Depression is DEFEATABLE.

What if there was a magic wand, and you could wave it just so, and your depression and anxiety would disappear like smoke…

I’ve had depression all of my life. Not a low level depression that you can live with, but depression bad enough that I looked at death as a lovely destination that I’d pine for, as if the glossy brochures were spread out before me. The list of things I’ve tried to defeat it is long and varied. And for me, fruitless. Pretty much nothing worked, and over the years, the noose tightened around my throat as I became worse and worse.

I had settled into a life of quiet depression, knowing that there was nothing left I hadn’t tried, and sure that I’d exhausted all options. I thought I was just stuck. That I’d be like this the rest of my life. And to some extent, that was an easier place to be than constantly trying the next medication, the next treatment, the next diet. And always failing. And then a pivotal day came. The day my beautiful son came to me with blood running down his arms from the cuts he’d made out of his own pain.

No. Just no. Everything in me screamed out in denial of that. I’m willing to suffer, to hurt, to fail to find joy in life. I’m not willing to lose my son. And over the days and weeks after that day, my search for something that would defeat depression took on a desperation I hadn’t had before. I searched frantically for anything, anything at all, that would help me keep my son alive.

Do you want the whole story? I wrote it down. It’s an ebook (that I’m trying to get) attached to this blog, and you’re welcome to it. It’s free. I want more than anything else for other people to find what I found. To stop suffering. To learn what they need to keep loved ones from suffering. But the long story isn’t for everyone, so in case you want the two second version, here it is.

Cold heals.

That’s it. Over the next few weeks or months on this blog, I’m going to try and show you the research I’ve found, and tell you about what I’ve learned and why, scientifically and anatomically, this is valid. But for this moment in time, I’m just going to lay it out there. When you get cold, your body uses the same chemicals for vasoconstriction (closing off veins and arteries when you get cold) that it uses to make happy neurotransmitters. And since you have vastly more temperature sensors in your skin for wet than dry, getting cold and wet tends to give you a blast of the same neurotransmitters that we take anti-depressants to (generally unsuccessfully) incorporate into our chemical makeups.

You want to end your depression? Turn on the shower. Check that your water gets below 60 degrees (I find it doesn’t work as well for me in summer, when the water temp is around 68). Hop in. Start warm and turn the dial down as you can stand. As soon as it’s as cold as it can go, do three minutes under the spray. Get everything wet but your head. Keep turning and really get cold. Curse if it helps – because it does. At least when you’re first starting out.

It helps immediately, but the effects are also cumulative. I’m better now, after several months of being an Ice Diva, than I was in the beginning. Part of that is that it took me a while to figure out what worked best for me, but I really think another part was just that I was so low, it took my body time to work itself out of the hole.

I haven’t had to take anti-depressants since about a month in. I don’t need them anymore. What would you give, not to need pills anymore? To feel better than pills ever made you feel? Would you give up four minutes of your day, every day, to be so freaking cold you want to curse and stomp and yell? I wanted it that bad. I still do. If you do to, keep reading. I’m not the only one this works for. Your journey lies ahead of you. And the destination will be better than you’ve ever imagined.