Go back to the doc and try a different medication. Go to a different doc if you think you're not getting what you need. Suicidal is a crazy thing to live with.

I know exactly what you're feeling; I've been there. I understand exactly "feeling like a trapped animal" and shame and worthlessness and everything else. I understand what it's like to be in school even though you hate it and see nothing in it.

The only answer is to get outside of yourself. Find something that's bigger than you and pitch in. I really think you need to find a job somewhere -- ANYWHERE, it doesn't matter, it's not a question of doing something important, but doing SOMETHING. And then kick the shit out of that job. Even if it's McDonald's or something like that do the absolute best you can. It feels good to do something well even if it's a minor thing. If you can make your boss feel like you're doing a great job, that will get under your skin and displace some of the misery you're feeling.

The routine will also help. It's critically important to someone in your situation to go to bed at the same time, get up at the same time, eat your meals at the same time.

If your procrastination is anything like mine, you are demotivated by fear -- fear of the unknown, fear that you won't be able to take the next step. You can hang on at school for a long time without having to move forward.

Try a counselor at school. See someone EVERY DAY if you have to. Try anything. Move forward.

And remember there's always more down. You never have to kill yourself. Sometimes you just need a restart. And remember that half the people you see around you have fucked up too, and are or have been just as messed up as you are.

I'm really sorry you're going through this. I don't have much wisdom to offer, but your situation seems to fit a concept I read about recently here:

http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/02/16/the-danger-of-deep-procratination/

http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/07/15/how-to-cure-deep-procrastination/

Maybe the information there will help you, even just a little bit. I'm rooting for you.

If you're in school, you likely have access to a counselor. Go there immediately and tell or show them what you wrote here. Unless, that is, you have a plan and a method for committing suicide right in front of you. In that case, either call 911 and turn yourself in as a suicide threat, or go to the ER and do the same thing.

Fnarf is right--death is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Offing yourself won't fix anything.

Once you start getting quality mental health help, then you can start to reevaluate your position in life. Want to quit school or change majors? Do so, as long as your plan isn't then to live in your folks' basement indefinitely. Want to get a job? Get one. Can't handle a job yet? Volunteer with people or animals.

Just decide that today, you are going to do precisely one thing: ask for help. And then do it.

First, depression doesn't respect you whether you are poor, rich, smart, stupid, fat, lazy, industrious, tall, short, etc. etc. It happens and it sounds like you have depression. DON'T kill yourself because of it!

A friend of mine once wrote a paper about how he was losing so many people to AIDS—people he never even got the chance to know, because they died before they ever met. I feel like that about mental illness. If you kill yourself, there are people who need you in their lives that you'll never meet. I know it sounds hokey, but it is true. I know there are people that I've met who I have needed in my life for one reason or another and I would have been deprived of them had they completed suicide. And, if I had actually completed suicide like I wanted to so many times, I never would have known how happy I could be. It would have been tragic. Not that I'm such an important person or anything, but knowing now how sweet life can be...well,I could have missed it all and just died in a pit of depression. Do you really want to go out like that? You deserve happiness just like everyone else.

Another thing about suicidal thinking is that it is ADDICTIVE. You start to feel bad or overwhelmed or like a piece of shit and after awhile, you replay those thoughts of suicide over and over in your head. Try to notice when you BEGIN thinking about suicide. Pay attention to what you are feeling when you first start to think about killing yourself during the day. Try to understand why you are feeling the way you are feeling, AND if your thoughts turn to suicide, actively work to push the thoughts away. Don't dream about ways to kill yourself to cause the least amount of inconvenience for others, just tell yourself you will NOT think about it.

I used to be a chronic suicide thinker. I still will now and then think that I need to die, but it used to be ALL THE TIME, and eventually I did try stuff to kill myself. And, it is really bad if you ever try, because then you are statistically way more likely to really do yourself in, so...don't get started with it.

You need to come up with a reason to just put that option out of the picture. It is a bad choice. You know this already, so work to put the thoughts out of your head. And, it is WORK. If you do nothing else in the day, if you have tried to push suicidal thoughts out of your head that is something. So, if it pops in your head, just try to think of something else.

I don't know why, but dreaming of suicide is seductive.

About the school thing. I totally understand. I'm on the 50 year plan myself. lol. I did actually graduate, but I am still going to school. For a LONG time I couldn't do my work and would flunk classes or withdraw or get incompletes. I've probably started more classes than any other human on the planet. Part of it is not procrastinating, but the key for me was getting some different medication. At the beginning of this year I started taking Abilify and it has been like a miracle. I didn't really even realize I was all that depressed before. I figured I was just lazy and didn't want to do anything. I figured I was the world's biggest procrastinator. I thought if I would just try harder and push myself I could get stuff done.

Seriously, I couldn't get anything done. I often spent a lot of time laying around in bed. I would put off everything. I had little to no motivation on a practical level. I mean, I wanted to do things differently, but I just couldn't. I couldn't get any reading done or anything except for maybe reloading my facebook page a gazillion times per hour.

