Hopefully the medication helps you feel better if it helps then it would probably make it easier to adress other things in your life without being so overwhelmed with depression. I personally have not had much luck with meds for the depression so I tend to self medicate that, mostly with cannabis...sometimes I drink to deal with it but that usually ends up being counter-productive. I do not only take drugs to self medicate though...getting high can be a nice distraction but not always self medication per-say. I do have prescriptions for anxiety and sleep meds, which I use pretty sparingly for those issues. But yeah basically just living with depression as best I can, trying not to let it get the best of me...guess that is all one can do. But it is possible to keep going...you're right that we don't need to die of our own actions, there are other ways though they may be very elusive and hard to perceive much of the time.