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Comment by bserge | Hacker News Reader

Eyeroll. Read it. I read everything. Look, my brain is broken. It would literally be easier for me to off myself than do everything I need to do every single day. It's simply hell.

A mediocre life is the best I can hope for without modern medicine. When I had access to it, I felt normal for the short but brilliant time it lasted.

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I feel this pain deep inside my brain. My head is like a million points moving in several directions at once, all the time. In fact, I just set up another appointment where I am going in full throttle for whatever medication I can get. I am completely exhausted trying to keep these points all lined up in a straight line.

You might want to take a serious look at your nutrition. Nutritional deficiencies or imbalances can cause all sorts of very serious issues, including mental issues.

Taking long walks in nature (as in 2 or more hours long) can help, as can unplugging from the internet and other media, and meditation.

Many of us hyper-stimulated, and are in a pavlovian loop of jumping from one source of instant gratification to another, without taking much time to reflect one's own life and the world. Quieting one's life might help.

The nutrition point is so difficult to evaluate - a lot of personal variation, many anecdotes, few good scientific studies, a lot of subjectivity and misattribution, people getting fired up online and turning it into ideology... it's very difficult to figure out what's true and what actually works for you.

I think it is mostly a case of scientific belief in a trial by error process: if you believe in trying a bunch of different ideas, you are likely to eventually hit on solutions that help or hinder. You do need some minimum set of ability and brain power to do this effectively. However, even prophylactic or placebo effects can be minor wins (so long as you can manage to avoid dangerous things, like too much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor ).

1000% agree about the hyper-stimulation. I see the signs of it in everyone around me. Very very few people take the time to "unplug" and ACTUALLY experience some quiet times, reflect on life and shut out the infinitely-noisy outside world.

These are great tips. I do miss my days spent outdoors (took a few years off to run a flower planting crew at a landscaping company and run some long distance races).

As for nutrition, I do think I'm doing well there. Other than a sugar fix at night, I eat pretty good/healthy/whole food.

Unplugging is probably my short term answer. I'm also going through the stresses of resigning from my day job and ramping up my side work, so that's a source of intensity too.

"pain"

Psychological pain is real pain, wouldn't you agree? Isn't it all "in our heads" either way?

In my experience, even having access to all the medicine you need doesn't really make things that much better. Sure you can force yourself to work or sleep or smile for a day, but you can't do it every day.

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