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Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

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Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#71
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation as you. SSRIs seemed mostly ineffective, or sometimes had crazy side effects (will never forget Effexor-induced zaps despite tapering off following the directions to the letter). Bupropion has been fantastic for me since I started and I wished I'd found it 20 years ago.

That’s great! Bupropion caused a psychotic episode for me maybe ten years ago. Most terrifying day of my life, when the razor blades were calling out to me telling me to cut myself. To be clear, I’ve never had anything like that happen before or since. My daughter spent 9 months in the NICU and got genetic testing for various drugs, with 1 being the baseline expected (I’m going off memory here) and 9 or 10 being “wtf…

[deleted]

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#72
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar thoughts. I think SSRI's are the wrong direction. Acute drug experiences with therapy and behavioral modification are the future. do some molly and ketamine and have a good talk.

How does the dissasociative ketamine help?

Ketamine (as its S-isomer) is approved by the FDA for treatment-resistant depression.

Note that while the evidence for Ketamine's antidepressant effect is actually strong, that does not mean you should get into the habit of snorting a gram of special K a day.

Ketamine abuse is known to cause serious, practical damage to the GI tract, the urinary system, the liver, and the brain.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#74

(Just my personal, anecdotal experience - I have strong family history of depression and anxiety on both sides of my family and it's something that's afflicted me since I was a teenager.) I will be extremely hesitant to take antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications ever again after my last experience with them. For me, the medications helped by tempering all of my feelings - I no longer felt sad or anxious, inste…

Sounds like anomie. What did your therapist say about this? Different anti-depressants have different effects. Not sure what you were on, but if it was an SSRI, perhaps a tricyclic would have been better, or vice versa.

The symptoms you explain are why it is important to pair therapy with antidepressents.

I'm very surprised your therapist did not alter your scrip.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#75

It's crazy how our brains and bodies are just a cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters. Change that mix, and it can change the very nature of who we think we are. Things that you might associate with your very identity, like optimism/pessimism, ability to focus, moral judgment, how collaborative or generous you are, aggressiveness, all can be influenced by hormones or neurotransmitters.

Its really not just a cocktail or mix. Its far more ordered than that and these compounds and receptors are found in very specific areas and circuits

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#76
"Enhancing serotonin made subjects more likely to judge harmful actions as forbidden, but only in cases where harms were emotionally salient. "

"Together, these findings provide unique evidence that serotonin could promote prosocial behavior by enhancing harm aversion, "

I object to the notion that 'less harm' is necessarily 'pro social'.

You can see the emotional attachment to 'harm' which confirms my biases in that people have difficulty mapping the moral issues with harm against their emotional reaction.

Case and point: A man robs a bank, is running from police, shooting at them, the police shoot the man, he dies.

I believe the 'seratonin' response is to condemn the 'terrible harm' done by the police officers.

It takes second order rationalization to contextualize the situation.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#77

The use of the word "prosocial" in the abstract is very confusing to me. They seem to be using it to describe actions which sound good but result in much worse real-world outcomes, right?

>worse real-world outcomes

This is subjective. Pro social just means that its beneficial for a social relationship(s)

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#78
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to elaborate on this? I take a lot of anti-histamines and haven't noticed any difference other than it helps me medically. But I'd like to be on the lookout so I can be my best self.

It increases IQ, histidine, a precursor for histamine, doubled the IQ of people with downs syndrome in an experiment over several months, but histamine also increases aggression which probably explains why you dont see many aggressive people with Down Syndrome. Aged food & drink is higher in histamine. Red wine more than white wine. Dark spirits more than clear spirits. Red meat more than white meat. It can cause spo…

How do you know it increases IQ?

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#79
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, >1yr of talk therapy.

Thanks. Was it same person who also prescribed the medication?

No, I continued to decline and created a plan to end my life. I told my psychologist and she referred me to a psychiatrist to begin a concurrent pharmaceutical treatment to go along with talk therapy.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#80

(Just my personal, anecdotal experience - I have strong family history of depression and anxiety on both sides of my family and it's something that's afflicted me since I was a teenager.) I will be extremely hesitant to take antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications ever again after my last experience with them. For me, the medications helped by tempering all of my feelings - I no longer felt sad or anxious, inste…

Lost Connections is a very good book on the topic. Read it, the author points out in countries where people don't have 3k a month for pysc meds, somehow they aren't all miserably depressed. One story is really sweat, a poor farmer is helped by his community after being left unable to work. In the west we'd say file for SSI and get some SOMA.

The entire mental health industry is focused on extracting as much from vulnerable people as possible. Unless you have a spare 1200$ to 1600$ a month laying around you won't be able to afford therapy anyway...

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