How I managed to get off antidepressants NATURALLY!

My story with clinical depression and natural healing

Let’s talk about anti-depressants. One of the most common and rapidly growing forms of psychological suffering in today’s day is depression.

According to Gallup, in 2023 29% of Americans reported being diagnosed with depression once in their lifetime.

Yet the solution the modern world offers is pills. Pills, pills and more pills. This is the fundamental basis of the entire pharmaceutical industry.

And that’s what exactly happened to me in 2010.

At the age of 17, I was diagnosed with clinical depression. At the time I was studying (barely, because who studies in international schools?) in an international school in Bangalore. My parents had brought me to India for ‘culture’ by as the universe would have it, I was plunged into a FULL dark night of the soul and deathly initiation into the evil that is the soul grabbing pharma industry before I had even hit 18.

We’ll get onto the spiritual awakening part of it later, but from a patient perspective, I was given heavy SSRIs (shudder) and Xanax for my anxiety.

These chemicals only made it worse, turned me into a vegetable and had severe side effects. At such a young age I had lost my will to live and was on the brink of wanting to leave this world, couple with other horrific factors that have now thanks to the grace of God faded from my memory.

January 2011 is when everything changed.

A lot of people ask me, how did you get onto the path of spirituality, and I tell them that this was my initiation. Since a small age, I was always exposed to Sanskrit shlokas, had learnt Sitar in England and coming from a traditional Shaivite lineage; I had direct spiritual perception of higher realms since birth.

But, we can’t always understand why life happened the way it did. It was thanks to the magical healing properties of cannabis that I managed to survive the terrible effects of the anti-depressants, reduce alcohol intake and have some degree of balance.

In 2011 I had a spontaneous awakening experience (which I will not elaborate on), partially induced by this plant, in which I saw many geometric patterns, visions, purged heavily and felt electric currents move through my body.

My inner self couldn’t bare my own suffering and through the medium of the plant (it could be any medium) decided it was time to jolt me awake.

Before this, I was VERY resistant to the idea of natural health - but something in me had drastically shifted and I agreed to visit an alternative health clinic in Bangalore with my mother. This is where I met my Guru, undoubtedly from previous births; and undoubtedly by the will of the Paramatma that my suffering had come to an end.

It took 7 months to heal my clinical depression and anxiety.

Because of the intense person I am, if I do something I do it fully. So, instead of partying hard, I turned all my focus into spirituality. After all I was on a gap year and university was quite a few months away. Shiva had given me this time for myself.

I divided into meditation, the law of attraction, personal growth, healing and read countless self-help books. Every day I took natural health treatment at the clinic and learnt from my Guru directly how so many patients were being treated.

And, maybe for the first time in my highly disturbed and traumatised adolescence - I felt loved. Love, the one thing that changes your life, sometimes it will come in the form of your Guru. Sometimes a teacher, sometimes it is a toxic karmic person that destroys you in the farce of love and sometimes it is divine reflection. The same love that I found in Kashi and why I keep going there again and again because the traumatised inner teenager in me will only ever find a home in the expanse of cosmic eternity.

Eventually, I cleaned up.

No more alcohol. I quit cannabis too. I quit all pills. For the next 3.5 years of university, I lived in a completely sober, detached Vipassana like state where I barely looked at any human in the eye and deleted my entire iTunes.

It was only in 2015 around half way through my Masters degree I decided I wanted to speak with humans, given I was studying with people in the top 10% intelligence in the country. And I was struggling with my sleep and from past experience I knew cannabis was the ideal natural medicine to give me my sleep back, but in purely medicinal form.

After finishing my degree, well, if you know me, I started travelling the world, first online tutoring and then becoming a content creator.

Learnt from so many different cultures, solo ventured across Eastern Europe, South East Asia, South America, my own ancestral land of India, and wherever I felt. That’s how Wandering Kamya was born, a travel blog where I shared my experiences and inspired people to live a life of freedom around their soul happiness.

Healing depression was as much as a one time effort as it is a lifelong healing of the core wounds that surface at different points in life to be resolved. It took months of effort to heal my depression but I was successful.

I healed myself with:

1. Natural medicine

2. Pranayama

3. Changes in my circadian rhythm

4. Sanatan Dharma and temples

But now, at this stage, I know that healing also involves so much more like ancestral healing, shadow integration, astrology, energy work and more. The list goes on and on. In fact the list of healing modalities in today’s day is endless. From sitting with Ayahuasca in the jungles of Peru to the months I lived with spiritual communities in Thailand and Bali, everything has enriched my journey in so many ways.

Yes, you can heal yourself naturally.

This article was to tell you that you can get off anti-depressants gradually with natural healing. I have done this and so have thousands of others, successfully and safely with proper guidance.

So here I share some things you can do to get started on your natural healing journey.

This is just a beginning, and there's so much more in this realm but these are things you can see benefits from safely.

(NB - nothing shared here is medical advice. It’s my own experience).

Safe herbal solutions for depression

1. The very FIRST thing that I owe my life to and will vouch for is Vijaya, the plant which contributed to curing my alcohol and pharmaceutical abuse. When approached in it’s original medicinal context, this plant helps to heal insomnia, depression, stress, chronic pain and countless other ailments. Vijaya means victory and it is mentioned within the Atharva Veda and Charak Samhita. Get yours from India Hemp Organics, who will first give you an Ayurvedic consultation and you can use my discount code kamya10 for 10% all of their products and medicines. I use their Sleep Well which gives me the best sleep! They have Ayurvedic consultants on board to ensure safety and support :)
   

2. The second amazing plant for healing depression is blue lotus. Yes, this is a magical plant which generates inner calm and balances the third eye or agna charka. What we see as hormonal or chemical imbalance is also energetic, and can be healed through energy. The plant itself has been worshipped by Egyptians for thousands of years and held sacred in the Vedic civilisation too. Taking a few drops before bed will give you peaceful sleep and over time this helps to elevate mood and clear dense, depressive energies. You can get 100% pure blue lotus extract here with my discount code kamya10. They also have the real blue lotus flowers which I love to brew into tea! Please always check for any contraindications with pharmaceutical drugs.
   

3. One of the best healing methods is Emotional Freedom Technique, also called the tapping technique which you can use for anything. This really helps to get into deep rooted trauma patterns and clear them out. This is a self empowering method that you can do for just 10 minutes a day and see results. Here’s a great example of an EFT video you can do sitting from home, on releasing emotional pain.
   

4. The power of breathing is incomparable, and that’s why even 10 minutes of pranayam a day makes a difference. There are hundreds of pranayam that you can do, breathing practices or breathwork as modern times have labelled it. Similarly, Qi Gong is a practice that unites your breath with awareness and movement to help expand your consciousness and clear out stagnant energy.
   

5. The setbacks you are going through are often related to your planets, and healing your plants can lift your energy. That’s why Vedic rituals go to the very core of consciousness, clearing karmic patterns and blockages. Individual sadhana is one aspect and you can also get rituals done for solving planetary disturbances. To consult on of my own sourced genuine Vedic astrologers in Kashi, the heart of Hindu knowledge and civilisation, please message me ‘astro’ and I will share (manually, until I have it all in one place!)

If you want 1-1 help in your journey and don’t want to struggle alone, I also offer personal sessions here. I would be most happy to guide you in your self healing journey and empower you to heal yourself.

There are tons of resources to share on this and this should encompass a book, but this is enough to start with. Sending love and light to anyone going through a dark time.

Aum Swastiastu