a chemical romance and dance with depression

Summary

I tried a combo of CBD and melatonin gummies for sleep. for about a week I felt the closest thing to clinical depression I’ve ever experienced. zero motivation, total apathy. the kind of flat that scares you. here is what I took from it.

1. the chemicals were the cause. once I stopped, the mood came back. small inputs in your daily routine, vitamins, supplements, even “harmless” gummies, can have outsized effects. audit them.

2. my habits carried me through. I still worked out. I still showed up for my kids. I still recorded the podcast. not because I felt like it. because the habits were already grooves and I just rolled in them.

3. that’s the case for building the habits before you need them. on a good day, habits feel like extra work. on a bad day, they are the only thing standing between you and falling apart.

4. small vices add up. a gummy a night sounds like nothing. it’s not nothing. audit them, name them, decide which ones to cut. you are protecting your big dreams from your small habits.

build the habits. cut the vices. try harder.

Transcript

introduction to the topic and personal experience with chemically induced apathy

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. What is your vice? What is your bad habit? What could be stopping you from seeing progress? This is the Better Human Business podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. And recently, I had a terrible bout with what I would call chemically induced depression.

And I definitely want to share this podcast, share it on the podcast here, because I thought it was really interesting. I don’t necessarily struggle with depression. I don’t think that I’ve ever truly struggled with depression, but I definitely did for the last 30 days. And it was quite rough. And I’ll explain exactly what was going on.

the onset of unexpected emotional and motivational changes

What I had was just extreme, extreme apathy. I did not care about anything. And that is very unlike me. I’m normally very ambitious. And I don’t care about a lot of things. But the things that I do care about, I care about a lot. Like my family and my business, these kind of things, fitness, those things I care a lot about.

But I didn’t care about any of those things. Again, it was extreme, extreme apathy. I didn’t want to work. I didn’t really care to work. I wasn’t being the best dad or father. I wasn’t really motivated to exercise. It was just complete, complete apathy. And I had no idea what was going on. Like I knew I’d gone through a recent, like stressful time.

We were selling a house, finishing up the construction of another house. There was a lot of stress. But I’ve been in some stressful situations, much more stressful than what I’ve been recently been going through. I chalked it up to that. I was like, maybe you’re responding to stress and like with apathy.

identifying the cause: the impact of sleep aids on mental health

Like I don’t understand. At least I was a little bit self-aware. But I’m a fairly stoic person. And so no one really noticed that I was struggling with anything. The only two people who actually did notice was one of my business partners and also my wife because they know me really well. And we have a lot of interactions.

And both of them were basically like, what the hell is wrong with you? You are not normal. And what’s crazy was, anyway, I mentioned over the last month, I was going through like a hectic, stressful time. And I was having trouble sleeping at night. And so my wife picked up these CBD plus melatonin gummies because what was happening is I would just, I would wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. and my brain would start going.

And it was really what was happening. When I have too much going on in my life, like I had a list of like 30 things that needed to happen in every area of my life, my mind would just wake me up and I would be sitting there thinking about all the things that I had to do. You could chalk that up to anxiety, extreme busyness.

how established habits helped maintain normalcy during challenging times

It doesn’t normally happen to me if I don’t have a lot, a lot going on. Normally I sleep just fine. She wanted me to try those gummies. I tried them out and it worked like a charm. And I just, I slept great. I was getting phenomenal sleep scores and I was waking up feeling well rested. I had taken melatonin before, but always in short doses.

But what ended up happening, and this is all self-diagnosis, I talked to a couple of different people about it, but melatonin can actually screw with your dopamine and serotonin levels. And I took the full 30-day supply of that, then I ran out. And within 48 hours, I had bounced back to who I was. I’m like ambitious again, and excited, and passionate, and ready to go, and I care about things again.

And it was me running out and really just not having, I would have taken more, but I was just out and I didn’t think to go buy more. And so it was taking this sleep supplement that completely screwed me up. Like I’m not going to dive into all the science because to be honest, I don’t even fully understand it.

the importance of building strong, resilient habits

But ultimately, I found out that one of the symptoms can be extreme levels of apathy from the use of melatonin because it screws with serotonin and dopamine. And that’s the only thing that I could think of that must have happened, especially because the second, or relatively quickly after I came off of it, I was back to normal.

