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Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

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Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#131

Post by jschwartzi »

shoulderfake wrote: post #118
curun1r wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which basically says that when we deplete the body of certain neurotransmitters, people get depressed Your statement represents a logical fallacy. I can also prove that depleting a car of gasoline causes it not to run, but fixing the fuel situation won't make all non-running cars functional. Just look at the more recent research that shows a connection between our microbiome and mood disorders to see that depressio…

The entire medical profession is medication-first... my brother was diagnosed with MS and none of the many doctors he talked to mentioned ANYTHING regarding diet. Meanwhile as soon as you do your own research you find out that diet is your primary means of battling it. I was also diagnosed with depression few years ago, these fucking monkeys instantly gave me some ssris...I wasn't depressed. I had a sleep problem tha…

What was insane was me being prescribed Paxil as a teenager by a family practice doc with no psychiatric experience or consult, without any therapy, and with only a 20-question questionnaire. What was even crazier was what happened when I quit it cold turkey several months later. The whole experience makes me very skeptical of anyone telling me medication can help me because of how awful my life became.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#132

Post by egypturnash »

JustThrowMeAway wrote: post #56
JustThrowMeAway wrote: post #30

After almost 25 years of taking antidepressants, I had no emotion left whatsoever. I felt dead and wanted to be dead. I wonder how to understand this. If you have no emotions, can you still want something? Why would you want to die? I tend to understand this sentence in a way that means she was suffering. But isn't suffering the same as experiencing negative emotions? Or is this supposed to mean that she had no good…

Man, all of my comments end up on the bottom of the discussions I try to take part in. This one for example. It raises a question that I truely find interesting. Does nobody else think so? It ranks as the last comment of all. Even below a single line comment "depression is not fun". Depressing.

Maybe if you stopped posting from ObviousThrowawayAccount47 you'd get more engagement?

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#133

Post by smolder »

Alex3917 wrote: post #111
adrice727 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Johann Hari covers a lot of the history of antidepressants in "Lost Connections." Per the studies he covers in the book, most of the benefits are placebo effect. The remainder is somewhat of a mystery. Whether you give someone a medication that increases the level of serotonin in their system (i.e. an SSRI), or that decreases the level of serotonin, the effect will the be same. Replace the drugs targeting serotonin w…

> Replace the drugs targeting serotonin with drugs that target dopamine and you can expect the same effect. Anything, drug or non-drug, that has any effect on the senses will have roughly the same effect. E.g. hot therapy, cold therapy, meditation, float therapy, aromatherapy, massage, acupuncture, etc. There's nothing at all special about serotonin, it just happens to sit at the intersection of several different are…

MDMA easily proves on it's own that there is "something special" about serotonin.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#134

Post by jschwartzi »

HBlix wrote: post #81
baumgarn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're stepping into a fallacy here. Of course every thought process is bound to biological processes in the brain. So we can see this as some sort of biochemical mapping of our understanding and perception of the world, and our social status in it. Why should the solution to a negative outlook be to mess with the chemistry alone, through drugs? You can just as well ask the other way around, what kind of worl…

If you had a childhood full of physical abuse, and your right leg was frequently broken until it became malformed, then the solution might involve crutches. All of which is to say, just because the damage done is in the past, doesn’t mean that it can’t have lasting effects you can’t just wish away. The developing human brain, it has been shown time and again, undergoes permanent changes associated with abusive enviro…

The thing you're missing is that it is learned insecurity that is associated with the biochemical changes, and that by doing the work to unlearn the insecurity as the author did you can reverse the biochemical changes. You can't make the statement that the biochemical changes are the cause of the insecurity, only that they are associated with it. And that's very important, because an "if-then" statement does not imply the converse. That is, if you reverse the biochemical changes you do not necessarily make the learned insecurity go away.

A broken leg is way less complicated than the synapses that form your perception of yourself, and far better understood. You can't really conflate the two without committing a logical fallacy. Treating the broken leg and the brain changes as identical in complexity is akin to treating the construction of a rivet the same as the construction of a Boeing 737.

The fact is that you can change, and you can feel better, but you also have to put in the work to change yourself. It's the hardest thing you will ever do if you grew up in a dysfunctional family because it requires you to deny years of your experience in favor of the received wisdom of how the world really works, and not everyone can do this. But if you do the work the reward in the end is that you're not permanently crippled by addiction to psychiatric medication.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#135

Post by loceng »

subcosmos wrote: post #109
iliketosleep wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seems as though SSRIs shouldn't be used as first-line therapy. They are powerful drugs that alter brain chemistry in ways that aren't properly understood. There are a number of low-hanging fruit which can be tried first, such as increased exposure to sunlight, exercise, change in diet, meditation, CBT and so on. But if all of these fail, an SSRI is definitely worth trying - they do work for some people.

