Sometimes to get better, things have to get worse first.

Sure - the operative word was "just". The forms of it I could sustain didn't help over five years or so.

I am curious to know what "Actually curing the depression" required for you?

Meds.

Specifically, things got so horrible that I was forced to drop my plans of getting medical insurance in order beforehand, and to go to a doctor, who promptly handed me off to a psychiatrist, who put me in the loony bin for a few days and on meds. The meds turned out to make it worse, so I was put on a different med, which worked so quickly and miraculously that the psychiatrist feared I was going hypomanic.