Noticed that both you and the OP mentioned drinking. Just the drinking can cause much of this. Drinking screws up your sleep cycle, which can also cause much of this. Drinking sessions are also time consuming, so you have less time for other things you enjoy anyway. Sure, some things you can do while drinking, but those may not be the things you would prefer to be doing while sober.
Sure! Though I drink basically not at all when I’m not in a depressive episode. It’s more of a subconscious “self medication” thing, and the symptoms don’t subside even if I’m not drinking sadly.
A Central Nervous System Depressant and Clinical Depression are two (basically) unrelated concepts. Alcohol is the former. Despite having the same word in them, they are only tangentially related to one another
Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, which is commonly just shortened to “depressant”. This doesn’t mean it causes depression, it means it has a particular effect on us humans biologically.
That said, it does also exacerbate clinical depression, so this gets confusing quickly!
That's a massive oversimplification which came out of non-scientific 12 step literature and is simply not true in many situations.
I have on many occasions beaten back total anhedonia and a desire to die with a few drinks. It's not an optimal solution obviously, but when your options are limited it is sometimes quite preferable to not drinking.
>I have on many occasions beaten back total anhedonia and a desire to die with a few drinks. It's not an optimal solution obviously, but when your options are limited it is sometimes quite preferable to not drinking
As someone who has suffered major depression, I agree totally that recreational drug use can be helpful in managing some symptoms of mental disorder. I do however feel like moderation is a very important aspect of this which can be harder for folks when they are already feeling down
