Sorry for mental health kind of question, but I do not know better place to ask about this stuff.
Nowadays, I lie down on a bed and just watch twitch streams all day, with a little bit of browsing lemmy in between. I do not want to do anything, pretty much any activity seems to cause exhaustion. So, I just do bare minimum and return to bed, watching twitch for over 5 hours.
Another is that I feel I cannot do anything good enough. I cannot study effectively, cannot do menial tasks without being stressed. This is especially concerning for me because I am taking a graduate program, but I also doubt I could do any kind of real work. I just don’t think I have capability to read complicated texts and remember it clearly, write a decent piece of literature on some subject, or just about anything at all.
Is this related to addiction - can addiction make me feel exhausted all the time? Also, how can I escape this permanent lethargy? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!
I’m gonna say something different from the other comments and call it a burnout. You ran out of mojo. Need a refuel. Gotta find meaning again and let it power you up.
That can happen easy and fast or slow and difficult. It’s up to chance. In general, people pick up a hobby or take up sports and then do everything else in order to support that joy. More rarely, some people choose activism as joining something greater than themselves drives them to push past this state of couch potato ism.
While this sounds wonderful, if this person is suffering from depression, everything you just described will feel either completely impossible for this person, or like absolutely and utterly useless wastes of time.
Exercise, nature, and activities certainly help depression, but the difficulty lies in actually finding the energy and give-a-shit to do those things, which in my experience was impossible without outside help (like therapy and meds).
You might be right, but there’s not that much in the post that clearly points to burnout. The comment about stress might, but it really depends what OP meant there, and whether that stress feeling is related to their work, or something else.
If it is related to their work, then yeah, burnout could be a big part of it. In which case talking to a supervisor or a school counselor might be a good idea.
Could be depression linked to social media addiction. Depends on the amount of screentime, and don’t take what I’m saying as actual advice. But if you want to try something, try cutting down your screentime and see if it alleviates it. Could be burnout from work as well. I’ve had several bouts of light depression to where EVERYTHING seems like a chore to do just because my job is so damn demanding.
Sounds like burnout/depression/ADHD over addiction.
do you exercise or walk to commute? without enough movement the body will slowly adapt to feeling tired all the time. good news is that 15 minutes of heart-rate-raising exercise will do wonders and you can find plenty of beginner videos on youtube you can do in your bedroom. it can also help alleviate brain fog and help your depression a bit too
Not OP, but even with exercise 4 times a week I still feel tired enough to want to take naps in the middle of the day, and I still have brain fog / whatever condition is causing me to not be able to think and analyze in real time. I suspect it’s related to depression.
could also be long covid
Sounds very similar to the shit ive gone thru.
Get your thyroid levels tested. Can’t remember if its hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism but one of them has symptoms that are very similar to depression. Low energy, tired, lack of motivation, feeling drained. It took a long time to get myself on the right medication but the biggest break thru in that time was getting my thyroid levels straightened out. Most of that time was spent with professionals who thought I was suffering from depression.
Id recommend seeing someone that specializes in ADHD and all the other comorbidity disorders. As well as asking your primary for a script to test your thyroid levels.
Nowadays, I lie down on a bed and just watch twitch streams all day, with a little bit of browsing lemmy in between.
I cannot study effectively, cannot do menial tasks without being stressed.
When did this start? How long have you felt this way? Was it gradual or sudden, getting here?
This became serious one or two months ago. Maybe depression took place of anxiety.
Maybe depression took place of anxiety.
Sounds right to me. For me, depression and anxiety are two sides of the same thing. For me, both mean I’m not coping with reality well. I’ve been struggling myself recently, even though I am on medication. FWIW, I have also struggled with addiction and you aren’t far off. Addiction generally starts as another way of coping, but you probably aren’t there yet. Addiction, for me, is defined as: I continue doing this despite more consequences than rewards. If something helps me forget the reality I am struggling with, I tend to get addicted to that part of it, regardless of what that does to the rest of my life. All of these issues will feed into each other.
