(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, instead I just felt mellow and apathetic about everything. And feeling apathy is an incredibly scary thing because I also no longer derived any joy from my hobbies, from sex, from exercise, etc. I could no longer feel sad but I could no longer feel happy, either.
Even worse, I found myself engaging in behaviors I would never have engaged in otherwise, like compulsive lying. My moral code was compromised because I no longer felt the guilt and shame that normally inhibits unscrupulous behavior. I look back on that time now and I think about some of my actions and I feel nauseous.
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. However, for me, even though I benefited from them at various points in my life (especially as a teenager), as an adult now I'm much more likely to depend on coping strategies I've learned through therapy than medication when it comes to dealing with my mood.
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.
As a contra-point to this (I feel like these sorts of threads bring out everybody who ever had negative experiences with xyz drug and that can be very harmful to those with mood disorders):
The only reason I'm still alive is due to SSRIs, they have definitely taken away some of the highs of life but they also took away the incessant thoughts of suicide. They have side effects. They suck and the idea of being physically and mentally addicted to a mood stabilizer is a huge bummer. But I know that the people around me (and you) want us around, even if it's not 100 percent of who we really are. If your meds are working for you, messing around with them because you want to "hack" your brain isn't necessarily the best course of action. Be smart.
> 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 the patients and situation. Sadly, too many people fixate on the potential negative side effects and avoid trialing treatments altogether.
For anyone suffering: It’s true that medications might not work out for you, but if they do address your condition and you’re one of the many people whose lives benefit greatly, then it would be tragic to avoid medications based on fear of potential negative outcomes.
Within the first 10 minutes he speaks of the fact that rational thought as we see it simply does not exist. All our choices are based on the ability to distinguish a preference and that ability is based on emotion.
It would only make sense that medication impairing our emotions would also impair our choice making.
Not sure if you ever tried a DSRI but it could be your serotonin levels are fine but your dopamine levels are out of whack. SSRIs are just one class of drug. Speaking from a history of anxiety and depression, the wrong drugs were not helpful, but the right drugs opened up a whole new version of self. In my case, that was buproprion.
I've used SSRIs a long time ago with therapy, and without a few years ago.
In my opinion, SSRIs should only be used as a tool to help make the patient more receptive to therapy.
It should never ever be used a substitute for therapy. I too have noticed that without someone to help keeping your behaviour in check, some undesirable (but not necessarily dark) personality traits could take over. Not to mention that someone needs to be there to check on you during the first weeks of use when the drug actually causes a deeper depression before it starts mellowing your feelings.
BTW. My second SSRI use also left me with permanently dry eyes and nose: me needing eye drops and to avoid dusty, dry environments for the rest of my life.
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 well.
I agree that ultimately therapy/coping strategies are the right cure, medicine is a way to bootstrap otherwise incapable people into persuing exercise, therapy, social stuff etc. If you can achieve that without the help of meds, more power to you!
Had similar. Was suffering from clots and doctors decided it was anxiety. I stopped caring about anything. Saw a love one injured. I felt nothing at all. Someone whom I was normally very protective.
Never took another pill.
This article was published in 2010, he had to resign his faculty position at Harvard in 2011, and was found guilty of scientific misconduct in 2012 by the government Office of Research Integrity.
> They concluded that Hauser had fabricated data in one study, manipulated results in multiple experiments, and incorrectly described how studies were conducted.
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?
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 (like me) this can be a tipping point towards aggressive behaviour.
> They’ve been linked to road rage, pathological gambling, and complicated acts of fraud. Some make us less neurotic, and others may even shape our social relationships. It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains. Why? And should there be warnings on packets?
> We’re all familiar with the mind-bending properties of psychedelic drugs – but it turns out ordinary medications can be just as potent. From paracetamol (known as acetaminophen in the US) to antihistamines, statins, asthma medications and antidepressants, there’s emerging evidence that they can make us impulsive, angry, or restless, diminish our empathy for strangers, and even manipulate fundamental aspects of our personalities, such as how neurotic we are.
