Yeah, I'm sorry, too. It's just tough. My family commits suicide a lot. They also spend a remarkable amount of time in mental institutions. It teaches you that past a certain point, all you're doing is watching the show.

A word of caution: mental health is very much organic... but the body is a system. It will adapt to the environment. When the environment rewards depression, the body will acclimatize to depression. Beyond a certain point there's fuckall you can do about biochemistry but up to a point, you're as depressed as you wanna be. I don't know where that point is but I know that you derive no benefit from indulging it and the potential benefit of denying it is killing the fucking problem.

I got depressed in fifth grade. I stayed that way until I left New Mexico. Talking wake up, go to school, talk to no one, eat nothing, sleep three hours, gorge, sleep two hours, run nine miles, work out for an hour, sleep. Yay exercise bulimia - I rode that train from Iran-Contra clear to the Serbian conflict. But then I got out, and then I wasn't somewhere shitty, and I was surrounded by people who kind of cared about me, and for about three years I'd get choked up sometimes and start bawling on the fucking highway 'cuz I couldn't believe I'd actually MADE IT OUT.

Sometimes it isn't organic. Sometimes it's environmental. Usually it's a blend of everything and that's why you need the will to change the things you can change and the strength to suffer the things you can't. Fuck optimism. Fuck pessimism. Learn pragmatism and apply it every fuckin' day to every fuckin' thing you do.

How does a reasonable person who knows they have an imbalance determine how much of that kind of poison to let into their life?

Experience. I haven't had a drink in a week because I'm coughing up a lung over here. If I felt better I'd have some bourbon.

When you've got emphysema, go for the brownies, not the pipe.