So, it probably isn't just a matter of being a lazy-ass person. You are freaking depressed. It is an illness and it is treatable. It may take some time and lots of different combos of stuff, but when you find the right combo of therapy and drugs you will KNOW it!

And, yes, I live with my parents too. Don't worry so much about that. If they are able to help you financially, enjoy it. Work on getting treatment for your depression and the rest will come later. You'll find that once you start feeling better you will want to work harder and you'll want to make it on your own. Do other people have it harder than you? Maybe, but that doesn't matter. Your pain and suffering and depression, sadness and heartache are your own. Don't worry about what other people are doing right now. When you feel better, help out the less fortunate then. As I said, depression and mental illness in general does not spare anyone, no matter how wealthy they are, so give yourself a break. Depression is fucking HARD to deal with! It is a full-time job and then some!

Lastly, (sorry this has been so long btw) reach out for help. If you are going to hurt yourself, just take yourself to the ER and tell them you can't be safe with yourself right now. I know it sounds dumb, but if you can't be safe alone, let someone else make it safe for you. You deserve to live. There is no reason to kill yourself, seriously. If you can't get to the ER, call 911. Tell someone. Don't go thru this alone with all of this crap going on in your head.

Be safe. Be well. Hang in there...

You don't deserve to die. Nobody does and least of all you just because your life isn't going how you want it to.

First on taking drugs: I put them in a spot i see constantly for me that is my bag I carry everywhere. Then I set a timer when I am supposed to take them (best idea is a phone or an ipod which will come up with the message 'Take medication') Therapy is hard for everyone. I have been in and out of therapy and rehabs and on and off drugs for years. Luckily for me I am finally getting somewhere because my shrink prescribed me the exactly wrong drugs.

Nothing will come easy but you have to keep trying because there are things you want to be doing. Depression is an illness that can be more serve then cancer. Don't get down on yourself be supported by your parents. In all honesty so am I and all because I am mentally unstable.

You might have Treatment Resistant Depression. Sounds like what it says. I always see studies on craig's list asking for volunteers it might be worth checking out.

Finally when you are depressed your thinking is altered. What you have may seem small but it is something. You did try to go to college? Do you live in your own place? Also posssibly part of the reason you are depressed is because your ideal life is far away from your actual life. Sometimes it helps me to be happy when I brush my teeth and take a shower. Sounds small but doesn't happen on every depressed day.

Okay I hope this wasn't to pep talky. I'm been sucidal too and I know I hate to here 'it's going to be okay.' But that doesn't mean it won't. Good Luck and hang in there. If you go now you won't know what you will be if you get over this.  

Someone once told me that procrastination is the end response to two very different scenarios. According to this wise friend and teacher, people procrastinate when they are at heart a perfectionist. "Why start something that I know I'll never finish correctly."

In the other case, it's a reaction to reticence. One doesn't want to do something, so one keeps putting it off until it has to be done - like people who put off dental appointments.

If one of these is you, then maybe this will help you out of your tunnel. Neither one of these are terrible traits, but they can lead to very hectic outcomes - like sitting up all night typing a term paper when you've had three months to do it in. The tendency to procrastinate needs in many cases to be overridden. It's just the adult thing to do.

Know what? I'm all for people taking drugs for things that require drugs, but it seems today that people go on anti-depression therapy because they are merely having a bad day or going through a rough patch. Someone told me recently she went on Paxil because she enrolled in an art school, and it wasn't what she expected...and I said, "What?"

Now I sound judgmental and I don't mean to. Perhaps you do need medication, but perhaps you don't is all I'm saying. If you are tap dancing with thoughts of suicide, though, you probably need a good professional to talk to (notice I said good). Remember - suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I'm sure someone loves you out there - your family, your friends. Please don't deny them the pleasure of your company.

If you aren't doing well in school, then maybe you are studying the wrong thing. Or maybe school just isn't for you. There's no shame in that. Maybe you should find a trade that interests you.

I think because everyone is living longer, life's milestones have moved back a decade. I theorize that what you are going through is what people twenty or thirty years ago went through in their early twenties. Not a happy time for many people. Mostly, I think, because you start seeing the world very differently from your teenage years, and you start releasing the more rosy childhood notions of what life entails. And frankly, you start to see that perhaps some of the things you wanted for yourself may be beyond reach. I remember I always thought that by 30 I'd be this and that and this and that. When thirty finally arrived, I was nowhere near what I had envisioned for myself.

Find something that interests you and become involved with it. Hell, maybe you just need a hobby. Best wishes, R. And please hang in there.

1.) You need a prevention plan for suicide. Figure out a list of people to call who will talk you out of it, activities to do that will make you a little less depressed, and things to avoid that trigger deeper depressions.

2.) Try a new therapist/counselor/pyschiatrist. And a new one after that if you don't like the first one. And so on until you find someone who works.

