Other depression "treatments"

It's good that you are getting things under control and it sounds like you have a pretty good understanding of how you cope with depression in unhealthy ways.  I guess I'd have to say that my biggest coping mechanism usually has been anger at myself where I feel like I want to do something harmful to myself and kind of go on an internal tangent about how much I hate myself, I shouldn't exist, etc.  Then I go through a period of feeling numb to deal with the anger.  I've at times also used shopping and food, too, but when I'm in the angry stage, I don't want to shop because I don't deserve it or I'm so ugly there is nothing that could make me feel better.  Once in a while I might drink too much because it takes away the anger.  Mostly, though, I just try to cope with it by taking my medications and continuing therapy - although I have to say, sometimes the latter can trigger a short-term depressive episode, depending on what's transpired.

So, I'm sure you're not alone in how you cope and I guess it's because of poor coping mechanisms that we end up in therapy or on medication, right?  If our own coping skills worked successfully, we'd be fine.  I'd like to get to the point where my automatic reaction isn't anger; probably, anger might temporarily feel better than depression, I don't always know.  I'm kind of curious about why you want to know more about the bad ways of coping - is it to see if you're like most people or not, or to see if you could do worse?  Just wondering.

Yeah you are right...we do talk about ways of coping but we have not delved into some of the side effects of depression like addictions and things of this nature.  Thank you for bringing this up...perhaps we can have more conversations about these things.