Are licit drugs any better?
 

I think my depression is getting worse...
I'm seriously considering start taking licit prescription drugs instead of marijuana, are they any better?
Like this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivotril (people say it is miraculous)

I've never been to this world of licit drugs...

*pulls out chair for reprise

You've come to the right place. This board is filled with the fucked up types that are absolutely loaded on licit drugs.

I'm on this new drug called "lunchables"

....go see a doctor. Don't just start taking benzos on your own, it won't end well or at the very least they won't help you except in the very short term.

I've been struggling with myself over whether I should try therapy/psychiatry again recently. I have been using weed as a self-medicating mood balancer for years now and honestly it works really well and probably does less weird shit to my body than SRIs. However, it doesn't help me as much as it used to. I had some bad experiences with psychiatry and therapy in my teen years which makes it really hard for me to want to go back though, especially if I have to go on meds.

You know, back in the day I would have been all up in this thread but I think marijuana can be useful and I think licit drugs can be useful and all of them can also do terrible things to people. Bottom line, find a doctor you trust and tell them the truth and consider what they say to you.

My teenage experiences with the mental health field were also terrible.

if you're serious then discuss it with a psychiatrist. Benzodiazepenes, as far as I know, are not so much used to treat depression specifically but are used in conjunction with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to quell the anxiety which often results, if not already present, upon starting on an SSRI. I can't speak to the efficacy, ironically enough, of antidepressants being used to treat depression, but if you're severely depressed it's an avenue worth exploring.

Consider that there are tons of different drugs with different chemical structures which have all sorts of side effects (some positive, some negative) and to my knowledge, this plethora of side effects is due to interaction of the drug with a multitude of other kinds of receptors in the body, many of which are probably unknown.

It's insanely hard to get a drug FDA approved, so safety is not really a concern, but keep in mind that we're nowhere close to being able to draw any concrete mechanism about how drugs affect consciousness or mood or anything like that, it is in some ways a magical trial and error sort of adventure. The theory is that SSRI bind to the reuptake receptor in the synaptic cleft, preventing removal of serotonin and therefore increasing its concentration in that area, but how that relates to mood in any concrete way, we have no idea, just correlative evidence. So it might be hard to nail down whatever works for you specifically

actually I have a bit more advice, lemme get something

is any psychiatrist really going to be like, "you know what, you're probably better off just smoking weed," though? I've never talked to a doctor about taking illegal drugs, but it seems like no psychiatrist would endorse a narcotic over the shit he gets paid to doll out and has been indoctrinated to believe is better because it goes through him as a gatekeeper and has been approved by the feds and shit

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e1...pigenetics.jpg

All of the above factors can have physiological ramifications which affect your health, including depressive status. There's higher incidence of depression in colder months when there's less sunlight, for example, and increasingly the evidence is coming out that this isn't just people having shitty attitudes because it's dark all the time, rather there are biochemical implications for being exposed to less sunlight and colder temperatures.

So in addition to licit drugs which you specifically are interested in, I would look into diet, exercise, intake of other fun substances, and possibly consider a change of climate. All of these things likely affect the way the brain functions on a day to day basis

i've never understood the whole "using weed or alcohol to self medicate" because weed makes me paranoid and alcohol makes me drunk

Yeah there's probably a bias factor but at the same time I'm not sure how many studies there are on THC binding to various receptors or protein complexes and whatnot. Usually they're making associations between incidence of pot use and correlation to mental disorders like depression and anxiety, so again it's correlation and a lot of conjecture

and by paranoid i mean get anxiety attacks

and by drunk i mean feels like total shit not better

but weed makes you chill first though right?

the paranoia normally kicks in towards the ass-end for me

I mean, psychiatrists have obviously self selected themselves as people who believe in psychiatric medicines, as virtue of being medical doctors and specializing in psychiatric illness. But there are definitely psychiatrists who are not anti-weed, and I'd wager some would think that if it helps you in reality and does not harm you wrt work life and motivation, that there is nothing wrong with weed.

Both of my p-docs are psychedelic enthusiasts.

Weed makes me paranoid and then chill. At least it used to.

Back in the day it just made me happy and euphoric. But then it stopped working. That's the problem with self medication: It doesn't work forever.

Like you said, we know some immediate effects on synaptic activity (if you know what I mean, I don't know the right phrase) but not the cascade that follows. And without understanding that (at all), it is really hard to prove anything.

That's the thing, some people freak out on weed (like me) and some don't. There must be a biochemical reason based on the development of an individual's bio-machinery, but at that point we're talking about bridging the subjective and the objective :confused:

Alcohol does act on the GABA receptor, same as benzos... but it's structurally different and therefore has some similar effects, but some different ones...

Do you happen to know why exactly the cascade remains mysterious? I imagine with most brain studies it's hard if not impossible to adequately study live specimens

What I take from it is it does so many, many things and the ripples from each of those things becomes basically impossible to track.

Like, we know an SNRI like Cymbalta acts directly on serotonin and norepinephrine, and that that effects dopamine indirectly. But the second generation of that is almost theoretical at this point, because we haven't even gone past the GABA-serotonin-norepinephrine-dopamine paradigm of psychiatric drugs.

