depressed for several year's. seeking solution

Dear Victor, Please accept my sincere apology for not having replied earlier, even when I read your post soon after you had written it.

I can relate to your experience and I can sense the dark depth from the bottom of which you are looking up at the opening (probably almost invisible) at the height of a moon. I am not a professional but I am with you to be of any help to you, if I can, here or in some other form. Before I say anything, I have this request:

Please stop self-medicating, if you are more than familiar with depression drugs. We don't know what can go wrong and it can have serious consequences, which are best avoided. Moreover, alcohol is not going to help us out of such a situation in the long run--it just helps things pile up.

Losing people we love is often a paralyzing experience and no amount of words meant for consoling can beguile some of us from such death shocks, and I believe yours is also such a kind. If you feel withdrawn from social interactions, including members of your family, that is quite natural for certain kinds of depressions, so don't feel extra concerned about that. Just try to restrain yourself from that temptation--the temptation to be alone, which leads to self-tormenting. Certain depressions trap us in some paradoxical but natural situations in which we take pleasure in destroying what we love (health, relations, aims in life, etc.)--a kind of taking revenge on ourselves. The pleasure of self-harming (in any form) is tempting like Sirens. I hope you won't misunderstand my idea of pleasure here--it means we are often satisfied or our desire to do some harm is satisfied or gratified when we do something bad that affects what we care for in the way we like it in depressed circumstances as opposed to how we would like it in usual circumstances. It often, therefore, does help to try being or talking with friends than can emotionally help us when we are trapped in such paradoxical situations.

In many cultures, members of a family cannot EMOTIONALLY support another member when they are in need of such such support, especially when in depression, even if then family members want to support and comfort them. They love and care for each other, but their culture has not brought them up in such a way that close members of a family show their love, care and emotions for each other visibly. People who have been brought up in such emotionally detached cultures cannot do or say what they know they should do or say or what they want to say or do. While this is the fault of neither you nor your children, the gap that has developed between you and your children (culture has its role in this) is contributing to how you feel about yourself. Good companionship with understanding people--at least one who is available--is really helpful in depression treatment. So it really does pay to try making good relationship with at least certain select people, if not most or all people around you.

However, a depressed person being in a specific condition that usually calls for special attention/treatment/care, general people around us may not be skilled/sympathetic/available enough for this need, even if they genuinely want to help the depressed person. Therefore, it turns out that we should not expect expert attention from them--they are just helpful, which takes us a great distance. This points to another help--a psychiatrist, a professional.

Sessions with psychiatrists are not always beneficial immediately, mainly because of factors external to the case at hand. The patient and the doctor are both humans and sometimes the chemistry between them matters. But such external matters rarely interfere in the treatment process, and we can safely say that sessions with a psychiatrist helps most of the time. At the same time, we depressed people need at least one trusted friend who is available for us, to talk with, to hang out with, to be a distraction from our depression and the causes of depression, or to talk sensitively and critically about the causes of the depression.

In short, it is more about how we live every single moment of our daily life. The trick is not to give our mind time to slip into thinking about what you feel depressed about. This is scientific--practically, we have just a head/brain/mind, and while our mind is occupied with something, it is not available for something else. It thus falls to reason that if you keep your mind busy with non-depressing things, it (your mind) does not have other things (whatever it may be) to be occupied with. In simpler terms, give your mind what you want it to be occupied with, and as a result, your mind feels what you give it can make it feel.

Along this line, try to keep yourself busy with one thing or the other. Hobbies come helpful. Helping others is also a big help in making ourselves feel good about ourselves. Keep a good friend close with you. Make some conscious effort to do good about anything. That will definitely help.

I have more things to say. But just this for now. Let's communicate, if you need it further. You can write to me in private.

Wishing you all the best as a friend.