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Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

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Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#111

Post by twofornone »

colechristensen wrote: post #10

Huh, given that something like 15% of Americans are on SSRIs, I wonder how this affects the political landscape (which seems overrun with a new kind of moralizing in the last few decades)

You should be more concerned with the psychological effects of birth control, which in my opinion are drastically understated and underesearched. We are toying with the hormones of tens of millions of women and the vast majority are unaware of the potential differences in decisionmaking and behavior.

There are secondary effects as well, for example, women have been shown to select for more dominant, aggressive men when fertile and meeker providers when not - how might that shape our social landscape, if a sizable proportion of women are kept permanently in a hormonally induced infertile state?

0. https://magazine.tcu.edu/fall-2020/hormonal-birth-control-br...

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15236788/

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#112

Post by LASR »

tamaharbor wrote: post #83
rjh29 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I had the same response. I found they helped anxiety a lot, but did not help depression as I just felt even more disconnected and apathetic to things. What helped me was switching away from a first-line SSRI and onto something a bit more niche: Mirtazapine. It's definitely worth trying a variety of SSRIs because everyone is different and it's really common for the first one or two that you try to not work…

Does the Mirtazapine make you sleepy all the time?

Not OP, but to answer your question: no, not all the time.

If you take it before bedtime, it sedates you in a deep sleep. But 3-4 hours later, if you wake up, it would be like you didn’t take anything.

You may even have trouble going back to sleep if you wake up early.

Of course all this varies greatly for every individual.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#113

Post by heavyset_go »

antics9 wrote: post #23
metadat wrote: 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.

I second this. I take antihistamines from April to September. Loratadin absolutely has a negative effect on my mood. Mostly because I feel tired I believe. Switched to Ebastin and no more tiredness. However, I am starting to suspect that it also does affect my mood in some way or another. During winter I take a pill as a precautionary if I’m going to be in any dusty spaces. The day after I sometimes experience mood s…

Levocetirizine doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier like other antihistamines such as loratadine does.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#114

Post by skellera »

meiji163 wrote: post #52
o10449366 wrote: post #3

(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.

Your source for your last point has the conclusion of:

“Although these biases did not significantly inflate estimates of drug efficacy, reporting biases led to significant increases in the number of positive findings in the literature.”

Which is literally the opposite of what you’re citing on efficacy.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#115

Post by jnovek »

loceng wrote: post #32
o10449366 wrote: post #3

(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…

Have you ever researched or tried MDMA? It's "single use" vs. daily and habit/dependency forming. MAPS.org did clinical trials, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for veterans with treatment resistant PTSD, to great success.

Psychedelics seem very promising for the treatment of PTSD at some point down the line, but it’s not even close to studied enough. E.g. a recent promising study in Nature was 90 participants. Taking street MDMA is not the same as being administered MDMA in a clinical setting as an aid to talk therapy.

I am enthusiastic about the advancement of research in this area and frustrated that it was delayed for so long due to political reasons, but please keep in mind that people with mood disorders or trauma can be desperate and may not make the best choices for themselves on their own.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#116

Post by javbit »

mpol wrote: post #60
colechristensen wrote: post #10

Huh, given that something like 15% of Americans are on SSRIs, I wonder how this affects the political landscape (which seems overrun with a new kind of moralizing in the last few decades)

Ouch, that is a lot. There is something like Serotonin Irritation Syndrome which can cause aggressive feelings and thoughts. Personally I tried to increase my serotonin twice, once with Tryptophan a few years ago and recently with Inositol. Both times I felt very aggressive. Maybe I should use it right before a chess game, who knows it helps ;) It is sometimes mentioned that for people who are sensitive to psychosis…

I tried an SSRI for a month, after the first week I was getting into more arguments for no reasons. Usually I'll have some (at least vague) lucidity as to why I'm upset, but at that time I didn't and it made me feel quite stupid. Never doing those again.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#117

Post by xkbarkar »

selectodude wrote: post #79
loceng wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good to hear the meds are working for you. Clinical depression is life threatening and no joke to walk around with untreated.

Whatever that treatment might be.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#118

Post by jnovek »

tsol wrote: post #95
o10449366 wrote: post #3

(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…

Have you ever tried EMDR? If your mood issues are a result of childhood trauma or trauma-like experiences, EMDR has been researched heavily and has a good track record.

I’m not anti-medication by any means. I will probably need medication to feel OK for the rest of my life, but EMDR has augmented my treatment in a meaningful way. If you haven’t tried it, it’s at least worth looking into.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#119

Post by heavyset_go »

laurent92 wrote: post #103
o10449366 wrote: post #3

(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…

For me, serotonin blockers just made me asexual. It was a flat organ even when activated. It also defeats the purpose of taking antidepressants to enter a more positive spiral with girls… But it is also very frightening as a man.

Ironically, it is actually serotonin blockers that can help with SSRI sexual side-effects. Activation of 5HT2C via SSRIs is what is hypothesized to be responsible for those specific side-effects, and blocking 5HT2C can help alleviate them.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#120

Post by throw0101a »

o10449366 wrote: post #3

(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…

> 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, instead I just felt mellow and apathetic about everything.

For some folks this is actually roughly the ailment that they suffer from:

> Anhedonia is a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure.[1] While earlier definitions emphasized the inability to experience pleasure, anhedonia is currently used by researchers to refer to reduced motivation, reduced anticipatory pleasure (wanting), reduced consummatory pleasure (liking), and deficits in reinforcement learning.[2][3][4]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhedonia

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