And I’m back to normal now. And why do I tell you that? It’s like, why do you care at all? I’m not trying to warn you to not take melatonin because it could be fine for a lot of people. In fact, like I said, I’ve taken it before and I don’t recall this happening. I don’t know if it was the combination of CBD and melatonin.

Anyway, I’m not telling you to not take melatonin, whatever. What did happen during these last 30 days though was I did not really lose any progress. And that’s what I really want to talk about more. Now I may have not been the same person who I needed to be and I didn’t feel the same way, but I still exercised.

reflecting on small vices and their potential to derail significant goals

Like I still trained. I was still present with my family. I still did the things I knew I needed to do. And at work, I still did the things at work I knew I needed to do. And what it was is just a culmination of habits built over years of knowing what I need to do for my health, in my business, in my relationships, all these good habits I’ve built up.

That’s why mostly no one noticed anything was going on, except for me and those closest to me is because I had these habits, these habits, habits, habits that I relied on. Every day I’d wake up and feel like doing absolutely nothing, but I didn’t let that happen. I had enough wherewithal, enough grit to be like, you know what, I’m going to, I’m going to do what I know I need to do, which is exercise this morning.

I’m going to drink enough water today. I’m going to do the work that needs to get done. I’m going to focus and prioritize my efforts at work. All these habits I’ve built up is just what I acted on, even though I didn’t want to at all. And this is where a lot of people struggle, is they want to rely on that feeling of motivation, the serotonin and dopamine, they want those things to carry them through, but we don’t always have it.

the power of habits in overcoming personal challenges

And when we don’t have it, we have to rely on our habits or discipline to just get the work done. You can’t rely on motivation, you can’t rely on a chemical cocktail, you have to just get things done sometimes, even if you don’t want to. Now in all honesty, I probably would have been seeking professional help if I didn’t realize that this was a chemically induced issue that I very quickly worked myself out of.

So what I’m not saying is just bite the bullet and do the work, who cares if you’re going through something hard or if you’re actually depressed or whatever, that’s not what I’m saying. Like I said, my next step would have been to see somebody about that, because there’s no way I was going to continue down that path.

But luckily, that wasn’t the route I had to go because it was like a self-induced, self-medicated habit. So ultimately, there’s a line out of Zach Bryan’s song where he says, small vices kill your big dreams. And so at the beginning of the podcast, I asked, what’s your vice, what are your bad habits?

closing thoughts and the vital role of professional help when needed

And think about that, like I’m not somebody who has really any big vices, I don’t even feel like I have small vices, I don’t really have very many bad habits. I drink water, I drink coffee, I eat relatively healthy, I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t smoke, I don’t take anything that has THC, I don’t do any drugs, I don’t do any of those things.

I stay away from all of it just because I want to be clear and focused mentally at all times. But I had one little vice there. And that’s just been running through my head on repeat, small vices kill your big dreams. And I had one vice, this busy brain, I had to take something to kill that brain activity, to lower that volume.

And I let that vice into my life and it could potentially have killed some big dreams if I continue down that path. And it’s just something I’ve been thinking about over and over again. So something that you need to think about is, do you have anything in your life that you could possibly remove? Is there any vice?

Is there any bad habit costing you your big dreams? Is there a small vice costing you your big dreams? Because it really will start to add up. And we can get into the conversation of more serious things like how many entrepreneurs I know who self-medicate with enormous amounts of alcohol every single night to fall asleep coupled with an extreme amount of caffeine the next day to get somewhere back to normal.

There are a lot bigger issues out there that can really cascade and cost you a lot more than you realize. So do I need to sit here on the podcast and tell you not to drink and not to do drugs? Hey, those are your choices. But are these small vices costing you your big dreams? And if you are going through something and you don’t feel like yourself, do you have the habits built up that can carry you through a difficult time?

None of that is easy and you’re going to have to try a lot harder to get it done.