Only one thing helped: Remeron. I was better in a day and only needed to be on it for a month.

I had previously tried many different anti-depressants, but I am very sensitive to such things and I could not tolerate any of them. The only one that I could tolerate was Trazedone, which didn't work all that well, and was giving me priapisms, so I had to stop.

As it was, I could not tolerate Remeron on its own; it would give me vivid dreams all night long, as do many antidepressants. This is the last thing you want when you are depressed as the dreams are usually vivid hells.

In order to sleep well while on Remeron, I had to take Klonopin, which is like Valium. As it turns out, I only had to take Remeron for a month, but by then I had a residual dependency on Klonpin. I didn't really need the Klonopin anymore as I was no longer anxious, but if I tried to taper off of it, I'd have terrible withdrawal symptoms.

I did eventually get off of the Klonopin, but it took my five years of slowly tapering. And trust me, even going that slowly, tapering off of a benzo is no fun at all!

So, for me, depression feels very similar to what both darius and the original article were saying. It's like an erupting storm. It starts with something small -- some tiny failure which a normal person might say "okay, no biggie, I can deal with that." My problem was the multiplication. We have associative memories, and I as a depressed person immediately associated this failure with other recent failures, which associated with others, and others, until there was a deluge of connections. It feels like a literal suffocation by failure -- I mean it becomes hard to breathe and there is often an ache across my chest.

There was often a growing sense of paranoia -- that they would all find out. What they would all find out was not terribly clear, but it was something as simple as "I am useless" or "I'll never live up to any of their expectations." (If you've never suffered from depression you might even wonder why this is a bad thing -- but that sort of metanarrative doesn't happen when you're depressed because it's just obviously bad, it's rejection, and rejection is painful emotionally, and there is no reflection.)

And so each thing triggers other things, until I am just left with this deep feeling that I have failed as a human, like everyone else has this thing going for them and I simply do not, and my only normalcy comes from the lucky fact that most of them are not paying any attention to me, which is also sad in its own way.

I live a much less stressful life now, and that helps. I try not to commit myself to any futures -- I tell people that I don't make plans per se but only resolves, so that I am sure of the direction that I'm sailing, but not what I will find. That helps with avoiding that seed of failure from which the storm starts.

As for the storm itself, I've found that deep breathing does more good than you'd expect, because if you're focused on your breathing then you're not associating those thoughts so much; the thoughts still swim around your head but they don't breed new ones so much, and you can kind of quietly nod at them without indulging them. This gives me a better sense of the objects around me, which actually seem to totally disappear as I disappear into myself.

But sometimes, I will confess, I feel duty-bound to be honest to my younger self. And so sometimes when those seeds start, even these days when I can cope, I do just let them expand and expand until I cry myself to sleep. I feel oddly at home there, as if this is some permanent part of myself which I'm oddly glad I haven't lost. But because this is now a choice, and it's voluntary, I no longer feel suicidal during these periods -- just awful.

This is ... strikingly and surprisingly similar to what I recall going through (so similar in fact that reading it made my chest feel hotter): a feeling of uselessness, of under-performing, of feeling "stuck" in a situation where I was doomed to continue to fail.

> I live a much less stressful life now, and that helps. I try not to commit myself to any futures -- I tell people that I don't make plans per se but only resolves, so that I am sure of the direction that I'm sailing, but not what I will find.

Even your current outlook reminds me of that of my own.

Though my time in this state was the most painful time in my life. These days I can look back at it as a blessing. I feel that my failures and struggles have instilled a stronger sense of 'balance' in my life and forward outlook. Most importantly, I feel that I can sense others having a difficult time much more acutely than before. It's really made helping myself and others avoid this kind of stress/suffering a priority and cause in my life -- in fact, the only cause I feel deeply passionate about.

I had been working at a large software company for several years. I was in kind of an oddball group, doing miscellaneous web development. For the most part, it was fun. The team became like a family for a time.

The constant re-orgs were stressful, though. That was like having to re-interview for my own job every ten months or so. I have done 3D graphics programming on my own time for about 20 years, and I always told myself that one day I would find a way to do that for a living. Setting up a very high expectation - kind of like wanting to be the lead guitarist in a band.

I tried to interview for any graphics job I could find, during my four years at the company. I never got an offer. Eventually, there were so many re-orgs, that most of my friend-co-workers had moved on to other teams. I decided to quit and work on a game, doing what I love. Technically, that went amazingly well. But from a design standpoint, it never quite gelled.

Then my relationship failed at the worst possible time. Then I exhausted my runway. I interviewed with goog and failed (more high expectations). I interviewed with a startup for a graphics position and it seemed to go very well!! But then baggage from that failed relationship, and doubt, stopped me from relocating during a critical window.

Then came crippling anxiety and horrible depression. My life seemed to go from amazing to over in only a few months. Friends grew distant and didn't know what to do for me. I couldn't face anybody. I stopped taking any calls. It felt like life was trying to tell me "Go home. You lost the privilege of playing with the grown-ups."

Sad to say, I am still "down in it". I had to move "back home," which is an isolated place. I haven't written much code in months. Despite having been a programmer for 20 years, I fear I won't be able to pass anymore technical interviews. Rationally, I know I am a very good and accomplished developer, and I know that everyone who has worked with me would say the same; but I'm extremely anxious about approaching the job search and the interviews anymore. One day I will find the motivation and the nerve to start over again.

Focus on something small and achievable, and achieve it. Even if it's just goddamn FizzBuzz. Reverse a linked list, and messsage one old friend on facebook to have lunch. That's it. Just do something small. It cuts off the downward spiral, and establishes momentum in the right direction.