Vitamin D3 is a good idea, generally the recommendation is 1000 IU a day. Especially now after the winter (assuming you’re in the Northern hemisphere) your vitamin D storage is probably depleted (the body needs a certain amount of UV radiation on the skin to produce vitamin D.

Regular exercise has been proven to help against depression and I think it’s probably the best and most important thing you can do. While helping your depression it will also help your general health and fitness.

Eat well: lots and lots of veggies, legumes and whole grain products. If unhealthy food makes you happy, don’t cut it from your diet completely. Allow yourself to eat sweets etc every once in a while and in moderation, but try to have a very healthy diet as a basis.

These things are probably hard to implement when you’re depressed in the first place but I guarantee you they’ll help and become easier as you go if you consistently stick to them. It takes about 66 days on average to build new habits. So if you manage to stick to it for about 2-3 months, it will become a lot easier.

Good luck!

Go on hikes through forested trails on a regular basis, no bullshit.

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Just mentioning this because I see all the others: spicy food. Your brain makes happy chemicals to help with the pain, apparently.

Cats

Medicine won’t really help if you’re feeling depressed due to external factors. People who feel depressed because of their life situation typically benefit more from therapy both to learn how to cope more effectively and for guidance/support on making life changes. Look for sliding scales or low/no-cost therapy options in your area

Exercise boosts endorphins.

Physical contact boosts oxytocin.

Sex does both.

Chocolate helps produce serotonin.

Capsaicin-heavy foods will make your body produce adrenaline and endorphins.

Caffeine is a drug but can give you a long hit of dopamine — but overdosing will make anxiety worse, and can fuck with your sleep cycle. It’s also rapidly addictive and the withdrawal symptoms include malaise and depressive feelings.

A stable sleep cycle is A#1 for happiness, though. It won’t make you happy on its own but screwing it up will make you unhappy on its own, so it’s the foundation to build everything else on.

Exercise, sauna, and completing small projects can help.

If your emotional distress is related to inflammation then even ibuprofen can give you some relief.

As for solutions outside of pills, exercise has always been the most effective thing for me in improving my happiness.

5-HTP is a mood-regulating supplement, like a mild anti-depressant. I once took it for a year and it actually helped. But for the first week it made me more emotional. Read about it on webMD so you understand it and the risks.

But the real answer is exercise, healthy diet, and maybe vitamin D. Boring answer, I know, but the absolute best one too.

Vitamin D

A lot of people, especially those who don’t go outside, have a vitamin D deficiency. This is especially prevalent this time of year as winter is just ending.

A lot of depression symptoms can be tied to Vitamin D deficiency. Go out and get a supplement and take it for a week, see how you feel.

St Johns Wort can help. It’s not as effective as prescription medication, but can help deal with mild ‘low mood’ type symptoms. It’s comparable to the effect of a compression bandage on a joint. It will help with the equivalent of a pulled tendon, but will do next to nothing against the equivalent of a shattered elbow.

It is worth noting that there are 2 sorts of depression. Feeling sad, while unpleasant, is a lot easier to treat. It’s generally caused by external stimulus. While this is harder to treat with drugs, it responds a LOT better to lifestyle changes. Basically, you need to figure out 2 things. What is making you sad, and how do you remove that effect. Implementing it can be an absolute bitch, but it’s worth the effort.

The other sort of depression is proper “clinical depression”. This is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It can be brought on by external stimulus, but it’s not dependent on them. With this, your brain starts losing the ability to care. Motivation becomes a lot harder, and so the cost to payoff with positive activities gets worse. Internally, it’s like having the chroma on a TV turned down. Everything gets muted and dull. Nothing is worth the effort required to do it. This sort of depression does need proper treatment. It’s far more insidious and will grind you down. To beat it you need to change your very brain wiring. This can be done, but generally requires significant external support. If you could beat it alone, you likely wouldn’t have become trapped within it.

I’ve experienced both. Neither are pleasant. Just keep in mind, both distort your thinking. Often, you can’t fully trust your own thinking. Situations that seem impossible to cope with will just crumble when actually attacked. However, without enough motivation, you often won’t even try.

An just to note, if you get to the point of intrusive, self destructive thoughts, that’s when you need to seriously reach out to external help. Even if you think you can cope with them, they can send your mind spiraling downwards.

In terms of mental health, drugs that give any kind of relief should be treated as a shelter from the storm so you can rebuild. This means if you’re not rebuilding while you’re in shelter, your happiness is only going to last as long as your shelter is standing. Drugs wear off, and it is very easy to just want to keep putting your shelter up ad infinitum. This is where the second problem of drugs for relief comes in. The shelter is sub-standard compared to doing the things to build a lasting happiness. You can get stoned as shit, but if you and your life is still in shambles there’s only so much that can do.

All the above being said cannabis can help when you need a break. Psychedelics can help as well and microdosing incurs minimal risk. Neither of these will fix any of your problems, but they can enable you to work on your problems yourself when it was too difficult to before.

Alternatively, if you want to avoid drugs altogether meditation can be an option in some circumstances. This is barely a recommendation because meditation is a skill that you have to practice in optimal form consistently before you’ll get anything at all from it. It’s impossible to actually know whether you’re doing it right until you start to feel relief from it and so many things can make practicing mediation as a beginner almost impossible if you’re in crisis. If you attempt mediation with absolutely no expectations other than that you will fail at it until you happen to approach it in a way that works you may eventually get some relief from it. If you get it working consistently, it is far stronger than anything you can get legally without a prescription in terms of providing relief. I can give you some guidance if you’re interested in this path. Secondarily, Kava can help a little in that it dulls the pain.

Vallerian root, kanna, ashwaganda, etc. might work if you believe strongly that they’re working. Avoid depressants like alcohol because although they provide temporary relief they also make things worse when they wear off which can be a terrible cycle.

Vitamin D and some exercise is generally helpful for me

I know it sounds obvious but walking or any light cardio will do wonders for your mood. Pilates also.