"This is why I LOVE being depressed. I feel like I'm living in reality."

That feeling of access to reality isn't unique to depression. You can feel like you're living in reality when you're not depressed. All of the advantages you claim for depression can be had from other emotions, like happiness or enjoyment, with few or none of the disadvantages.

Calling your perception reality and someone else's fantasy doesn't make your perception reality and theirs fantasy.

"Would you rather a live a lie and be happy or know the truth and be miserable?"

I'd rather not live in a false dichotomy, so I don't.

That's /your/ experience of depression, and not everyone goes through it the same way or can normalize to it. Some people do feel things during an episode, ranging from sadness to worthlessness to guilt, and may find their mind so clouded reflecting on their life just isn't a possibility.

You're not describing depression, you're describing your experience of depression. It's important to keep that in perspective lest other's understanding of the illness be skewed.

Does being depressed make you happy? It sounds like that. Then being happy for you is like being depressed for other. Well I am lost here :)

I don't know how to do this without ripping you apart, but here it is. You are not depressed. Do not hijack this word. At this point, in 2012, depression is the debilitating clinical illness with potentially life-threatening implications. Sadness, dissatisfaction, melancholia, and such are all excellent terms that help describe the range of feeling you enjoy so much, and much has been written about how positive these experiences can be. But words are important, and when you say you "LOVE being depressed," it confounds the understanding of what actual depression is, a state of being that by its very definition, is intolerable and harmful to the person experiencing it.

Also, unhappiness is not fundamental to getting an accurate understanding of things, which is yet again unrelated to that "feeling of reality" you're talking about. Just as you function best under melancholia, others function best under happiness. You even betray this fact yourself when you say "some of the most famous artists, poets, singers, songwriters, inventors, did their best work during their darkest days." "Some," indeed.

There is no dichotomy between true and happiness. Understanding one's own mental states is certainly a powerful tool to getting the most out of life, but to glorify your own experience to the point where you claim that people who do not share your experience are "dreamers in their sleep" is itself the lie that shows a profound lack of understanding.

Edit: added harmfulness to the definition of depression. In fact this seems to be the key: mental illness (and in turn depression) is something that is only such if it causes harm to yourself and/or others. You are describing an experience that is beneficial to yourself and/or others.

"You are not depressed. Do not hijack this word. depression is the debilitating clinical illness with potentially life-threatening implications"

Oh thank God! Thank you doctor for un-diagnosing me! And all online without meeting me in person. Thank you so much. Please go help the others, tell them they're not depressed too.

Look, plain and simple. I'm describing all of this from my point of view. I'm not going to spend 5 paragraphs being politically correct or adding, In my personal opinion in front of all my sentences. FOR ME: It hurts, but I know it'll be over, so I take the time to take advantage of it, and I've grown to like it. I see happiness as a dream, a pleasant one that I enjoy waking up from every now and then. You should have just called me condescending. lol I would have just agreed and moved on.

You're right, I should have said that what you're describing sounds like something that is very much not depression, as you're describing your experience as beneficial, something thats overall positive to your life, not something harmful. And yeah I'm not a doctor, and if you have been diagnosed with depression I'm overstepping my bounds, but we all know that even professionals, especially in the field of mental illness make mistakes. But clearly a something painful is not necessarily the same as something that causes harm, and if the painful emotion you have is something that improves your life, that is the complete opposite of the definition of mental illness.

So do you believe truth is miserable?

That truth is miserable is just another lie. Yes, every single moment in the world could be 200 people killed, 20 women raped. But there is billions smiling.

People smiling is not news, but people crying is. People building a house is not news, but a fire on one (for every fire there is 1000 new houses) is news.

Movies only show people being killed(5-6 per movie), raped(1average),and disasters.

How many people see 1 murder in all their life?. A rape?. An earthquake? a terrorist attack?

The reality is that this is fairly rare. It is only the media distortion field that makes us believe in a lie.

