IMHO here is a big part of the problem.
The question/theory about depression as a mental state can make you look at it seriously.
I face it daily having lost my wife and being childless (not that that should make a difference), also my mother, my best friend, my dog... I could go on.
Especially the fact that I am a computer consultant who works from home, often at night or very odd hours, and have nothing at all that might resemble a “normal life”.
Now in college many years ago, I did in fact do some “testing” of various “chemicals”.
And while there is some temporary boost out of it, it’s pretty much a dead end road and it’s been years since I tried anything mind altering, other than a good bottle of 18 yr old Scotch.
I have always felt that if a person is good, he has a chance to be happy. A person who HONESTLY has questions about the universe and faith and karma and morals would get answers.
But this is simply not true.
And to compound the issue, a few years back there was an item on the nightly news.
It seems there was a woman who had suffered severe, life threatening depression for years. No drugs would work, she had basically become immune to any of the ones that had helped in the past.
Based on various results scientists had seen in lab testing with animals, they decided to send a probe into her brain - a very specific region, that literally consisted of a few hundred or a thousand neurons.
Then they sent in a tiny voltage.
She got more animated.
They pushed up the voltage.
She started to speak more.
You get the picture. In a few minutes, she was smiling and telling jokes.
Now she is permanently fitted with a stimulator like a pacemaker I guess.
BUT!!!
For a guy like me who tries to make more cosmic interpretations of things, and find the all important REASON that everyone says god has, I was floored by it.
First, is that all “happiness” is? A couple special neurons in the brain partying down?
Second, for all those people who said “Drugs don’t make you happy. It’s a false happiness” one has legitimately have to say well then what the H is so honest about hooking up a car battery to your skull and thinking that is “real” happiness?
It just keeps going back to the mechanical nature of man, and no matter what we try, in the end we will remain MOSTLY unfullfilled, and our questions unanswered.
You mistake giddiness for happiness. One who’s happy doesn’t necessarily go around smiling and cracking jokes. Neither is one who goes around laughing necessarily happy.
Depression is an illness that’s misnamed. The “depression” part of it, is really just a symptom. The disease itself is one that throws off the brain’s internal chemistry. This, in turn, leads to symptoms such as a feeling of unhappiness or loss of interest. Who wouldn’t feel that way with a brain that’s not firing on all cylinders? Often the root cause lies with how the brain utilizes serotonin. Different people experience different symptoms. Some get depressed. Some, myself included, get migraines. But whatever the manifestation, this a medical problem that’s treatable with medications.