The thing is, these drugs work. The vast majority of people with severe depression or schizophrenia will find a drug that helps their symptoms. But the side effects can be terrible. So what incentive do companies (where the $$$$ is) have to even really understand WHY their shit works if people are going to buy it regardless? I mean, imagine if there was a prozac-like drug that had no bad side effects. It just helped depression. Not only would no other drug sell, but that would be the end of the circle of life - make a drug, hold on to the patent like the golden ticket it is, and make a new "better" one when the patent runs out.

Cymbalta just went off of patent and the generic is literally 5% of the price of the brand name. Why would drug companies want to fuck with their get rich quick scheme? Society - and science - suffers for their greed.

Ever tried gabapentin/neurontin? Didn't do jack shit for me w/r/t depression, but take enough of it and it sorta feels like MDMA. And it's pretty much impossible to take too much of. I would stay as still as possible and close my eyes for like two hours when peeking and it's some weird mind-gasm, very euphoric.

I never used to get paranoia with weed at all. I had to stop smoking for awhile a few years ago because of the so called "criminal justice system," and after that I got paranoia a bit. I've still never had a "trip" that was bad the whole time, but I am more likely to experience paranoia now than before. It's usually in the beginning and then I chill.

I have a good friend who used to smoke 2-3 times a day and was totally fine, then one day he started getting crippling paranoia freak outs every time he smoked, as in had to go lie down, could not do anything. weird how drugs work

weed really doesn't do alot for me anymore. i think it just affects your brain differently after so long

i'll smoke it if i'm about to watch a movie or play a game to make the experience a little cooler. but otherwise i really don't like smoking it on any other occasion like at a party or whatever

the cascade

nbome < acid

ILP are you a regular oboard poster?

fwiw my psychiatrist knows about my persistent weed consumption and didn't say anything about stopping it now that i'm on wellbutrin and lamictal for my bipolar disorder. your mileage may vary.

also there are a ton of different chemicals that contribute to your high, not just THC. this, i imagine, is part of why synthetic cannabinoids don't work for cancer patients quite like the real thing. just another reason why theraputic uses need to be explored without the fear of criminalizing sick people looking for treatment.

for example, here's an NPR story i heard the other day: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014...child-seizures

it details the experience of a girl with severe epilepsy who found relief in a strain of cannabis that has very low potency in terms of THC, but is very potent in terms of CBD, which is what is believed to be drastically improving her quality of life. i think this story also highlights the problems inherent in criminalizing a specific species of plant which has so many varieties exhibiting so many different chemical properties.

i mean, i do want to get high, but it's really shitty that people are shut out from having access to a plant that grows by itself which would produce so much medicine in such ridiculous abundance at a cost that is negligible. i hypothesize that the inconsistencies in y'alls experiences not only has to do with verying body chemistry but also not knowing what the hell you're smoking. the most information that you could possibly get out of your drug dealer is "indica or sativa?". It's so much more complex than that.

What was I talking about again

jesus fucking christ this goddamn board.

also there are a ton of different chemicals that contribute to your high, not just THC. this, i imagine, is part of why synthetic cannabinoids don't work for cancer patients quite like the real thing. just another reason why theraputic uses need to be explored without the fear of criminalizing sick people looking for treatment.

for example, here's an NPR story i heard the other day: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014...child-seizures

it details the experience of a girl with severe epilepsy who found relief in a strain of cannabis that has very low potency in terms of THC, but is very potent in terms of CBD, which is what is believed to be drastically improving her quality of life. i think this story also highlights the problems inherent in criminalizing a specific species of plant which has so many varieties exhibiting so many different chemical properties.

i mean, i do want to get high, but it's really shitty that people are shut out from having access to a plant that grows by itself which would produce so much medicine in such ridiculous abundance at a cost that is negligible. i hypothesize that the inconsistencies in y'alls experiences not only has to do with verying body chemistry but also not knowing what the hell you're smoking. the most information that you could possibly get out of your drug dealer is "indica or sativa?". It's so much more complex than that.

What was I talking about again

I would also like to add that new studies suggest that bipolar disorders are more physiologically linked to epilepsy than other mood disorders. like there are manic episodes, which are what the name would imply, and there are mixed episodes in which long periods of depression are peppered with what looks like a manic episode (explosive outbursts of rage, severe irritability, insomnia). research psychologists believe these are are just long manic episodes that express themselves in a way that looks like depression. this is hy i'm being prescribed Lamictal which is an anticonvulsant, and I have to say it as worked out really well for me so far.

so if that little girl finds that her seizures are improved by smoking a little bit of a secific kind of weed, I can see why people with mood disorders find relief themselves.

i mean goddamn it can we just legalize it already.

Thanks everybody, I've read it all, and I guess the best thing to do right now is to see a doctor/therapist, I've never been to a psychiatry/psychologist before, I guess the time has finally arrived.

Marijuana usually works for me, but it is getting hard to find and my new roommate is not very happy with that, I don't want to upset him because he is being really nice to me with everything else.

Lamictal worked wonders for me in high school. Shouldn't have gotten off of it as soon as I did.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

I still take it, but I'm going to start weening off in a couple months. Going to bring it up next appointment in March. It seems like the safest one for me to try to get off of or at least get down to a small dose.

I live in WA so MJ *IS* a licit drug

Excellent point.

Also an excellent point. Plus, there are subtle differences between species. Idk how purple kush and Afghan haze or whatever the fuck fit into that, but there are at least two separate species of cannabis which means that by definition they have distinct genomes and therefore may express different psychoactive compounds.