I saw that someone else had posted that they use kratom for depression, and since both kratom and depression are huge parts of my life I figured i'd share my story.
I'm a male, aged 26. Currently unemployed following a month-long stay in the hospital for a severe bacterial infection/sepsis. Since I was about 12 i've been diagnosed with ADHD, for which I take 60 mg of Adderall a day. I also have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder. I'm on klonopin to help with my anxiety and the Adderall is supposed to treat my depression, however i've found that it doesn't work as well for depression as kratom does. I've been using kratom daily for about a year now.
My depression manifests primarily in sadness/despair/regret/lack of motivation. Every single morning, without fail, I wake up from a series of extremely vivid dreams, typically on the negative side, and I sort of collapse in my bed with a swirl of regret, shame and sadness over my past. I am very obsessive/neurotic, and have been described by friends and ex girlfriends as either someone you "love to hate or hate to love."
The thing is, I was a very severe alcoholic from ages 18-25, a period during which I went to rehab twice, and detox over a dozen separate times. There were always periods of sobriety, but they didn't last long. This caused a great degree of chaos in my life, as I was living on my own and had a large amount of friends, but my behavior was erratic and hard for them to look at. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when I broke up with my girlfriend of 5 years, whom I was on the track to marrying, during a fiery relapse for no good reason at all. She was so devastated that she moved back home on the other side of the country the next day. After continuing this bender and engaging in promiscuous, unsafe sex with a multitude of partners I checked myself into rehab. Coming out of there was a wakeup call, and it wasn't a pleasant one. The weight of breaking up with Cindy (name changed for privacy) was crushing me and I soon began drinking again. To shorten this part of my story up, I eventually lost 2 jobs, my apartment, and I had to move back in with my mom.
All of this was food for depression, obviously, but my depression can be traced back to high school. Drinking was merely an act of self-medication. After I moved in with my mom I saw a psychiatrist and sorted myself out with some medication, but it wasn't quite enough to keep myself from dark patterns of thought. I discovered kratom around this time, and immediately I felt its therapeutic effects, which seemed like an absolute miracle.
Kratom doesn't help me so much with motivation as it does with alleviating sadness and regret. I will burn about 5-6 grams as soon as I can get out of bed, and within an hour it's as if my past is actually the past and no longer a bother to me. This alleviation of sadness was all I needed to stay away from a drink, as I never drank to have fun, it was always to make these thoughts go away. Kratom also helps immensely with sleep, and I get a steady 8-10 hours a night now.
I still have a long way to go, but I just wanted to share my story for anyone who may be in a similar situation. After I got over the first month or so where Kratom would make me quite nauseous, it's an indispensable tool for me now to achieve a state of happiness/contentment throughout each day. I find that the trio of Adderall, Klonopin and Kratom all work symbiotically with each other, but I don't plan on taking Adderall and Klonopin forever, and I think i'd fare well with kratom alone. If (knock on wood) a federal ban were to be implemented, i'm not quite sure what I would do.