Dealing with the anti-SSRI crowd is exhausting

I've been depressed since I was 10 (27 soon) and tried pretty much everything there is: exercise, therapy (several modalities), light devices, brain stimulation devices, journalling. You name it, I tried it, but nothing ever worked. After my SI got out of hand, I finally started on Zoloft and have been able to function since. Sure, things are still not perfect, but depression is not taking over my life anymore.

You'd think that everyone would be happy for me, that I finally found something that works for me, but instead, everyone is acting like I can just decide to go back to doing all the stuff I've tried before and that this time it will somehow magically bring different results.

I'm genuinely happy for people who made some lifestyle changes, did therapy and got to a much better place, but unfortunately, that has not been my experience, and instead of accepting that, people would rather tell me to try harder or accuse me of not being resilient enough. It's like it's unacceptable that I actually need an SSRI.

It took me a really long time to accept that I have what seems to be clinical depression, and I don't really need a reason to feel awful. Diurnal mood variation doesn't care about my personal circumstances, I just wake up and I immediately have a breakdown for no reason.

But time and time again, people will insist I can just ✨ gratitude journal ✨ my way out of misery. It's honestly annoying to see this attitude even amongst licensed specialists, because if it truly was just a case of me doing more and trying harder, don't you think I would have gotten it right at some point in those 17 years?

Just the other day, someone on here DM'ed me to check on me as they saw one of my posts on depression. Immediately, the conversation turned into give me, a complete stranger, a list of things you're doing so I can judge them. I'm taking a licensed medication, that's what I'm doing.