If one of those perpetually happy people took an anti-depressant drug,
how would it affect them?
After doing some searching through the newsgroups that focus on depression, the general consensus seemed to be that anti-depressants would not have any effect on a healthy/happy person; except for the side-effects that come along with taking a specific drug.
From “Healthy Place: A Depression Community” (link to article):
However, I found an article from 1998 that says a certain anti-depressant did have an affect on healthy people:
From here: http://www.docguide.com/dg.nsf/PrintPrint/DE98EED6DA8FD870852565BB004F2E7C
I also remember reading an article in Discover magazine about a year ago that discussed what would happen if everyone was taking anti-depressants. The article suggested that there would be some change in the personalities of everyone (happy or otherwise) but I don’t recall what the changes would be. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t seem to be online. Maybe on my next trip to the library I’ll look it up.
I very much doubt the first quote. Antidepressants would have the same biochemical effect in a person who was not clinically depressed, whether it be serotonin reuptake inhibition or inhibiting monoamine oxidase or doing strange things at all sorts of different receptors (as tricyclic antidepressants do). Certainly, at the least the person would feel the side effects associated with the drug (nausea, diarrhea or constipation, weight gain or weight loss, headache, sexual dysfunction and so on, depending on the drug). Over time, they might well experience elevated mood as well, or perhaps notice that their emotions have become less intense.
A few antidepressants are regularly given to ‘happy people’. Bupropion (Wellbutrin) is also sold as Zyban, a smoking cessation aid (in different doses). The drugs are dopamine reuptake antagonists, and the idea is that having higher levels of dopamine in the synapses will both increase mood and decrease nicotine cravings. Amitriptyline (Elavil), a tricyclic antidepressant, has the potentially desirable effect of making patients extremely tired, and so it is often used as a sleep aid. Even the muscle relaxant cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril) is chemically related to the tricyclic antidepressants and is used for back pain.
I was on too high a dose of antidepressants once; maybe it would be like that. I was fairly happy, but also a bit apathetic towards mild things that used to make me upset (not big things, just little things, e.g. failing a math test). I had very little sexual desire. My attention span was short to the point where I couldn’t stay focused for a one-hour lecture.
I’ve since had the dosage reduced, and I feel quite a bit more normal now.
Kills their sex drive dead as a doornail, just like it does to depressed people.
Let’s not make blanket statements, o.k.? There are so many antidepressants, and so many different cases. That side effect is by no means universal. In some cases, it could have quite a different effect; some people with depression are completely uninterested in everything, including sex. In those cases, it could help them to become more functional, not less.
IANAD, YMMV.
What Roches said.
Individual response to antidepressants (as with other psych drugs) is highly variable. Just as an antidepressant doesn’t work on one psychiatrically-diagnosed person the same way it works on another – what makes Susan feel like a whole person again and able to go to work and get things done makes Ann feel like a zombie with a head full of cotton wadding, and makes Mike morose and suicidal. (Yes, antidepressants often list a ‘paradoxical’ reaction as a side-effect)
The response of people without psychiatric diagnoses is going to vary widely as well.
Loosely speaking though, it would generally be untrue that taking antidepressants would have either of the following effects:
• nothing at all
• making them ecstatically happy and supremely well-adjusted
Some people assume/claim the first on the spurious basis that depression is like an insufficiency disease (it isn’t) and that if you aren’t insufficient, providing a supplement of the substance (which psych meds are not, btw) would not have any effect.
Some people assume/hope for the second on the erroneous surmise that antidepressants take you from wherever you are to a spot uphill from there, so if you were depressed you’ll be more cheerful and able to do things, and similarly that if you were OK you’ll be boosted to a wonderful state of supreme well-being and lively initiative.
I makes confetti shoot out of their ears!
I swear!
I had to use antidepressants a few years ago. I forget which one, but the side effects label included, among other things, “depression.”
In my experience with various anti-depressants, they knock off the mountain tops and fill in the valleys of your day to day life so that everything is kind of even: no great highs (joy) but no great lows (depression) either. This is good when you’re depressed because you tend not to get depressed enough to do harmful things to yourself. It’s bad because you don’t enjoy life enough to have a reason to live (happiness).
Depression sux.
Are there any diseases linkes to things like an overabundance of serotonin or an inhibition of monoamine oxidase or the other kinds of things various antidepressant drugs induce?
It sounds like a fairly simple thing, to search the Merck Manual (or the DSMs) for disorders linked to the kinds of things the drugs induce, and use the symptoms of those diseases as a first approximation for the effects of the drugs in the nominally functional.
About a year ago, my back was injured in a car accident. I’ve had pain ever since.
About a month ago, my doctor decided to put me on Wellbutrin. She said that it has the affect of raising pain-tolerance. I pointed out that I’m a very happy person, and her reply was that it shouldn’t affect me in any way.
Well, it has. About two weeks after I started taking it, I started feeling a general sense of anxiety. I was irritable-- very unusual for me. I’ve had more nightmares in the last month than I can remember having in my entire life span.
I’ve been told to wait a full six weeks, because sometimes the side-effects kick in before the benefits do. Perhaps once the benefits kick in, they will mute the side-effects. I hope so. I don’t like feeling this way.
Roches sounds like he certainly knows his stuff (Pharm, D?), so I’ll submit this theory to the discussion…again, I’m no drug expert but here goes…
MOST anti-depressants are considered “serotonin reuptake inhibitors”… basically to over simplify the hell out of everything…
Serotonin is what your brain kicks into your bloodstream when you’re “happy” or get a “high” from something (either a runners high, satisfaction in achievement high, or drug induced - extacy, pot, whatever…)
These drugs work by preventing the “reuptake” or re-absorption of the “high” chemical, Serotonin.
SO…depressed people get “happy” when they take Ritalin because they don’t reabsorb the happy chemical quite as fast… allowing them to appear “normal” - their chemical makeup absorbs more serotonin that your “average happy person” and the anti depressant slows that process down.
Happy people would just stay “happy” I suppose… or get even more “high” or ecstatic, since they re-absorb serotonin at a lower rate than “depressed” people…
Besides the normal nasea, sexual side effects…etc the taking of an anti-depressant by a “normal” person would likely lead to their moods “evening out”.
Since the release and reabsorbtion of Serotonin is regulated by the drug instead of by their normal body processes, they wouldn’t have extreme happiness or depression… I expect they’d be kinda monotone and generally unreactive and indifferent to startling news…
Roches - more or less correct for a lay person’s explanation?
D.