I don't get how people can become depressed, when we live in the century of Fentanyl, easy access to alcohol and amusement arcades.
You're viewing a single thread.
Alcohol is a depressant my man.
Neurologically speaking, so in a different context, yeah, but neurological depression also seems to lead to actual depression, the mood disorder, which also show up as neurological depression.
We really need better imaging tools to measure neurotransmitter activity, would make for several advancements I'd say
Abuse of any psychoactive drug on the regular leads to depression. It isn't just this concept of depressant or stimulant or even related in any way. Any stimhead can tell you all about the suicidal ideation inducing comedowns and inability to get anything done after stopping use.
Abuse of any psychoactive drug on the regular leads to depression.
That's a biased generalisation.
While abusers of psychedelics are rare, they're generally manic and psychotic moreso than depressed.
Yes, depression can be caused by any addiction and abusing stims can cause a lack of neurotransmitter due to exhausting the resources for the body to do so.
It's a bit different than using something that's a direct depressant though.
Depressant isn't linked to depression tho. Get that idea out of your head completely. Like seriously go read some neuro textbooks and stop getting your pharmacology info from tiktok. Depressants depress the CNS... depression is a mental illness.
Also I've abused psychs and known a few others that did and I wouldn't call any of our our activities/side effects manic or psychotic by any means. I know one person who had a family history of schizophrenia that had negative effects like that from their abuse. But just the one. I'd be interested in scholarly articles about the subject tho since I have biased data, and apparently, yours is not, at least from what one would construe from your comment.
Isn't linked?
That's just wrong. Correlation is a link. The long term high dose use of any CNS depressant correlates with actual depression (the psychological issue [I added the brackets because you seemed to miss when I specified the difference earlier.])
Oh wow, an anecdotal story, well that just proves what you're saying is 100% correct.
Science couldn't possibly disagree
"Pure" psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin rarely cause any sort of abuse, really, but I've been on a drug abuse closed ward and the manic people were generally in there because of CNS stimulants of all sorts. Psychedelics are just less likely to yield any long-lasting harmful effects compared to say smoking crack or snorting meth.
So yeah, while a CNS depressant isn't the a thing that directly causes psychological depression as such, you can probably see how they're linked from the following analogy; imagine that I tie your legs together. That doesn't remove your ability to walk, per se, as long as you remove the restraints. But if no-one removes them for 50 years, do you think you'd walk as well as before?
In much the same way, yes, CNS depressants are linked to depression, and alcohol and benzos are the clearest examples.
This one is a CNS stimulant.
https://www.verywellmind.com/adderall-for-depression-4845418
So is this
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2021.808807/full
They're both linked to depression too. My point is that you need to get this idea of correlating the terms because of how they look similar out of your head. It's a result of drug abuse (addiction/overuse) and the consistent changes caused by that in brain chemistry, causing negative effects when they aren't affecting you. It's not a result of it being a depressant vs a stimulant that you're addicted to. A depressant, when not abused, relieves symptons of depression (and even when abused, often relieves them upon intake). Not going to get into how stimulant mania is likely caused mostly by lack of sleep, but you can look into it if interested.
And you're right that psychedelic abuse hasn't been linked to increased depression or anxiety... mostly because there's no research on it whatsoever. In fact, almost all of our studies on drug abuse and addictiveness are incredibly flawed in the first place. That doesn't make your anecdotal experience from a drug ward any more powerful tho, especially as it's going to self select for people with mania as they are more likely to both be committed by the state and by their family or friends, more likely to cause people to take notice and sit them down, etc.
Analogies are great when it's not medicine. Medicine is really fucking complicated tho. We can have a veritable chemical pathway and successful trials in animal testing and still end up with a result we shouldn't expect.
My point is not that CNS depressants don't cause depression from abuse, but that it's just a result of abusing drugs, not the fact that they're a depressant class drug.
Yes, abusing drugs of other classes can cause depression too.
Who ever argued it didn't?
A depressant, when not abused, relieves symptons of depression (and even when abused, often relieves them upon intake).
It also relieves those symptoms despite being abused.
on drug abuse and addictiveness are incredibly flawed in the first place. That doesn't make your anecdotal experience from a drug ward
I literally emphasised how anecdotal experiences aren't evidence enough, which is WHY I LINKED ACTUAL PEER REVIEWED DATA.
My point is not that CNS depressants don't cause depression from abuse, but that it's just a result of abusing drugs, not the fact that they're a depressant class drug.
And you're wrong. First off, research the difference between the terms "addiction" and "dependence", and then read the science I just linked in my previous reply.
You're willfully ignorant, pretending you understand a subject you're barely conversant in. (Why do people feel the need to do this online?)
I used the analogy, because it's literally how the depression causing part of downers caused psychological depression; by long-term CNS depression.
That's why alcoholism is so strongly linked to depression. Just like benzo abuse and opioid abuse, but unlike meth, speed and other stims, which tend to cause mania.
(I feel like I'm repeating myself here. Probably because I am, and you just keep ignoring the actual science, because it proves you wrong and you're not man enough to admit to having not understood something perfectly.)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9834328/
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.138.11.1508?download=true&journalCode=ajp
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ajp.2006.163.7.1149
