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Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

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Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#91

(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…

Quoted post unavailable.

I spot-checked your first citation and it doesn’t support your claims in the slightest. It literally says that patients who continued taking their medication had lower relapse rates than those who stopped:

> > Compared with patients whose antidepressants were discontinued, those with continued treatment showed much lower relapse rates (1.85 vs. 6.24%/month), longer time to 50% relapse (48.0 vs. 14.2 months), and lower 12-month relapse risk (19.5 vs. 44.8%) (all p It literally says that antidepressants work.

> The common belief that these drugs are effective treatments (esp. in the US)…

They diverge from placebo and are effective treatments. It’s not a US thing at all. I don’t know why you think it’s limited to the United States, but then again the rest of your post is full of misinformation.

Please stop parroting this anti-psychiatry nonsense and trying to use studies that say the opposite of the misinformation you’re trying to spread.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#92
post #43
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not just slightly different. It can be extremely variable from person to person. Not just SSRIs. I had a very bad experience with Mucinex D (or DM?) about 12 years ago, the first time I tried it. I can only imagine it was what clinical depression is like. For two days (until I stopped taking because I was so scared) I lost all interest in my life. I wasn't interested in my young children, ow my wife, or watching an…

Mucinex DM has dextromethorphan[0] which can act as a non-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextromethorphan see section on dependence and withdrawal

It's much stronger effect is as an NMDA antagonist, similar to Ketamine. This blocks one of the primary excitatory neurotransmitters in the brain. That would be a better candidate for a depressant effect than its minor SRI property

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is value to medications that inhibit or regulate serotonin, and every individual's experience will be slightly different based on their genetics and the circumstances of their life. Not just slightly different. It can be extremely variable from person to person. It’s well-known in medical research and clinical practice that medications likes SSRIs range from helpful to neutral to net negatives depending on th…

These medications don't really address your condition, but rather just treat symptoms. IMO, the fear is not really about short-term negatives, but about it turning into drug abuse, without actually tackling the root cause. Such drugs should only be used in extreme cases.

What is the root cause of depression? That's a huge subject, and for some people even with community and a job and hobby they still feel depressed. Sometimes the underlying condition really is a chemical imbalance.

For example, adverse childhood experiences are highly correlated with depression. What's the underlying problem to tackle with a 50 year old adult who is depressed as a result of abuse as a child? Some things just change you and no amount of therapy can undo that

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#94
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear insulin is the same way. Eventually they still die, and OMG IF THEY STOP THEY DIE TOO. /sigh. please stop this, you're contributing to the stigma both in terms of mental health, and that lifesaving medication is somehow an addition.

The person you're replying to has multiple sources to defend their comment. It's not a big secret that antidepressants are overprescribed and extremely easy to obtain. Sure, they have their uses and may be life saving to some, but their use should also be questioned from time to time.

> The person you're replying to has multiple sources to defend their comment.

Click their first citation. It’s a study that shows that people who discontinue their antidepressants are more likely to relapse than people who continue taking them.

It also says that relapse is more likely if the person was depressed for longer before receiving treatment (e.g. excessively delaying treatment made relapse more likely)

It doesn’t support their wild anti-psychiatry rant at all. Don’t be fooled by off the wall comments that try to overload you with a list of citations that they know most people won’t read.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#95

(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…

My experience was the opposite. In fact, after taking medication to fix it I later stopped because of this naturalistic fallacy. I knew it was bunting some of my emotions and I figured whatever the drugs are doing I can do with lifestyle changes. 10 years later, a daily habit of exercise and cold showers, a variety of daily natural supplements like turmeric and magnesium, and a career later.. I was no different.

I'd wonder why everything felt so hard for me, why I was so stressed out all the time. And how it could be that no one else seemed to be horrified by the existential realities of life. At the same time I wanted to participate in life so I could help change things for the better-- but damn every morning was a new battle. And then I decided to start the same medication again, and boom.

About a year later and I feel normal. It's amazing. I'm like.. is this how people feel all the time? You guys just wake up and don't dread the day? Lol it's almost funny now. They blunt my emotions.. but turns out i was hyper sensitive to everything. In an awful , stressful way. I still have white hair from that period of life.

Sometimes, medication is the answer. I had a perfectly fine life on paper yet couldn't be happy. My theory is this was because of some adverse childhood events I experienced, that seemed to change something in me. Thank God for modern medicine.

And I learned sometimes the best advice is don't listen to others-- only you know what's best for you. People are complicated and therapy doesn't always work.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because I've tried it and noticed improvements in myself.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#97

(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.

They did. If it's prescribable as a medication to treat anxiety or depression in the United States, I've tried it. I try and keep a very open mind, so even when many medications didn't work, I continued to try new ones and combinations with sufficient trial periods, but in the end what worked best for me (at that point in my life) was just not taking anything at all.

I'm not saying medication is not effective - it was extremely effective for me in different phases of my life and probably saved me from suicide, however in my adult life I found the emotional blunting and apathy that came with not just SSRIs but DSRIs and other classes of medications to be extremely concerning.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#99
post #95

(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…

My experience was the opposite. In fact, after taking medication to fix it I later stopped because of this naturalistic fallacy. I knew it was bunting some of my emotions and I figured whatever the drugs are doing I can do with lifestyle changes. 10 years later, a daily habit of exercise and cold showers, a variety of daily natural supplements like turmeric and magnesium, and a career later.. I was no different. I'd…

> My theory is this was because of some adverse childhood events I experienced, that seemed to change something in me.

Have you considered some sort of regression therapy such as hypnotherapy or if more adventurous, plant medicine? I sat next to a pretty senior FBI guy on a domestic US flight once. He was a hypnotherapist who claimed that in almost all cases they were able to use hypnosis to get information about what happened even if the conscious person was completely unable to recall any details.

In most shamanic traditions, a lot of work is devoted to bringing up and purging out past trauma. Examples include plant vapor baths to sweat things out, purgatives to release emotional trauma (often present in the stomach / belly) and plant medicines such as ayahuasca that act as both a purgative and help form new perspectives of past experiences.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#100

As does Histamine.

And yeast (via gut bacteria). I’m pretty sure we have been cultivated to breed more of them, not our decision just because they’re delicious.

Bacteria that's crossed the blood brain barrier can affect behaviour.

In European woman, the most common bacteria in a woman's vagina's is Lactobacillus largely due to the milk product consumption in their die.

However whilst Western medicine considers Lactobacillus to be a probiotic, other cultures who do not consume milk products in as large a quantity have different bacterial profiles in their vagina's.

Japanese people claim to be able to smell gone off milk oozing from the pores of westerners.

The presence of a particular strain of bacteria (whose name I dont have to hand right now) in a woman's vagina will also predict whether they have freckles or not.

Biology is a fascinating subject and very much open to debate.

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