Posted by tygereyes on August 20, 2005, at 10:41:41
In reply to Re: Life not the same after SSRIs? » tygereyes, posted by AMD on August 20, 2005, at 9:53:08
I don't agree that SSRIs are "street drugs" nor do I think that they are "addictive" - I've been addicted to real drugs and find it laughable when people compare the two. SSRIs do not cause the "drug-seeking behavior" that is characteristic of drug addiction, nor do they produce an immediate high (unless one is bipolar). Simply because they cause a withdrawal effect (which I personally don't think is that bad, but that's probably just because I've gone through heroin and Xanax withdrawal more times than I can count).
HOWEVER, SSRIs do seem to have this unique property to make people feel "better than okay." For most of us, who have struggled with depression and other psychiatric issues for a very long time, this is miraculous and this is something that we do not want to give up. The interesting thing is that I have seen this even in my friends who take SSRIs and do not have clinical depression. The drugs still have an effect on them, even though nothing is technically "wrong."
I am fascinated by this, because according to psychopharmacology, the drugs should have NO effect unless they're "correcting" some kind of "imbalance" (to use a crude term).
I have taken tricyclics, anti-convulsants, and neuroleptics - in fact, I'm on a drug from each class right now, actually - and yet I've never seen this with any other class of drugs, only SSRIs.
It makes me sad to know that this trial of Zoloft will probably not make me feel the same way that it did in the past. Maybe SSRIs are like anti-biotics in that regard; maybe we develop tolerance to them and they're simply going to need to create more and more similar drugs to "trick" our bodies into responding the same way.
poster:tygereyes
thread:543953
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050816/msgs/544239.html