> If these claims are true, the implications are profound. The list of potential culprits includes some of the most widely consumed drugs on the planet, meaning that even if the effects are small at an individual level, they could be shaping the personalities of millions of people.
Mirapex, given for Parkinson’s, it’s truly scary. There are entire forums dedicated to the broken families due to the gambling auctions caused by it. My brother has been on it for two decades, so my family has gotten to watch the effects first hand.
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.
Yes it brings up uncomfortable questions about free will. Like “why did he murder that guy? did he choose to do it or did the chemicals in his brain force him to?”
We choose to ignore that fact. Another scary statistic is the drastic reduction in testosterone levels in the west in men and women, which probably accounts for many of the recent social changes.
The question is if it's OK to adapt to the new landscape, or to consider it a crisis that needs to be solved.
The reality is, SSRIs and other pharmaceuticals that have been used to treat common psychiatric illnesses (anxiety/depression) have dismal outcomes and fail the vast majority of patients that they have been given to.
I'm optimistic that the next few decades will bring about better approaches to these massively underserved (and largely exploited and discarded) people.
I’ve suffered from depression for 20 years with no relief from many different traditional antidepressant medications and many different modalities of therapy. I received my first MDMA therapy treatment in October of last year. It changed my life. It is the most important thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.
It feels like I’m feeling emotions for the first time in my life. I had completely lost hope for any kind of improvement in my symptoms, until this. I am so, so thankful I found this, and am so glad that it will (most likely) be becoming legal for use in treatment outside clinical trials in the very near future. So many lives will change for the better. For the first time in a long time, I’m excited to wake up and ring in each new day.
I wonder how long before people propose to use it for happier society. Just like Stanisław Lem predicted in short story about Altruzine in Cyberiad [1] :)
"Harm aversion" is an interesting lens through which to view people's motivation and behavior. (They mention aversion to social harms specifically, but some of the examples are physical harms.) I've heard of loss aversion and of course risk aversion, but that's a new one for me.
"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.
>This harm-avoidant bias after citalopram was also evident in behavior during the ultimatum game, in which subjects decide to accept or reject fair or unfair monetary offers from another player. Rejecting unfair offers enforces a fairness norm but also harms the other player financially. Enhancing serotonin made subjects less likely to reject unfair offers.
So essentially a subject with enhanced serotonin was more likely to be exploited?
>Enhancing serotonin made subjects more likely to judge harmful actions as forbidden, but only in cases where harms were emotionally salient.
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic."
- Joseph Stalin
It's saying that serotonin doesn't make you a better person or more fair in an objective sense, it just strengthens your feelings of empathy, which makes you a better person whenever the good and your feelings about it are by chance aligned.
Maybe we are living in the world of "Brave New World" where there will soon be "Soma" pills of different colors depending on how we feel and how we want to feel.
The big question is ethics. How far do we go to understand, engineer, and change the very nature of what makes us human? Changing the very negative emotions for the future generation would change the world of great art like the next Poe, Van Gogh, Plath, and more.
This changes the very nature of what makes us unique. If everyone is happy, nobody is happy, right?
Insert yet another HN thread of people who happily support the covid vaccine because doctors say to get it, but yet in this thread those same people recommend a bunch of alternatives to what someone's doctor suggested/recommended.
Medication has absolutely saved my life, and made my life and those around me significantly better. I'm triple vaxxed. Doctors recommended both. YMMV.
not at all trying to contradict you, but I think the discrepancy may be due to people's trust in virology vs psychiatry. Psychiatry has a bad reputation (we were giving people lobotomies not that long ago) and even today, the literature often fails to be as scientifically rigorous as other fields, in my opinion.
I get what you're saying, but that's a sloppy equivalency.
The evidence in favor of the mRNA-based COVID vaccines is overwhelmingly positive in terms of efficacy and lack of side effects. (Yes, they exist, but they are extremely rare) And neglecting to vaccinate one's self has serious risks for those around you, particularly at-risk folks. There aren't real alternatives, besides physically separating one's self from all human contact.
