If my depression never goes away...

Have you sought professional help at all? I find that your expressions of all or nothing thinking is very detrimental to you being able to accept any thoughts, advice from others personal experience,. It is a journey for sure with lots of bumps unless your willing to accept that and continue to try even if that means only existing for those days you are alive. How will you ever know if your ideal of what pleasure is will ever return.
I think we all have had periods of hating the illness .. Feelings are just moments in time even when they are long lasting. I find you are almost trying to justify staying where your at in what you perceive as all negative. Can you share all avenues you have tried to help yourself. We are here to share, help, express ourselves etc. you say you are receptive to other ideas, yet are rebutting it all which tells me you are indeed in a very negative place right now. Which means you may need more help than we here can provide by our own personal experience.

As an atheist I hold to the theory of evolution. The pleasure/pain aspect of perception is intrinsic to this process. To be alive is to take part in this process which has its existence out of necessity. The cosmos is violent: stars fuse hydrogen to heavier elements, gravity at tracks them together, bodies collide, life forms, dies, and persists in in conflict with entropy as a result of environmental interactions which led to a brain evolved to seek favorable outcomes (such as feeling pleasures). This is reality - the struggle to achieve favorable outcomes.

Depression forces a mind to confront that their current model of environmental interaction is insufficient to achieve a favorable outcome perceived as required for continued existence (survival). A depressed mind broods on problems, ever compelled to seek that which will act as a solution. At the same time depression impedes the ability to formulate an effective response to such problems. As a result altering ones mental state is necessary in order to improve cognitive processes. Exercise, diet, a routine sleep cycle, supplements, psychiatry, and activities which distract from depressing thoughts can aid in that process. Seeing a therapist can be effective as well. I have found non-directive meditation is also quite helpful (I had been engaging in it long before I had was aware it was practiced - mysticism has little personal appeal to me).

Errors in reason are as a result of imperfect perception. Depression alters perception, this is undeniable. Seek to gain perspective on your current system of belief, doubt that "for which there is the least cause for doubt." Construct a plan to reorder your minds chemical balance; consider solutions you may have been hesitant in pursuing. Do more than be patient, be proactive in rejecting a reality which is perceived as lacking meaning. Do not become lost in distractions as I did burning away years of my life with video games and other trivial persuits. Use them instead as a means to an end, and only as such.

Most importantly, seriously consider seeing a psychiatrist. Look one up now and resolve to call and make an appointment as soon as possible regardless of how it may inconvenience others.

Feel free to flame me if I'm talking through my hat, but FWIW:

It's much to your credit that you're not wishing to "lord it" over others. Nevertheless, I think "lording it" over yourself in the sense you describe is just as wrong. I admit your use of the term "god-like" concerns me. One of the prime reasons I became an atheist was that the god I was once expected to worship was a pleasureless ***hole, a perpetually angry control freak and tyrant ready to punish thoughts and feelings as well as actions, and obsessed with praise. I once did a word/phrase count on Handel's Hallelujah Chorus:

Hallelujah: 51
For the Lord God reigneth: 3
And He shall reign for ever and ever: 8
Other "for ever and ever"s: 8
King of Kings: 8
Lord of Lords: 7

And even all this isn't enough to please him, or it could have been sung once and discarded; instead, it's repeated all over the Western world all the time. Whatever can be said of the god being sung to, he ain't feeling pleasure. If this is what "god-like" means, I for one would have no part of it.

Plus, I can't see how you're "inferior" if you're still honoring your commitments, expressing caring for those in your life who merit it (including yourself!), and engaging your struggles instead of giving up. Again, imposing any kind of "superor/inferior" burden on youself I'd call a grave mistake -- not only does it make you MORE prone to depression, but pleasure dies by definition the moment it turns burdensome.

Sure ... until the people they're hurting get wise and avoid them, correct them, punish them, or call the cops as necessary, and there goes their pleasure.

That doesn't negate the positive value of those messages while you and they live. I'd still rather have that as my last conscious thought than, "OH, MY GOD, I F***ED UP!"

Alas, even in the complete absence of depression, no creative arts pursuit can be pleasurable at every moment all the time. I have some small inkling of that whereof you speak, as I'm an amateur comic poet -- I compose with words instead of notes and chords. There are plenty of times when I find that process intensely UNpleasurable ... until I find a perfect rhyme -- one that preserves the meter, makes sense within the story I'm telling, AND can get a laugh. Thus, my pleasure status can jump all over the map in the course of writing one sonnet (fourteen lines)!

IMHO this is a false (because suffocatingly narrrow) dichotomy. I may be depressed, but I'm still grateful for whatever intelligence I have, as (1) it expands my possibilities in finding creative solutions for depression, and (b) it expands my pleasure horizons. I became a classical and jazz lover in my very early 20's; put simply, now that my mind's been stretched to include Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Darius Milhaud and Charlie Parker, I can never go back to "Boogie Oogie Oogie."

I'd be interested -- wanna trade PM's or post publicly here? (We have quite a decent thread called "Music as Therapy" going here.)

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If you had the choice to be the dumbest person on earth with all the pleasure in the world or be someone who is depressed and highly intelligent, which would you choose? I'm quite sure you would choose to be the person with all the pleasure in the world because of the fact that your emotional health comes 1st above some stupid intelligence.

No, I would not. And being obssessed with "pleasure" and feeling "god-like" for being a hedonist.... that is not being emotionally healthy.

Dumb people make dumb decisions. Dumb decisions backfire. When in mess, you are not happy.

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Finally, I hate depression and struggles so much that if, let's pretend, I were to be one of the greatest composers who has earned the title and message to the world of "A young man who faced and accepted a struggle of depression that made him great," I would utterly despise this title. I would instead choose a different title (a different message to the world) of "Struggles and suffering in life is worthless and a life of basically pure pleasure and no struggles or suffering is what makes you great. Therefore, avoid struggles and suffering at all costs and be god-like and superior to these worthless things and become a god through the greatest thing a human being can have (pleasure)."

Um, world already has Pitbull and Will.I.Am and Kesha (and even she is not pleasurepleasurepleasure on her last album... you cannot spend your whole life brushing teeth with bottle of Jack). So your message wouldn't be all that special. Turn on a hip-hop station and you will get this shallow "pleasure and materialism" BS. Hedonism is old.

And no, hedonists aren't universally aclaimed...it's people who actually don't avoid "struggling at all costs".

Please, reconsider your views. Never seen somebody torture themselves and boycott their lives over pursuit of "pleasure" so much (and that includes people who seek pleasure with drugs...).

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If I was the greatest composer right now in front of the world, I would purposely say that I had a life of practically pure pleasure with no depression and little struggles in life. I would say this despite the fact that I have and continue to have chronic depression.

Greatness comes from humility too.

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This life seems to want to force its inferior message upon people that "Suffering is an inevitable part of life and just has to be accepted" as well as that "The greatest people in life had struggles and depression." I utterly despise these messages and want to portray a different message (a superior) message of my own that goes against these loathsome messages of life. It would be a message that creates a different reality I want (a god-like reality in which we all are gods superior to suffering and such and have all the pleasure in the world). It would be that message of my own that I just quoted above.

no offense, but this sounds delusional. Nobody ever has gotten through life without struggle. You are struggling right now... isn't better to accept this and work with what you got rather than not live at all?

Can yo pm me please xx thanks

I dont hear the word LOVE. Anywhere in any of these posts,