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The Degradation Drug

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Re: The Degradation Drug

#71

Post by hirvi74 »

_qua wrote: post #53
somebodynew wrote: post #7

The article describes its first subject as having been diagnosed with simply "depression", but describes their medication regime as including lithium and lamotrigine which in combination is strongly suggestive of treatment for bipolar depression in particular. Given that the described behavior sounds very much like a manic episode, the article should have explained this connection before attempting to focus the blame…

Agree. Even if the behavior was induced by drugs, it's a textbook description of a manic episode. If her psychiatrist had an accurate description of her behavior and praised it (as the article asserts) he was off his rocker.

> If her psychiatrist had an accurate description of her behavior and praised it (as the article asserts) he was off his rocker.

I find people put too much faith in psychs. I'm thankful for the help they have managed to provide people, but it's still the most abstract, nebulous, and least scientific field of medicine. I'm not trying to completely discredit the field by any means, but merely trying to be realistic about it.

From personal experience, it seems like one presents with arbitrary symptoms, and is then given a arbitrary label that cannot be successfully mapped to any underlying biological or physiological cause. Afterwards, one basically proceeds to brute-force n >= 1 medications until something works.

It gets more complicated when one researches the various medications and the underlying mechanisms of how they treat various conditions and their efficacy.

I have ADHD. Data suggests that stimulants are highly effective for ADHD. By why do stimulants work? Good question! To put things in very simple terms, it's hypothesized stimulants work due the effects on the dopaminergic system, but the honest truth is that no one actually knows why stimulants work for ADHD. A similar pattern can be applied to other mental conditions and their respective treatments too.

Re: The Degradation Drug

#72

Post by runnerup »

k__ wrote: post #42

I read in body building forums that those who are on testosterone take cabergolin to keep their male breast from changing too much. Some of them said it made them more sexually active than before. They got horny more often and the refractory period was reduced. When I read about caber, I found out it was given to Parkinson patients and that one of it main side effects was that people were more inclined to gamble and…

Interesting, anecdotally testosterone therapy (even unnaturally super high levels) tends to counteract my ADHD impulsiveness and the obsessive or prurient behaviors driven by dopamine reuptake inhibitors like amphetamine.

Because of the descriptions of dopamine agonists, I suspect pramipexole and cabergolin have a much strong effect than DRI's. But maybe I've just lived with DRI's for so long that I can mitigate/resist the effects somewhat better than a person who just started on them in their middle age.

Based on personal experimentation I also suspect the elevated estrogen from testosterone replacement is largely responsible for the reduction in dopamine-driven behaviors. I tend to do best overall with estradiol on the high side of normal. When estrogens are low I get far more compulsive behaviors shadowing those in TFA, even in the absence of dopamine related pharmaceuticals.

Re: The Degradation Drug

#73

Post by BizarroLand »

While reading the article I got the feeling that this article touched on something much deeper than it meant to. In stories there has often been a artistic, dreamy, head in the clouds type that either delights or confuses the more stolid, logical, sensible and practical other character.

Abbot and Costello, Rabbit and Briar Fox, Dexter and Dee-Dee, Billy and Mandy, Drop Dead Fred and everyone else in that movie, (or anyone in a Yahoo Serious movie other than Yahoo Serious) these dualistic Gemini archetypes are littered throughout western culture, and quite possibly others but I don't know them well enough to bring any popular characters to mind.

I wonder how much of that is caused by the fundamental divide between high and low dopamine functioning people?

Wild, zany, brash and in your face manic lifestyle caused primarily by having a lot of dopamine in your brain? With plenty of people around to facilitate the outcome at least in part because of the attention-seeking nature of the effect?

This makes me long to attempt something similar. It makes me wonder who I would be on a long arc dopamine rush. Would I paint? Would I sing? Would I drive my friends and coworkers wild? Or lose everything in a dopamine fueled fumbling towards ecstasy?

Who knows, but it's intriguing! It's as tempting as a siren song. If someone had those pills in front of me right now I don't know if I could resist trying them.

Re: The Degradation Drug

#74

Post by rincebrain »

I've actually been taking pramipexole for almost two years now for depression which mostly didn't blink for anything else in the past.

I certainly do behave differently while on it, but not in a way that I think anyone who knew me would claim is inconsistent with my prior personality or behavior, just...less likely to fall into the inertial well that is depression stifling your actions.

A strange anecdote, though - my doctor told me when I was tapering up on it "okay, for some medications they tell you you might feel ill taking it initially, but no, for this, I am going to promise you, you will feel sick, and how well you can tolerate feeling sick is going to be the limiter on how fast we taper this", and he was correct, though it was never that bad during the initial taper up, just mild discomfort...

...then one day, the pharmacy gave me 1x1mg pills instead of 4x0.25mg pills, from the same manufacturer, and suddenly I had horrific nausea if I was in anything moving faster than a brisk walk for hours after taking it, and it went away when I went back to the 4x0.25mg. Which was wild, as I've never had motion sickness from anything before.

(It's also twice a day because the half-life is real short now, which is annoying, but c'est la vie.)

Feel free to ask anything that comes to mind about it, if anecdata interests you.

Re: The Degradation Drug

#75

Post by mnw21cam »

koprulusector wrote: post #58
girvo wrote: post #23

> It is a rare case of restless legs syndrome that is severe enough to make the risk of prison time or the sex-offender registry look like a reasonable tradeoff. While I understand the rest of the article, as someone who has been through opioid-withdrawal induced RLS a few times in my life, this is really downplaying how horrible it is. The RLS alone would stop me from sleeping for a week or more. You lose your mind.…

I’m not an addict but I have suffered from restless leg syndrome in the past, to the severity you describe. Every time you’re on the cusp of sleep, there’s this tickle that travels up your leg to your lower back. But it’s this weird, disembodied tickle. There’s nothing to scratch or press or wrap or anything to alleviate. So you’re now wide awake because of this tickling sensation. This was ~2016 for me. I read somew…

I get mild restless legs if I don't take my daily calcium supplements. I think both calcium and magnesium are helpful, although I have also heard they are meant to work against each other in some way.

Re: The Degradation Drug

#76

Post by lowbloodsugar »

somebodynew wrote: post #68
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you are writing off the whole article with a sentiment along the lines of “this bitch was already psycho”. I can tell you that I am certainly not bipolar and yet I had similar problems on related drugs, resulting in bankruptcy and violence. I will never, ever again take drugs from a psychiatrist. For all the fake panic about “reefer madness” supposed medical “professionals” can prescribe mind altering dru…

I understand your frustration with the current state of psychiatry, but I think that you may be reading too much of it into my comment. I had no intention of shifting any blame from the wholly inappropriate combination of prescribed drugs or the psychiatrist to the patient, and I used very deliberate wording to intentionally avoid making any reference whatsoever to the gender of the patient. The point of my post was…

The article discussed several examples, including men. You stopped reading after making your decision about the one woman.

Re: The Degradation Drug

#77

Post by user_7832 »

taylorius wrote: post #52

Slightly off-topic (though related). I think I experience a mild form of the craziness described in the article if I don't get enough sleep the night before. I'm not trying to compare the two in any way, or make it "all about me" - but it's a definite pattern I've observed, and I wondered if anyone else had experienced anything similar.

This is not particularly surprising, lack of sleep causes an increase in dopamine (the theory is that the brain tries to "compensate"). There was a very recent episode on the Huberman Lab podcast on using this to "reset" the circadian rhythm and depression (to some extent).
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