Selective Serotonin Rewait what

[st_rev]

The SSRIs--selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors--are a class of drugs commonly used as antidepressants. They 'work' by keeping neurons from absorbing serotonin from the synaptic cleft back into the cell, increasing the amount of available serotonin. This is good because serotonin is made of tiny pixies who want to be free, so keeping it out of

Comments

[luagha]

Also related to use of Prozac for obsessive-compulsive disorders.

As I have had it explained to me:

A woman has to wash her hands three times before she takes the stairs. She is unable to walk on stairs if she doesn't - she will collapse and would have to be dragged. Her brain is in a rut to speak - a local minima from which she can't climb out.

Take prozac for three months. Now all peaks and valleys are lessened.

Return to the stairs. With someone standing there counseling her and saying exciting things like, 'You don't need to wash your hands, you can do it, stop walking to the bathroom' she can, as a supreme effort of will, walk up the stairs. Where before it was impossible.

After successfully walking up and down the stairs with help three or four times, the compulsion is gone. The rut/local minima is no more.

Then the patient can stop taking prozac.

[luagha]

is this from a study somewhere or anecdotal experience or what?

[luagha]

It is how it was described to me on a radio show; the process of prozac therapy for compulsions.

[mizkit]

I really like the idea that essentially we're all CRT TVs.

[twoeleven]

Nobody actually knows how the hell these things work, or...

It appears so:Fluoxetine (Prozac) was the first major breakthrough for the treatment of depression since the introduction of tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) nearly 30 years earlier. It was the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration, offering superior efficacy and reduced side effects relative to TCAs and MAOIs. Though a debate remains regarding the exact mechanism by which the clinical efficacy of fluoxetine is manifested, the importance of fluoxetine and related SSRIs to the field is unquestionable. [...]
there are some classes of drugs for which not knowing the mode of action (MoA) is pretty typical; psychopharm is one of them. i'm too lazy to look up the paper, but i read an article within the past year that claimed that the SSRI activity of the class is a secondary MoA, and their main effect is due to another interaction with the CNS

[luagha]

We are already.

(This was a sly reference to the prevalence of school shootings et al; but actually if measured over time school disasters have been fairly steady since they were first really measured with some school bombings in the 1930s. It's a naturally statistically bursty phenomenon because it's exciting and rare and it bleeds and it leads, but measured in decades the numbers haven't changed. It's just the media coverage that has amplified the attention.)

[lhn]

Do you have a cite for that? Not that I disbelieve it-- in general, my default assumption of any "X is worse than ever before!" story is that X is either roughly steady, has gotten substantially better to the point that exceptions are major news, or at worst is cyclical. (Rebuttable, of course-- it's just the way to bet.) But in the case of school attacks I'd be interested in having something to point to.

[luagha]

It's googleable.

[anonymous]

A couple suggestive data points in favor of the "punch it and it'll get better" theory:

all-nighters are sometimes recommended as a treatment for depression
one-time use of MDMA can end a depressive episode
electroshock therapy, when it works, *really* fucking works

Actually, I wonder what would happen if you tried tryptophan and 5-HTP in the evening, *then* stayed up all night (without the aid of stimulants)? and then had sex?

That's the closest thing I can think of to provoking a release of serotonin without any drugs you can't buy at a drugstore.

[st_rev]

Sleep deprivation definitely works as a short-duration antidepressant, but it's not sustainable, and the side effects are severe.

I've had more success with choline and dopamine precursors, generally.