What this person is telling you is that people with no money is happy, I had experienced it myself in Africa, then going to USA looking at people with SUVs but no friends and working 60h/week and no vacations as slaves for buying the toys TV commercials promise will give them happiness, but do not.

While I agree with your general sentiment and have said similar things myself, I want to note that I read once that if you ask a room full of women how many have been raped, about half the hands go up. If you ask how many have had sex after saying "no", about 90% of the hands go up. So rape -- I.E. non consenting sex -- appears to be fairly common (and other violent/unfortunate events seem to be plenty common as well). A lot of people just do not talk openly about the experience because it makes them feel ashamed or because of the negative reactions of other people or simply because it is not deemed appropriate for polite conversation. I was molested and raped as a child and I am quite open about that fact, which makes many people very uncomfortable with me. It also causes some people to share their story with me privately, people who do not normally admit to what they have been through.

I think "news" focuses on the negative because it helps the human race to survive. I mean running around announcing a storm is coming can help save lives whereas running around announcing it is a beautiful sunny day does not typically have a protective function.

As far as I know what you describe isn't what is called "clinically depressed". There are people who are so depressed that they literally can't get out of bed.

I'm not an expert though.

Sounds like you get an ego trip off your depression.

Some of the worlds greatest artists, inventors, etc did their best work because they confronted the darkness of the world, and the darkness of themselves. And because of their darkness they had a lot to work with.

But to say that only unhappy people see the world for what it is is highly facetious. No, in fact, it's more than that. It's evidence of a clear desire to interpret your own suffering in a way that demonstrates your superiority over others, and as ploy to discredit those who spread hope and positivity.

I think it's very sad if the lenses of your world are so narrow that you can only see the depressed as wise, and the positive as dreamers, and I pity you, but don't try and sell that perverted mindset on to the rest of us.

The fact is, people use Youtube, Farmville, etc as a form of escapism from the challenges of life, which do, as you said, include confronting reality and the many negatives of it. This is an incredibly difficult task, and it's understandable that so many of us shy from it, in small ways almost every day. But it isn't an impossible task, and there are many great (and happy) people who demonstrate this. Off the top of my head Gandhi, Mandela, and the Dalai Lama all embody this truth perfectly.

And as for creative people needing depression to fuel their creativity; go watch 'Bill Cunningham New York', and tell me that creative brilliance and happiness aren't compatible.

"Sure it hurts at first but like a child living in a warzone you normalize to it eventually and learn to live with it. The best part of depression is that you feel like you are seeing the world for what it really is, gone are the happy hormones that force the oppression of hope on you, gone are the dreams and fantasies that you know aren't ever going to come true. There's a beauty to it. You feel awake."

Emphasis mine, obviously.

This is why people are giving you that reaction. If you have replaced the "you"s with "I"s it would have been more obvious that you are being descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Well yes, that's why it's my opinion.

Just a thought; when you get all these angry responses from people criticizing what you wrote does that make you think 'huh, a lot of people are mad about what I said, hence I must be wrong', or 'huh, a lot of people are mad about what I said, hence they must all be wrong'?

As a believer in solipsism, I would much rather live a lie and be happy than be miserable in the 'truth'.

You might like to read "The fabric of reality" by David Deutsch (quantum physicist). If you can withstand his arguments for an objective reality then you are a true solipsist.

What a horrible article. Complete lack of in-text citations. There's no way of verifying any of the claims there, unless one goes through all of the listed references. To me it seems like the article was created by someone with very mild depression, wanting to back up his subjective feelings on the matter with vague citations.

What if you're living a lie and being miserable?

Are you objectively sure that miserableness is "seeing the world for what it is" not "seeing the world how in a biased-the-other-way view"?

It's not impossible to be happy despite confronting and accepting the ugly reality of everyday life at the same time.

Why wait? It seems to me writing something like this ought to be able induce yourself into a depressive downward spiral.

Naa, it's a cycle. Like day and night, dry and wet, healthy and sick, cold and warm, hungry and full. Without one you can't appreciate the other.

Reality is a myth.