[Books] Subject of depression and/or anxiety, BUT!

[Noomz]

I want authors who write out their depression, the thoughts they have, about their lives and so on. Not poems, not poetry, just straight up experiences and thoughts. I find it very difficult to find something related to it that's not poetry or motivational, feel-good stuff that's so terribly popular now. No "life secret" rubbish.
I want to read someones honest thoughts and experiences. If it's cynical and pessimistic, all the better.

[Deleted]

The books written by Bukowski are rather dark. They are written as fiction but the characters are based on his own life experiences (I believe).
I bought The Bell Jar from Sylvia Plath because the author killed herself and the character in this book suffers from depression, I haven't read it yet though.
A Child Called it from Dave Pelzer is fiction but based on his own life is very hearthbreaking. It's about a boy who gets abused by his mother while his father and other sybling(s?) just watch.
Thirteen Reasons Why is a book about a girl who commited suicide and leaves a box of tapes telling the events that lead to her suicide, it's for adolescent but was a nice read.

[eschatological]

Do you want novels, or more like auto-biographical stuff?

Some of Dostoevsky's short stories, IE, The Double, The Underground Man, etc, are very point-of-view from people going mad/being depressed.

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Edit: A whole lot of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is based on his experiences in jail, though it's a novel.

[Hexian]

I want authors who write out their depression, the thoughts they have, about their lives and so on. Not poems, not poetry, just straight up experiences and thoughts. I find it very difficult to find something related to it that's not poetry or motivational, feel-good stuff that's so terribly popular now. No "life secret" rubbish.
I want to read someones honest thoughts and experiences. If it's cynical and pessimistic, all the better.

You don't want to go down this path.

[eschatological]

You don't want to go down this path.

Why not? Dostoevsky once wrote "Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth." Writing about the depths of one's depravity can be helpful. There is a point to staring a bit into the abyss. Some might argue the cost is too high (folks like Nietzsche ended up mad, Hemingway ate his shotgun), but there's a great deal of worth to be had in such writing, as long as its basis is artistic and seeking some truth.

What I would advise is to not automatically dismiss those who sink to great lows, and then claw their way out, and tsk at it as "motivational." Some of the greatest mystics ever suffer a "Dark Night of the Soul," (St. John of the Cross), and find a more sublime truth. There's a whole branch of theology about suffering and how it can be a path to God or some higher truth. Even Aristotle wrote about suffering unjustly being virtuous in the Nicomachean ethics. Unfortunately, people tend to only read Dante's Inferno, and not his Purgatorio or Paradisio. Personally, I love how Dante's Inferno is a symmetry, and starts and ends in a downward and then upward facing viewpoint:

Canto I
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Canto XXXIV
salimmo sù, el primo e io secondo,
tanto ch’i’ vidi de le cose belle
che porta ’l ciel, per un pertugio tondo.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

We mounted up, he first and I the second,
Till I beheld through a round aperture
Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;

Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.


And then the latter books continue this upward climb, only possible by first going through Hell itself.

[Noomz]

You don't want to go down this path.

Don't worry, I'm not suicidal or anything like that. It's just a subject that really interests me, along with other psychological topics.

- - - Updated - - -

Do you want novels, or more like auto-biographical stuff?

Some of Dostoevsky's short stories, IE, The Double, The Underground Man, etc, are very point-of-view from people going mad/being depressed.

- - - Updated - - -

Edit: A whole lot of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is based on his experiences in jail, though it's a novel.

Autobiography would be more interesting, as it would be more personal. But yeah Dostoevsky seems to be the a big author on the subject.