Battling Depression is a Full-Time Job

Eating salad can ease depression.

I'm pretty sure the cause of most depression -- 8.32 million Americans currently take antidepressants -- is other people and how disappointing they are. Battling it takes everything you've got.

Unless you are a toddler, you have no role models. Our current crop of leaders are little more than grade-school kids: Nancy Pelosi fitfully tearing up her copy of Trump's State of the Union speech while he was delivering it, and in front of the whole world. Veep Kamala Harris cackling at nothing all the time, except maybe the voices in her head, and flat-out lying about anything important to the country, i.e. "Our southern border is secure." And of course bumbling Joe Biden, who clearly has dementia but is somehow flying around on Air Force One as the President of the United States! 

My personal depression comes from the widening chasm between the two warring political parties and how it has infected the masses, causing someone like my once-good-friend Mary deciding I suck because I am a Republican, no matter how generous I have been to her over the years, and telling me so in plain English, right to my face, even though my now-dead-best-friend Debra, a committed Democrat, never gave a damn about my politics.

It comes from the armies of woke assholes, most of them dummies, who have decided that my son, the absolutely fairest, least racist person I have ever known, is a racist because he teaches people how to make baskets from found flora, an art perfected by our Native American ancestors and thus not available to the white man.

It comes from people deciding that God made a mistake and they got the wrong genitals and so they cut them off or add them on or take hormones and change their names, and all they do is look like freaky women or girly men who don't fool anyone.

It comes from all those hundreds of thousands of morons still blaming Donald Trump for all the ills in our country, despite the fact that he left office in 2020 and things were so much better when he was president.

It comes from people like Jenna Bush Hager (daughter of former president George W. Bush), who grew up in the White House and regularly met heads of state and foreign dignitaries, gushing over her recent  interview on a morning TV talk show with Khloe Kardashian, a celebrity of no talent and clearly, if anything, a lesser Kardashian, if there could be such a thing. (That's just sad.)

It comes from the ridiculous idea that saying a certain word out loud means you are a racist, but saying "the N-word" instead means you are not, even if in your heart you hate all black people and hope they die.

It comes from how fat and unhealthy most Americans are, yet all the advertisements show thin people stuffing themselves with pizza and pasta and burgers and tacos and drinking Starbucks Extra Foamy Double Mocha Machiattos as if they are just having a cup of coffee.

It comes from knowing that teen deaths from overdosing, the leading cause of death for that demographic, are rapidly rising every year, in part due to the influx of fentanyl coming across our unprotected southern border.

So what the heck is seeing a shrink going to do for you in the face of all that? Not a thing. In fact, recent studies have shown that in the long run, taking antidepressants does not improve your quality of life. My suggestion is to watch a lot of old comedy shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Ted Lasso, never read the news and eat plenty of salads.