80% of my days I'd wake up groggy and tired, as opposed to refreshed. The feeling then lasts the whole day.
Sometimes I'd get "windows" of normality, like bursts of energy / motivation but they never last more than one day.
I have a regular sleep routine, don't drink, don't smoke...
I want to understand if it is depression or something wrong with my sleep.
I feel the same, actually. Is it depression or something wrong with my sleep? Probably both. But I notice that if my sleep is shit, then I'm basically worthless and everything about life is more difficult.
I don't drink, smoke, or do anything unhealthy, either. In fact, maintaining good health through a diet rich in f+v, beans, legumes, cronometer, intermittent fasting, longer fasts, getting proper exercise (walking, cycling, yoga, meditation) none of this seems to "help" me feel better.
But I think sleep and depression must be linked somehow. Rarely if ever do I awake feeling good. I always just feel "less bad" which is dysthymia as indicated decades ago by a "science" of psychiatry or psychology or counseling (whatever) that seems completely impotent (except to take SSRIs -- which never worked for me and actively just made me worse due to side effects).
I've been thinking about medicinal mushrooms (taken in a clinical setting and controlled or watched during the trip by those trained to do so) but of course given the general state of poor medicine (in the US) and poor to no solutions to most chronic health problems, these medicinal mushroom clinics will likely never be an option in my lifetime.
Meditation didn't do much longterm for me, either. Just sat there on a cushion for hours, days, weeks, months and focused in tightly on what's wrong with me. I'm convinced what's wrong with me is the tricky, complicated tease of genetic, environmental, and basic biological functions that don't have much to do with positive thinking or being optimistic or being mindful, or whatever. That is, I'm convinced dysthymia is biological in nature, and there's not much known to be done.
Since medicine is useless for these issues, I've been trained by the culture to tag them as spiritual problems. So I've battled with "god" even though I don't believe in god? Im a mess. But I think if there is a god (and I doubt it) then that god is deliberately malevolent and simply "likes" or enjoys watching his creations suffer pointlessly until they die. And that includes me and just about all life I see around me -- stages of deterioration punctuated by pointlessly suffering before death.
Sorry im not making you feel better with these words -- pretty dark space I've found myself in, and there doesn't seem to be much relief that'll ever happen until I die and that's that with my pointless existence. Lol. Becomes funny after awhile, I guess.