Certainly. Other people with depression are the only ones who truly understand and can talk knowledgeably and empathetically about it. When I was the closest I ever came to ending it, I spoke with a dear friend who is also depressed. I asked her to form a suicide pact.



She was reluctant because she has children she did not want to abandon (as do I), but she indulged me in an exercise to figure out how we would do it. We didn't know it was an exercise when we started. I was quite serious about figuring it out.



However, over the course of the next few hours, our discussion slowly grew absurd, and we started laughing very hard. So hard, in fact, that if it were possible, I would have asphyxiated due to being unable to breath in due to how hard I was laughing.



That was the best therapy of my life and no psychiatrist ever could have provided it. No therapist. Only a friend. Only a trusted friend who understood.



I don't attend any formal therapy any more. But I go to a free group full of bipolar and schizophrenic and depressed people every other week, Reseach suggests this is the most successful form of therapy. You can look it up if you want, but my experience tells me this is so.



We understand each other. We care because we are in the same situation. We are all desperate. And when we recover, it is believable to others because we have seen each other at our worst. Some of us struggle more than others. We do have relapses. We do end up in the hospital again. But we also have long periods of time when we do ok. Longer than if we didn't attend group.



People usually leave after doing well for a while. They might come back again, once in a while. Last week someone who hadn't been back in 20 years came back. Still alive! Still doing well! I think it is very affirming that what we do there helps. It affirms that we help each other as well as anyone can.



I don't really like psychiatrists and therapists. I'm always trying to impress them. At group, I don't bother. That's not quite true. Group gives me a chance to perform. When it's my turn, I get to tell a story -- a story I make up on the spot. Sometimes it's like a performance, where I make people cry and laugh and all that stuff. Sometimes it's intense. Sometimes profound. But people are responding to me on a level playing field. I'm not paying them for expertise or paying them to listen. It isn't confounded by that.



No one has to go to group. We all choose to be there because it is valuable to us. That makes a big difference. It makes us equal. It makes our attention and responses more valuable to each other. The responses come from lived experience, not theory or education. They come from an authentic place, not a professional place. They have credibility that professionals could never have.



We have expertise. We have lived our disorders. We have a knowledge that no one else can possibly have, no matter how much they have studied it. We know what works and what doesn't. Our advice is much more valuable to others like us than the advice of outsiders, no matter their expertise.



So yes. Your instinct that talking to someone else with depression can help you get out of it is right. There are support groups all over the place if you need to find someone. Talking to a friend works. Talking to others you don't know in a support group works. If you keep on going, they will become people you do know. Maybe not friends, but valuable all the same.



And writing online also helps. Even Reddit seems to offer some good advice and to let people share their pain. It's kind of wild west, so it's not for me, but if you are strong enough to put up with the attacks, it could be helpful. But one way I got through this was by writing, writing, and writing. I still am (in more ways than one).