you said, ppl who are suicidally depressed rarely ever shake their depression and live for the rest of our lives depressed and fucked up.