They saved my life after a decade of trying everything else.

Do you mind sharing what "everything else" you tried included?

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#136

Post by tomnipotent »

curun1r wrote: post #125
iliketosleep wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seems as though SSRIs shouldn't be used as first-line therapy. They are powerful drugs that alter brain chemistry in ways that aren't properly understood. There are a number of low-hanging fruit which can be tried first, such as increased exposure to sunlight, exercise, change in diet, meditation, CBT and so on. But if all of these fail, an SSRI is definitely worth trying - they do work for some people.

This is exactly my view. I see medication as the nuclear option. It's important to have it in reserve, since it can work, but you should try everything else first because of how badly the medication route can go. The "first do no harm" doctrine is violated by taking a medication-first approach.

> I see medication as the nuclear option. It's important to have it in reserve, since it can work, but you should try everything else first

For many people this isn't an option - medication is required to even get them to a stable enough baseline for other treatment options to be effective.

Views like this are very unhelpful and help to perpetuate shame, which can prevent people that need help from seeking it because the treatment doesn't line up with the views, morals, and general opinions of the people around them.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#137

Post by DanBC »

curun1r wrote: post #125
iliketosleep wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seems as though SSRIs shouldn't be used as first-line therapy. They are powerful drugs that alter brain chemistry in ways that aren't properly understood. There are a number of low-hanging fruit which can be tried first, such as increased exposure to sunlight, exercise, change in diet, meditation, CBT and so on. But if all of these fail, an SSRI is definitely worth trying - they do work for some people.

This is exactly my view. I see medication as the nuclear option. It's important to have it in reserve, since it can work, but you should try everything else first because of how badly the medication route can go. The "first do no harm" doctrine is violated by taking a medication-first approach.

Depression is a sometimes fatal illness, and advice like this causes real harm.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#138

Post by curun1r »

tomnipotent wrote: post #136
curun1r wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly my view. I see medication as the nuclear option. It's important to have it in reserve, since it can work, but you should try everything else first because of how badly the medication route can go. The "first do no harm" doctrine is violated by taking a medication-first approach.

> I see medication as the nuclear option. It's important to have it in reserve, since it can work, but you should try everything else first For many people this isn't an option - medication is required to even get them to a stable enough baseline for other treatment options to be effective. Views like this are very unhelpful and help to perpetuate shame, which can prevent people that need help from seeking it because…

> Views like this are very unhelpful and help to perpetuate shame

No, my view is a hard-earned perspective that I've gained through personally having the system fail me. I lost a decade of my life to the medication-first mentality and I resent your implication that trying to help others avoid the same outcome is in any way dangerous.

I do concede that drugs work for some people, but views like yours that lead to over-medication are what is truly dangerous. What we need is well-rounded advice that allows patients to make informed decisions about their road to recovery. Medication is one possible path, but it's not the only path and it's not without it's downsides. It can ruin lives just as much as it can save lives, and people need to know that. It permanently alters brain chemistry, so it's an irrevocable choice, unlike almost all other approaches.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#139

Post by HBlix »

jschwartzi wrote: post #134
HBlix wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had a childhood full of physical abuse, and your right leg was frequently broken until it became malformed, then the solution might involve crutches. All of which is to say, just because the damage done is in the past, doesn’t mean that it can’t have lasting effects you can’t just wish away. The developing human brain, it has been shown time and again, undergoes permanent changes associated with abusive enviro…

The thing you're missing is that it is learned insecurity that is associated with the biochemical changes, and that by doing the work to unlearn the insecurity as the author did you can reverse the biochemical changes. You can't make the statement that the biochemical changes are the cause of the insecurity, only that they are associated with it. And that's very important, because an "if-then" statement does not impl…

Some people can change to some degree, some can’t. Some people for example can recover from PTSD with time and talk therapy, and if you insist on others doing that they’ll end up killing themselves. Not taking medication is just as much of a fallacious “one-size-fits-all” solution as insisting that everyone take medication.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#140

Post by danmaz74 »

jschwartzi wrote: post #131
shoulderfake wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire medical profession is medication-first... my brother was diagnosed with MS and none of the many doctors he talked to mentioned ANYTHING regarding diet. Meanwhile as soon as you do your own research you find out that diet is your primary means of battling it. I was also diagnosed with depression few years ago, these fucking monkeys instantly gave me some ssris...I wasn't depressed. I had a sleep problem tha…

What was insane was me being prescribed Paxil as a teenager by a family practice doc with no psychiatric experience or consult, without any therapy, and with only a 20-question questionnaire. What was even crazier was what happened when I quit it cold turkey several months later. The whole experience makes me very skeptical of anyone telling me medication can help me because of how awful my life became.

You really trust your data point of 1.
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