How to Recover From Depression Without Drugs

Depression is a very common illness afflicting millions of people each year. It can sap your strength, put stress on relationships and make you lose your sense of self. Here are some things you can try to lift your spirits and make you enjoy life again, without drugs or therapy.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Laughter
• Smiles
• Five minutes

1. Laugh. Watch comedy programs on TV. Read humorous books and articles. Rent movies by the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges, or your favorite comedians. Do this every day, and all night long if you feel like it. Go to bed happy and get out of bed if you are unhappy.

2. Spend time doing the things you enjoy, and avoid doing things you don't. Socialize with people you like, and stay away from people you don't. Live every minute like it's your last.

3. Get out of the house. Do some things you always wanted to but never did. Buy yourself something expensive. Take long drives and get far away from home. Sit on a park bench and write. Leave your life behind and become someone else, if only for an hour.

4. Decide what you would do if you could do anything in the world you wanted, and then start to do it. No matter how impossible that goal seems, if you cut it into small enough steps, you can find a way to start. Take one minute at a time.

5. Remember you have two choices in life. You can spend the next five minutes being happy, or the next five minutes being sad. Whether happy or sad, you are using the same amount of energy in that five minutes. The choice you make could change your life forever.

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[citeunseen]

on 4/27/2009 Major depression is not the blues. Yes, getting out and doing things are nice distractions. If you are going through the funk or the blues, it is a useful list. But, when you cannot go to sleep at night, night after night, and you wake up early in the morning and don't want to feel your body in bed, but cannot concentrate enough to figure out what you want to or need to do, for a period or at least 2 weeks, you are probably experiencing major depression. And the cute little helpers don't help because very few things are funny, crying is the operational mode, and talking to anyone takes just too much energy. The best comparison I can think to describe the feeling of true depression is comparable to bleeding to death...you can feel the life flowing out of you and you become weaker, confused, and drained drop by drop, thought by thought, minute by minute,loss by loss that cannot be recov

[gmmcnair]

on 10/10/2007 Some good advice even for those of us who need drugs to shake the depression. A little cognitive therapy. :-)

[Shallah]

on 9/23/2007 Very, Very good suggestions! Excellent advice to get out of a funk. Get moving, do something different!

[devonian]

on 9/1/2007 Yes, it's very nice but clinical depression isn't fixed with a 'positive outlook'.

[Retrolori]

on 7/18/2007 This isn't too helpful for 'major depression'.