Posted by Quintal on January 12, 2007, at 22:30:59
In reply to Do people feel medications help or mask symptoms?, posted by leo33 on January 12, 2007, at 20:06:57
>I seem to have this question? Since with drug addiction they say its just masking the symptoms. Don't the psych drugs do the same?
I've come to the conclusion they do work largely by masking symptoms based everything I've read and experienced myself. An exception would be thyroid hormones being used to treat depression resulting from thyroid disease.
I felt wonderful when I was taking Klonopin and Parnate but it was an illusion as I found out after stopping them and reviewing my behaviour. They just seemed to blind me to the negative (and very real) side of life that I preferred not to see. SSRIs were like emotional anaesthetics to me, they certainly did simply mask my symptoms. My old psychiatric nurse would argue fervently that benzos only mask symptoms while antidepressants address the root cause of the problem (he was a disciple of Prof. Heather Ashton), but I found the opposite true. I had a full range of emotion on benzos but even then although I thought I was doing great, my life was really going down the pan but I couldn't see it until I had to quit them.
The main difference with drugs of abuse is that they produce rapid and powerful changes in consciousness that makes them attractive to casual users as well as depressives. I notice that some of the newer treatments are moving a step closer to the underlying mechanisms of some drugs of abuse, such as the triple reuptake inhibitors. I also suspect (and hope) they will be more effective antidepressants because of this. It is also likely that they will have a more severe withdrawal syndrome than many other currently available antidepressants.
It is suggested by Robert K. Siegel Ph.D. in his book "Intoxication: the universal drive for mind altering substances" that there will be a focus on producing safer, self-limiting versions of drugs of abuse in the future development of antidepressants and anxiolytics. I think it's an interesting idea and I hope he's right.
Q
poster:Quintal
thread:721825
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070107/msgs/721867.html