Bryan Johnson describes how severe sleep deprivation from caring for a newborn, combined with startup stress and existential crisis, triggered a depression that lasted ten years. He warns that sleep loss created a feedback loop that kept him trapped, and anyone who's been there never wants to go back.
When I was 24, I fell into a deep depression. It was a combination of having a newborn and not sleeping at all and a startup and a bunch of other existential life crises. I didn't have a good night's sleep for some duration of time, a few months. And I think it was the combination of the stress and the sleep and everything else slumped me into this negative state. And I stayed there for 10 years and I just couldn't get out of this black hole of depression. For someone who's experienced that, you never want to go back.