Psychiatric medicines are way, way, way more of a mixed bag. The side effects can be massive. The process of finding the correct one is very trial-and-error. For many people there are alternatives.
Please don't misunderstand: I know many who have massively benefitted from these meds. They can be positively transforming and lifesaving. I'm just questioning the value of comparing these two things.
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?
[+] [-] o10449366|4 years ago|reply
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. And feeling apathy is an incredibly scary thing because I also no longer derived any joy from my hobbies, from sex, from exercise, etc. I could no longer feel sad but I could no longer feel happy, either.
Even worse, I found myself engaging in behaviors I would never have engaged in otherwise, like compulsive lying. My moral code was compromised because I no longer felt the guilt and shame that normally inhibits unscrupulous behavior. I look back on that time now and I think about some of my actions and I feel nauseous.
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. However, for me, even though I benefited from them at various points in my life (especially as a teenager), as an adult now I'm much more likely to depend on coping strategies I've learned through therapy than medication when it comes to dealing with my mood.
[+] [-] tsol|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] selectodude|4 years ago|reply
The only reason I'm still alive is due to SSRIs, they have definitely taken away some of the highs of life but they also took away the incessant thoughts of suicide. They have side effects. They suck and the idea of being physically and mentally addicted to a mood stabilizer is a huge bummer. But I know that the people around me (and you) want us around, even if it's not 100 percent of who we really are. If your meds are working for you, messing around with them because you want to "hack" your brain isn't necessarily the best course of action. Be smart.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
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 the patients and situation. Sadly, too many people fixate on the potential negative side effects and avoid trialing treatments altogether.
For anyone suffering: It’s true that medications might not work out for you, but if they do address your condition and you’re one of the many people whose lives benefit greatly, then it would be tragic to avoid medications based on fear of potential negative outcomes.
[+] [-] andrei_says_|4 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/JJP-rkilz40
Within the first 10 minutes he speaks of the fact that rational thought as we see it simply does not exist. All our choices are based on the ability to distinguish a preference and that ability is based on emotion.
It would only make sense that medication impairing our emotions would also impair our choice making.
[+] [-] johnchristopher|4 years ago|reply
Hope I am not out of bond but I think this demonstrates why a moral code also has to be an intellectual thing and not just an instinct thing.
[+] [-] dave_sullivan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Findecanor|4 years ago|reply
In my opinion, SSRIs should only be used as a tool to help make the patient more receptive to therapy.
It should never ever be used a substitute for therapy. I too have noticed that without someone to help keeping your behaviour in check, some undesirable (but not necessarily dark) personality traits could take over. Not to mention that someone needs to be there to check on you during the first weeks of use when the drug actually causes a deeper depression before it starts mellowing your feelings.
BTW. My second SSRI use also left me with permanently dry eyes and nose: me needing eye drops and to avoid dusty, dry environments for the rest of my life.
[+] [-] _pyqs|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2989833/
[+] [-] rjh29|4 years ago|reply
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 well.
I agree that ultimately therapy/coping strategies are the right cure, medicine is a way to bootstrap otherwise incapable people into persuing exercise, therapy, social stuff etc. If you can achieve that without the help of meds, more power to you!
[+] [-] treeman79|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rossdavidh|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Hauser#Scientific_miscond...
This article was published in 2010, he had to resign his faculty position at Harvard in 2011, and was found guilty of scientific misconduct in 2012 by the government Office of Research Integrity.
[+] [-] radu_floricica|4 years ago|reply
Yeah, not the sexy kind of misconduct.
[+] [-] colechristensen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twofornone|4 years ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] astrange|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PeterWhittaker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpol|4 years ago|reply
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 (like me) this can be a tipping point towards aggressive behaviour.
[+] [-] nosianu|4 years ago|reply
"The medications that change who we are"
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200108-the-medications-...
> They’ve been linked to road rage, pathological gambling, and complicated acts of fraud. Some make us less neurotic, and others may even shape our social relationships. It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains. Why? And should there be warnings on packets?
