All 50 Things I’ve Tried to Get Out of My Latest Depressive Episode, Ranked in Order of Efficacy

  1. Logging out
  2. Going to bed at the same time every night
  3. Waking up at the same time every morning
  4. Anal
  5. Taking three Effexor tablets instead of two
  6. Taking Effexor two hours before bedtime instead of first thing in the morning
  7. Doordashing three pasta entrees and two slices of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory and being like, “This will be enough to feed me for a week” and being right
  8. Drinking water
  9. Eating vegetables
    1. Which can actually go either way, like, sometimes I eat a vegetable and my body is like, “Jesus tap-dancing Christ, finally, thank you, here is the serotonin you requested,” and sometimes I white-knuckle it through a beet-and-apple salad with cashews and pumpkin seeds and sit there with the empty pink plate in front of me wishing I had Doordashed three pasta entrees and two slices of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory instead
  10. Talking to my loved ones
  11. Talking to the cute little robot in my phone who shepherds me through CBT conversation trees and rewards me with a gif of a kitten every time I identify a cognitive distortion
  12. Doing yoga
  13. Meditating
  14. Going for little walks around the neighbourhood
  15. Going to YouTube and typing in “timothee chalamet speaking french”
  16. Sleeping with a weighted blanket
  17. Finishing an episode of a podcast about what happened to Elizabeth Holmes in federal court this week and immediately starting an episode of a different podcast that is also about what happened to Elizabeth Holmes in federal court this week
  18. Reading Infinite Jest again
  19. Specifically reading the part of Infinite Jest where Don Gately thinks to himself, “No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretched ahead, glittering… He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What’s unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. What his head could report to him, looking over and ahead and reporting. But he could choose not to listen; he could treat his head like… clueless noise. He hadn’t quite gotten this before now, how it wasn’t just the matter of riding out the cravings for a Substance: everything unendurable was in the head, was the head not Abiding in the Present but hopping the wall and doing a recon and then returning with unendurable news you then somehow believed.”
  20. Journaling
  21. Dressing my childhood Kit Kittredge doll in butch little outfits
  22. Making new friends
  23. Asking my brother to send me pictures of our cat where her tongue is sticking out a little bit
  24. Ordering one Aperol Spritz and thus consuming an alcoholic beverage for the first time in nearly three years just to spite the door guy at the pub who looked at me standing next to my dad and stepmom and said, “Sorry, no minors in the bar area”
  25. Oh, Drag Race, duh
  26. Reading Louisa May Alcott’s journals from the 1800s where she’s like, “I long to be a man” and “I don’t care much for girls’ things, and people think I’m wild and queer” and “I feel as though I am by some freak of nature a man’s soul in a woman’s body” and “I’m torn between Ralph Waldo Emerson and this one twink I met in Europe and Ever So Many Pretty Girls but i think I should probably just be single because I feel insane right now” and being like SO true bestie
  27. Composting
  28. Finally studying for my driver’s license even though I’m 28 so I can perhaps eventually live in an area where there is, like, grass
  29. Being told to “go upstaiahs, suh” by a Boston firefighter
  30. Making my father and my stepmom watch all three hours of Dune with me
  31. Getting into Dune lore with my 73-year-old aunt who it turns out is a Frank Herbert fan from way back
  32. Consuming baked goods
  33. Making progress in my quest to earn all 286 of the Civilization V achievements listed on Steam
    1. Currently at 180
    2. There’s sort of a reason this one is lower down on the list
  34. Taking a really hot shower
  35. Getting out of the shower and lying around in a towel until it’s bad
  36. Walking past a cannabis dispensary and, like, thinking about it
  37. Wearing pajamas that match and a gay little robe that doesn’t
  38. Watching one of those five-hour-long YouTube videos where a blindingly white twenty-two-year-old explains like Here’s Why This Nickelodeon Show From Fifteen Years Ago Is Bad Actually
  39. Playing games on my phone
  40. Imagining an alternative twelve-step program where you renounce God, make a list of all the things you like about yourself, and then send angry letters to everyone who’s ever abused you
  41. Thinking about inventing a time machine and sending my hottest lesbian friend back to Smith College circa 1950 to save Sylvia Plath
  42. Remembering that we are all in hell right now and it’s not just me
  43. Listening to RXKNephew
  44. Having recurring dreams where I’m trapped someplace and my mom won’t let me leave and then waking up and remembering it’s not real and I did get out
  45. Looking forward to finally watching Yellowjackets and within the first minute being like, “Oh, okay, this is quite a bit gorier than I expected,” and then being like, “It is literally a show about girls who eat one another to survive after a plane crash and you knew this going in,” and then being like, “But it’s one thing to know intellectually like ‘this is a show about cannibalism’ and quite another to actually have to watch the cannibalism happen on your laptop that you propped up on the toilet while you took what you thought would be a relaxing bubble bath with that one bath bomb from Lush that looks like an apple and smells like cinnamon and turns the water red, if you get my meaning” 
  46. Thinking about going on a little trip somewhere warm when all of this is over
  47. Thinking about getting into plants
  48. Thinking about getting into crafting
  49. Getting death-threated on Goodreads and being like, dude, Goodreads?
  50. Logging in

Published by Peyton

Peyton is an author and journalist based in Toronto. His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Billboard, Pitchfork, and lots of other places. His debut novel "Both Sides Now" was published by Penguin Teen in 2021. Twitter: @peytonology

6 thoughts on “All 50 Things I’ve Tried to Get Out of My Latest Depressive Episode, Ranked in Order of Efficacy”

  1. Lisa says:
    Reply

    “42. Remembering that we are all in hell right now and it’s not just me” is what got to me the most, because it’s true of course but also possibly because of the new Stromae song?
    I hope some of these things did help!

    Like

  2. Kaley says:
    Reply

    as someone also in a depressive episode this is making doordashing 3 pasta entrees and 2 slices of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory sound so galaxy brained right now

    Like

Leave a comment