This is a sort of postscript message. I used to be mildly depressed,
also used to hang out in alt.suicide.holiday. It all ended rather
strangely, and in an anti-climactic sort of way. Perhaps the same
will happen to you.
I was reading an article on Mark McGuire, back when he set a record
for the most homeruns in a single season. It went on about how this
big beefy guy could maintain a peaceful zen-like mind in all
situations, how he was on good terms even with his ex-wife. Needless
to say all this was intriguing. One doesn't normally expect
drug-taking record-setting homerun-hitters to be very intellectual.
The thing that really caught my eye was a quote from him to the effect
that "I'm responsible for the thoughts in my head". I'd believed in
such a hypothesis for a long time, but it was rather stunning to find
someone who could convert a piece of wisdom to actual concrete
advantage in real life. This fact, that I'm the one responsible for
the thoughts rattling around in my head, stuck around for me and made
me take long breaks from my regular depressive episodes.
Just by sitting quietly and emptying my head I was able to
periodically clear out the cobwebs long enough to make some actual
real changes in my life - ones that made me less likely to fall into
other depressive episode. My depressive episodes still kept coming
back but got weaker and shorter each time. Eventually I was in a
position to dissociate the actual real shitty things in my day-to-day
life from the imagined, depression-related ones.

It also helped that I figured out the meaning of my life: the meaning
of your life is what you want it to mean.

--
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti (Om Peace Peace Peace)