3.) Meds sometimes take awhile to work, and sometimes they don't work at all. But give them another chance and don't expect instant results. Have your parents call you every day to remind you to take them if you really can't remember on your own.

4.) Have you been tested for ADD/ADHD? I have a close friend who had deep deep procrastination issues, and it turned out they had undiagnosed ADD.

5.) Don't kill yourself. It's a really shitty thing to do to everybody you know. Even if you think no one will care, they will and it will fuck people up.

I think that you are more suicidal because of self-loathing than you are because of procrastinating.

You clearly despise yourself because of the way you have coasted through life on your parents money.

Either get over it - start being ok with never achieving anything in your life (the quote from Office Space where the guy says he truly wouldn't do anything with his life if he won a million dollars comes to mind).

Or you go and find something that you WOULD actually do even if you had a million dollars. Those things do exist- and when you figure out what that thing is the motivation to succeed at it is SO MUCH EASIER to find. I didn't think such a thing existed until I found it at age 26. Maybe you will find something like that eventually.

Either way, procrastination - to me at least - seems like the symptom, not the problem. The problem is your self-loathing for your lifestyle and how easy you have it. Address that, however you can, and you might make some progress on feeling happier.

I've absolutely been in your situation-- I just barely managed to graduate college, and for me it was totally the debilitating perfectionism thing. I was on and off meds and counseling and did find them to help somewhat, but that's being discussed pretty thoroughly in the other excellent answers to this question, so I have a totally different piece of advice that may or may not help.

A couple of years ago I was very lucky to get a job in my field that I love and for a company who was willing to hire me based on my demonstrated skills and didn't ask to see my GPA. And ever since starting this job, I've had no trouble whatsoever with procrastination or managing my time; in fact, I've excelled at it. And for me, the difference is having a schedule. I believe now that if I had simply imposed the schedule I have on myself now when I was in college I would have done so much better.

So my idea is to pretend you have a job. Wake up at the same time every weekday (say 7 or 8), and just make yourself work for eight hours (class counts as work). Allow a half hour lunch break and just treat the rest of the day like you're at work. When you wake up in the morning just pick something on your list and start working on it. Work on it until it's done, or the eight hours is up, or you feel like switching to something else on the list. When you finish something, put a big line through it. When 5:00 comes around, relax. Don't know if that will work for you but it made such a huge difference for me I thought sharing this small concrete thing you could do would be worth a shot.

And you don't need traumas or serious problems to be depressed, it's a neurochemical imbalance so cut yourself some serious slack on that front. It's NOT your fault. I know how awful it is so I really hope things get better for you.

The answers by the others, particularly Tom and Fanrf are really excellent. I think you will find that virtually everyone can relate to the situation you are describing. Discipline and routine tend to be the solution to procrastination... one foot in front of the other.

That said, there a few points I'd differ with from the others:
1. Don't look down the road, just look at your feet and focus on the next step. Plans for your life are too big. Just do one small thing. I have always had a motto: one thing one day. That's it. I just want to do one thing every day.

2. Therapists generally suck. Do not bother going to someone who hasn't come recommended by someone with a brain. They can do more harm than good.

3. Suicide is NOT a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The problem is permanent. Sure life will get better. It will get worse too. If I could have killed myself I wouldn't be writing this. You are 30, it is unlikely you will kill yourself, so stop using it as a reason you don't have to put one foot in front of the other. Or kill yourself and be done with it. Until you do, stop thinking about it. It only makes things worse.

Best of luck to you.

First off, don't kill yourself. I promise your life will improve. It might get worse at some point too, but it's worth it to stick around for the time when it gets better. And odds are it will get much, much better.

All I can do is add on to what Fnarf said. Routine is really important because you give up control to the routine. Let the routine be your boss. To-do lists are great too. I have to force myself to crank out a to-do list each day, and I am always glad I did. Then all you have to do is follow the list and check off each box.

May I suggest the first thing on your first list should be to find a counselor. You really need to get all this off your chest. Also, you say there are people you are lying to about your life. Find one, and tell them the truth. What do you have to lose here? You will most likely feel tremendous relief, and other people can often give you perspective you didn't even know you lacked.

Finally, everyone is unhappy. Right? Everyone struggles and suffers. When I get depressed, (and I do- everyone does!) I try to remember to look around when I'm walking down the street, and look! Lots and lots of people look like they're trapped inside their own heads. Also, have you noticed that many people who are exceptionally kind and intelligent hate themselves the most? Why is that?

Please stay alive.

. I have found that the first step to solving any problem is discovering why the problem occurs or what causes it. For over 19 years I have found this to be the case for Australians anyway. There are 4 major reasons why people procrastinate. One of the 4 reasons comes under the category of "Wrong Goals" there is a valuable article written, in easy to understand terms and It can be found at http://bit.ly/wronggoals. (Relax, there is nothing to buy or sign up to)

You be the judge, but It has helped many Australians understand what is going on in their lives so they can then do more and be free to achieve the life they deserve. I hope it helps
Sam
www.beatprocrastination.com.au