I mentioned in My New Best Friend article that Andrew Solomon (author of the "The Noonday Demon"), says it can sometimes take you a year or more of experimention with your doctor to come up with the right combination of meds that seems to work best for you. This is worthwhile work to do. When you start to feel better, whole worlds open up to you and offers you opportunities that were closed to you while you were in depression.

You have to be ready, willing, and able to keep trying until you find the right combination of meds that work best for you. It's called perserverance, and requires a lot of patience, which you will develop ONLY if you really want to get well. Wanting to get well - at a high level of personal commitment - is half the battle won.

You should also be aware that there are many benefits to not getting better. In other words, there's a payoff - you are getting something out of it - or you wouldn't be doing it. Some examples include:

1) Sympathy: Your loved ones or people in your life may offer you sympathy, understanding, and reduce their expectations of you while you are feeling ill. This frees you up from having to conform your behavior with appropriate social norms for a healthy person.

This sympathetic and supportive behavior, viewed as well-meaning and compassionate by the ones giving it to you, really just keeps you stuck in your depression, with no motivating reason to try and get unstuck from it.

Motivation is key when it comes to overcoming depression. Don't let your close family and friends feed your indulgence in depression. If you want to get better, then work towards it. Stopping the depression support systems in your life could be a very good second step, getting on the right meds being the first.

2) Job Hunting: Hard enough in a good economy, and when you are feeling good, this up and down trial-by-fire rejection and selection process, being judged by others, and going through their hoops before you are granted free passage to make a living can be devasting to the depressed mind.

Especially in California where even the entry-level jobs have 200+ people in line ahead of you, trying to get a job at Starbucks or Vons. A depressed person can easily site reasons why he doesn't want to job hunt. But part of getting better is to do things you think you can't do, overcoming your own reluctances, and moving out of your comfort zone. A tip: The more you do it, with no attachment to the results, the easier it gets.

A little Zen thrown in there might help (the non-attachment part). Just keep trying without worrying about it. Practice makes perfect, and job hunting requires a lot of practice, which you will not get if you are attached to staying depressed.

There are always payoffs to remaining ill. There are also benefits to getting better. Go through them, and write down two lists in columns side-by-side to see what they are for you, then contrast and compare them. Let it sink in a while.

Then ask yourself, which do I want? The getting better column may seem brighter and healthier, but less attainable to you than the not getting better column. The less attainable part is just a concept in your mind, just as staying ill is. Given enough personal inquiry into your list, you might even come to the conclusion that it not only is a concept, but is basically untrue. You are choosing falsehood each time you choose depression. Time to choose truth. You will be better for it in the long run, and see that choosing depression holds NO benefits for you, ultimately.

You make choices every day. Why not upgrade this choice and choose to be free of depression. If you are already depressed, it can't hurt to choose against it. The problem is, you have to make this choice every minute of every day, not just the one time when you are doing this exercise. This choice has to become your default choice, not just one you make occasionally, when you are doing an exercise. This is what is meant when I say, "You got to really want it." It implies a certain commitment on your part.

Wanting to get better, in my opinion is the superior choice. You stand on your own, take credit for your victories, accomplishments, and defeats. Not getting better means that you are constantly asking others for help, meaning you can't take credit for any progress yourself if other people are doing the work for you. As long as indulgence in self-pity exists in your life, your life ain't going nowhere but down.

It's the difference between a student who is gifted, but does no homework, and a guy like me who doesn't get math and has to study really hard to catch up. Who do you think would do better in the long run - the guy that everything comes to naturally and effortlessly? OR the guy that learns to work his butt off, because nothing comes easily to him.

Here are a few examples from my life in the "getting better" column:

I know I want to persevere, and I want you to as well. As my cousin Brent once said to me, "There's always hope, if you're hoping." Which is kind of brilliant, don't you think?