In terms of mental health, drugs that give any kind of relief should be treated as a shelter from the storm so you can rebuild. This means if you’re not rebuilding while you’re in shelter, your happiness is only going to last as long as your shelter is standing. Drugs wear off, and it is very easy to just want to keep putting your shelter up ad infinitum. This is where the second problem of drugs for relief comes in. The shelter is sub-standard compared to doing the things to build a lasting happiness. You can get stoned as shit, but if you and your life is still in shambles there’s only so much that can do.

All the above being said cannabis can help when you need a break. Psychedelics can help as well and microdosing incurs minimal risk. Neither of these will fix any of your problems, but they can enable you to work on your problems yourself when it was too difficult to before.

Alternatively, if you want to avoid drugs altogether meditation can be an option in some circumstances. This is barely a recommendation because meditation is a skill that you have to practice in optimal form consistently before you’ll get anything at all from it. It’s impossible to actually know whether you’re doing it right until you start to feel relief from it and so many things can make practicing mediation as a beginner almost impossible if you’re in crisis. If you attempt mediation with absolutely no expectations other than that you will fail at it until you happen to approach it in a way that works you may eventually get some relief from it. If you get it working consistently, it is far stronger than anything you can get legally without a prescription in terms of providing relief. I can give you some guidance if you’re interested in this path. Secondarily, Kava can help a little in that it dulls the pain.

Vallerian root, kanna, ashwaganda, etc. might work if you believe strongly that they’re working. Avoid depressants like alcohol because although they provide temporary relief they also make things worse when they wear off which can be a terrible cycle.

Exercise and therapeutic carbohydrate restriction are both shone to be mood regulators.

Exercise boosts endorphins.

Physical contact boosts oxytocin.

Sex does both.

Chocolate helps produce serotonin.

Capsaicin-heavy foods will make your body produce adrenaline and endorphins.

Caffeine is a drug but can give you a long hit of dopamine — but overdosing will make anxiety worse, and can fuck with your sleep cycle. It’s also rapidly addictive and the withdrawal symptoms include malaise and depressive feelings.

A stable sleep cycle is A#1 for happiness, though. It won’t make you happy on its own but screwing it up will make you unhappy on its own, so it’s the foundation to build everything else on.

5-HTP is a mood-regulating supplement, like a mild anti-depressant. I once took it for a year and it actually helped. But for the first week it made me more emotional. Read about it on webMD so you understand it and the risks.

But the real answer is exercise, healthy diet, and maybe vitamin D. Boring answer, I know, but the absolute best one too.

Just mentioning this because I see all the others: spicy food. Your brain makes happy chemicals to help with the pain, apparently.

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Exercise, sauna, and completing small projects can help.

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Vitamin D

A lot of people, especially those who don’t go outside, have a vitamin D deficiency. This is especially prevalent this time of year as winter is just ending.

A lot of depression symptoms can be tied to Vitamin D deficiency. Go out and get a supplement and take it for a week, see how you feel.

St Johns Wort can help. It’s not as effective as prescription medication, but can help deal with mild ‘low mood’ type symptoms. It’s comparable to the effect of a compression bandage on a joint. It will help with the equivalent of a pulled tendon, but will do next to nothing against the equivalent of a shattered elbow.

It is worth noting that there are 2 sorts of depression. Feeling sad, while unpleasant, is a lot easier to treat. It’s generally caused by external stimulus. While this is harder to treat with drugs, it responds a LOT better to lifestyle changes. Basically, you need to figure out 2 things. What is making you sad, and how do you remove that effect. Implementing it can be an absolute bitch, but it’s worth the effort.

The other sort of depression is proper “clinical depression”. This is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It can be brought on by external stimulus, but it’s not dependent on them. With this, your brain starts losing the ability to care. Motivation becomes a lot harder, and so the cost to payoff with positive activities gets worse. Internally, it’s like having the chroma on a TV turned down. Everything gets muted and dull. Nothing is worth the effort required to do it. This sort of depression does need proper treatment. It’s far more insidious and will grind you down. To beat it you need to change your very brain wiring. This can be done, but generally requires significant external support. If you could beat it alone, you likely wouldn’t have become trapped within it.

I’ve experienced both. Neither are pleasant. Just keep in mind, both distort your thinking. Often, you can’t fully trust your own thinking. Situations that seem impossible to cope with will just crumble when actually attacked. However, without enough motivation, you often won’t even try.

An just to note, if you get to the point of intrusive, self destructive thoughts, that’s when you need to seriously reach out to external help. Even if you think you can cope with them, they can send your mind spiraling downwards.

If your emotional distress is related to inflammation then even ibuprofen can give you some relief.

As for solutions outside of pills, exercise has always been the most effective thing for me in improving my happiness.

A certain fun guy is really nice for this, but start small

You could try sam-e if you are in a country that isn’t prescription only (many don’t require one).

Imo meds alone won’t do a ton of good, if you’re battling depression or constant blahness you should also be trying to steadily make improvements in your habits and life situation. When you are not feeling too down try to make a list of things that might make daily life more pleasant and try to work some of that stuff into life. Things like sitting in the sun or watching the sky aren’t too trivial. If nothing sounds pleasant (because depression) imo you have to go the regimented route where you add things to your life that you think would improve anyone’s situation like eating healthy, exercising regularly, and picking up a new hobby.

There’s probably no non-spooky chemical that will make a significant dent. People are recommending, like, chocolate, but I’m certain the main effect is eating your feelings, with substances causing a rounding error.

However, I can predict pretty well what therapist homework would be, or at least what it always was for me. Basically just clean living stuff, and not giving in to the urge to avoid doing things. There’s CBT too, and resources to do it on your own, although it can get confusing without a helping hand. So, yeah, I suggest self-administering therapy. IANAT.

Medicine would be drugs. Unless you mean in the broad sense of the term.

For me I require a reason behind my happiness, maybe it’s my autism I’m not sure, however without a foundation leading to smiles the smiles are lackluster. Just forcing myself to go outside, sit in a nice park, etc. helps place me into opportunities where I can notice things that make me happy bit by bit.
These little things add up. Being at a small time gig, of a band I haven’t heard of, being around people who like the same things helps a lot.

I’ve wanted to see my favourite musicians, and I managed to through perseverance (Corey Taylor is an amazing human being, his outlook definitely rubbed off on me). I wanted to go to Europe, and everyone I knew kept saying “one day”, so I decided that “one day” for me was going to be the next. Packed some things and went that weekend to Amsterdam, by myself, and met 3-4 people and we all hung out together for four days and we had such a connection we enjoyed ourselves so much.

If you have an inkling of places or things that would make you happy, perhaps try forcing the first step into it. It’s easier said than done, though good luck man.