AKA: a bunch of my collected random thoughts, mostly previously posted on Reddit. Asked why we like the show, someone replied that it had helped them with depression; when questioned about how that could possibly work, I decided to share something rather personal. As a general primer as to why I’m taking the time to write all this stuff, this is actually not a bad starting point.

…Depression, in the medical sense, doesn’t mean being “depressed” and moping all the time – rather, it’s a horrible, sucking, consuming thing that sits on your shoulder every hour of every day, a thing that can easily and without warning whip-snap you into believing there’s no hope and no point to anything because everything is shit and you’re shit and the world is shit, and so you either lash out or withdraw for hours at a time. If that happens, finding a ray of light can quite literally be a life-saver; if you find something that brightens the darkness, makes you feel something that isn’t, well, this, then you cling on for all you’re worth and slowly haul yourself out again. MLP is an example of just such a thing – it’s not that it’s relentlessly bright and shiny and cheery (indeed, if it were, that might actually tip you further down the slope once the credits roll and you look around and you don’t live in Equestria), it’s that it draws you in, it’s honest, it’s hopeful.

I was diagnosed with depression earlier this year, having suffered the symptoms in various ways for years and done nothing about it because I’m a man and a father and a sports fan and a lawyer, we’re meant to be tough but stoic, and not punch holes in walls or go on five-hour walks around the docks in the middle of the night (both things I actually did because they seemed like good ideas at the time).

Once I went to see the doctor, was diagnosed and given some antidepressants, things turned around pretty quickly and looking back at some of the stuff I did, it’s like reading about a totally different person. But here’s the thing – I’m not sure I’d have been able to stabilise myself enough to get myself the help I obviously needed without having found MLP. It sounds really trite to say it, but plunging into four (at the time) years’ worth of MLP from a standing start and binge-consuming it might possibly have even saved my life.

tl;dr: Ponies isn’t “painful to watch”, it’s pretty literally what kept me going.