I wish you happiness though. One or two months is a long time to be miserable. Listen to the majority of ppl in this thread and reach out to a professional. Just going to your regular doctor or a urgent care type place will work to start if you don’t know where to start in your area. In addition to medication, therapy helps (or if that isn’t available, just talking with someone about your problems). DM me if you want to talk, I’m all ears. Helps me to try and help others.
Have you had covid? I have had a similar experience, and I suspect it’s a form of long covid affecting cognitive abilities and memory. You may want to look into it, as this is currently being studied.
Well, as you can see, everyone is saying it’s not addiction. It’s depression. So I’ll be the odd one out. I’ll say it’s not depression. I think it’s chainsaw.
…I’m just making the silliest of jokes to try to cheer you up. But seriously though. You should get some actual professional help. And I don’t mean that insultingly. I mean that as they are the ones who know far more than I would. They can get you on the path to healing!
Otherwise you end up on the internet, with some random asshole making silly jokes because it’s all he knows how to do when someone is hurting. Remember when I said it was chainsaw?
When’s the last time you had blood work done?
OP, make sure to get your thyroid levels checked, that can also lead to lethargy and depression.
Good point. During my extensive research of one person, I’ve noticed that this year my SAD seems less crushing since taking 1000 vit D each day.
So yeah. Good place to start
This is a good avenue to go down, before assuming mental health. I’ve had some vitamin levels through the floor and just felt like shit. It would have been very easy to misdiagnose as solely depression.
It definitely sounds like depression. But depending on what your addiction is to, there could be some overlap in symptoms which could make it hard to isolate.
For what it’s worth, it also sounds similar to what some people experience with long covid/brain fog. If these feelings are relatively new, and you’ve tested positive for covid in the past, that could also be worth giving consideration to, as I’m pretty sure this is affecting a lot of people who may not even realize how severe their conditions are yet.
Hey my friend, fellow depressive here. It’s not addiction, it’s a massive struggle. This is a vital time, the only way out is to face your circumstance.
I had similar symptoms and in my case, I had a sleep disorder, an anxiety disorder, depression, vitamin D deficiency, and other problems.
Go call your doctor and explain your symptoms to them in detail. Your problem is the type that should be medically evaluated by a professional.
Sounds more like depression than addiction. Hopefully someone with more experience can chime in, but common symptoms of depression include:
- Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy doing
- Persistent tiredness or lack of energy
- Difficulty concentrating on things
which sounds like what you’re describing. It might be worth talking to a professional.
Therapist here. This is correct. While almost any activity can be addicting, OP isn’t describing an addiction, which would involve distress in the absence of a particular activity, even when other activities were engaged in. What OP is describing is much more like the apathy/lethargy we see in depressed people, which often results in persistent engagement with easy distractions.
Hey would you recommend becoming a therapist?
That would depend on the person I’m talking to. Not everyone is well-suited for it. Generally, I recommend people find jobs that they enjoy doing most of the time.
Better place to ask: https://lemmy.world/c/mentalhealth.
This sounds like depression. I think you should get an eval from a mental health professional.
Thanks, I did not realize it was from depression. I regularly visit psychiatrist for depression and anxiety, and I thought my depression was once cured. I guess it did not get better.
Bad news about depression. The clinical kind? The stuff you’re describing? We don’t have a cure yet. We have stuff that will alleviate symptoms and allow a person to live an almost normal life, but it doesn’t cure it. Worse, you might find a medication that seems to fix it, but your body may eventually adjust to it and the depression will come back.
Talk to your psychiatrist. They should have some suggestions that might help.
I’ve had to deal with depression my entire life. The fight is constant and real. Don’t give up.
Update your psychiatrist about how you’re doing. Depression varies throughout your life, but the good news is you probably just need a slight adjustment to your treatment.
Keep at it. I had similar symptoms and tried a handful of SSRIs that made no difference for me, and gave up for a while, but my current doctor got me on a SNRI that did the trick.
probably the best advice anyone here can give.
At best, we’re just taking guesses here. At worst… well… this is how you end up drinking twenty bottles of tequila a week, seeking the medicinal value of the worm slathered in tabasco sauce
