I hope the following helps. I know everyone is different, however, I have extremely bad depression as well, it’s constant, and nothing even triggers it, but I have no flare ups of random depression despite being on zero medication of any form.
I take natural herbs for anti-depressants daily, specifically I take the Herb Pharm brand organic liquid herbal extracts. I take American Ginseng, alcohol-free version of St. John’s Wort, and their ‘Stress Manager’ herbal compound - a combination of eleuthero root, reishi fruit, holy basil leaf, rhodiola root, and schisandra berry. I take all 3 of these every morning as soon as I wake up. They work like a dream as long as I take them daily, you can take any one, or all of the 3 I mentioned above, since everyone is different you might need to experiment with them a little. They take between one week and one month of daily use to fully kick in (yet I’ve had them work as quickly as 2-3 days, again, depends on the person). I would also suggest keeping caffeine minimal, or if you do drink it, combine it with a tea meant to reduce stress (I take Yogi tea’s brand of Lavender ‘stress relief’ tea). I also keep all chemicals out of my system, it’s a good thing to keep chemicals with possible varying side effects out of your system just to be on the safe side when it comes to depression problems. I don’t take allergy pills, or even birth control pills, I feel as though they could contribute to other problems in odd ways and are just not worth it, personally. Also, sometimes women who have a lack of magnesium can get depression symptoms from that, so make sure you are getting all your vitamins, a good multi-vitamin for women is the RAW/Garden of Life brand vegan vitamins. Tiredness can also cause depression, so get your B12 vitamins, too. If absolutely none of these things help your depression, yes, they do make medications that were not tested on animals, but even then, the chemicals it has been made up of may have been initially tested on animals. No one should be able to force you to take OTC meds, honestly, even if your parents invest in them despite what you tell them, you can always throw the daily pills away when your parents aren’t looking, that’s what I used to do in middle school. :/ Again, synthetic is still just that, try to detox and keep it all natural and organic and see how you feel, then maybe try the herbal anti-depressants I mentioned above if that doesn’t work. :) Good luck!