> We’re all familiar with the mind-bending properties of psychedelic drugs – but it turns out ordinary medications can be just as potent. From paracetamol (known as acetaminophen in the US) to antihistamines, statins, asthma medications and antidepressants, there’s emerging evidence that they can make us impulsive, angry, or restless, diminish our empathy for strangers, and even manipulate fundamental aspects of our personalities, such as how neurotic we are.
> If these claims are true, the implications are profound. The list of potential culprits includes some of the most widely consumed drugs on the planet, meaning that even if the effects are small at an individual level, they could be shaping the personalities of millions of people.
[+] [-] e40|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ozzie_osman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] symlinkk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netizen-936824|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cblconfederate|4 years ago|reply
The question is if it's OK to adapt to the new landscape, or to consider it a crisis that needs to be solved.
[+] [-] neuro_image2|4 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/11u7iX4j1tA
The reality is, SSRIs and other pharmaceuticals that have been used to treat common psychiatric illnesses (anxiety/depression) have dismal outcomes and fail the vast majority of patients that they have been given to.
I'm optimistic that the next few decades will bring about better approaches to these massively underserved (and largely exploited and discarded) people.
[+] [-] willhinsa|4 years ago|reply
It feels like I’m feeling emotions for the first time in my life. I had completely lost hope for any kind of improvement in my symptoms, until this. I am so, so thankful I found this, and am so glad that it will (most likely) be becoming legal for use in treatment outside clinical trials in the very near future. So many lives will change for the better. For the first time in a long time, I’m excited to wake up and ring in each new day.
Cheers, Will
[+] [-] ajuc|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://books.google.pl/books?id=xhbFAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT264&lpg=P...
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] therealcamino|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jollybean|4 years ago|reply
"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.
[+] [-] daenz|4 years ago|reply
So essentially a subject with enhanced serotonin was more likely to be exploited?
>Enhancing serotonin made subjects more likely to judge harmful actions as forbidden, but only in cases where harms were emotionally salient.
What does "emotionally salient" here mean?
[+] [-] whatshisface|4 years ago|reply
It's saying that serotonin doesn't make you a better person or more fair in an objective sense, it just strengthens your feelings of empathy, which makes you a better person whenever the good and your feelings about it are by chance aligned.
[+] [-] thenerdhead|4 years ago|reply
The big question is ethics. How far do we go to understand, engineer, and change the very nature of what makes us human? Changing the very negative emotions for the future generation would change the world of great art like the next Poe, Van Gogh, Plath, and more.
This changes the very nature of what makes us unique. If everyone is happy, nobody is happy, right?
[+] [-] imbnwa|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidandgoliath|4 years ago|reply
Medication has absolutely saved my life, and made my life and those around me significantly better. I'm triple vaxxed. Doctors recommended both. YMMV.
[+] [-] bp0017|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnBooty|4 years ago|reply
The evidence in favor of the mRNA-based COVID vaccines is overwhelmingly positive in terms of efficacy and lack of side effects. (Yes, they exist, but they are extremely rare) And neglecting to vaccinate one's self has serious risks for those around you, particularly at-risk folks. There aren't real alternatives, besides physically separating one's self from all human contact.
Psychiatric medicines are way, way, way more of a mixed bag. The side effects can be massive. The process of finding the correct one is very trial-and-error. For many people there are alternatives.
Please don't misunderstand: I know many who have massively benefitted from these meds. They can be positively transforming and lifesaving. I'm just questioning the value of comparing these two things.
[+] [-] guerrilla|4 years ago|reply
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism
[+] [-] woopwoop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netizen-936824|4 years ago|reply
This is subjective. Pro social just means that its beneficial for a social relationship(s)
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nybsop|4 years ago|reply
Is this science?
[+] [-] Terry_Roll|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metadat|4 years ago|reply
But I'd like to be on the lookout so I can be my best self.
[+] [-] SV_BubbleTime|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cplusplusfellow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] captainoats|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vadiml|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] echopurity|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] grouphugs|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]