anti-depressants vs. opiates

[Tyler Durden]

FAPP (for all practical purposes), opiates COULD be used as anti-depressants, but they're only going to work for so long. Someone who has PTSD or a neurological disorder might resort to using narcotics to dull out their emotional pain with a high enough dosage of a particular opiate, but in the long run, opiates, administered continuously over a period of time, decrease the amount of active opioid receptors in the brain, which, once the person has discontinued their use of opiates, they have less opioid receptors that are active, and thus, the body's natural analgesics cannot bind to an adequate amount of receptors anymore, thus causing physical pain during withdrawal.

 

Anti-depressants work in a different way, as already mentioned, but they too, can only work for so long before they reach a "peak effectiveness", and then they are no longer of benefit, unless the doctor ups the dosage of the drug, but still, at some point the drug will stop being effective and the patient returns to "baseline". This is why they are prescribed. They are designed to bring a patient's levels of serotonin, dopamine, and norephinephine up to normal levels, but oftentimes they bring them to skyrocketing levels, and thus the patient ends up more depressed than before, once they stop taking the drug.

 

Exercise and healthy eating habits, and hydration, are probably the best cure-all for depression. It will cause some soreness in the muscles and the body will naturally react to eliminate pain and elevate someone's mood. Of course, there are some people who are extremely depressed and they need something in addition to exercise.

 

Opiates almost always worsen depression, same with a lot of the old anti-depressants. They can also cause new neurological problems, such as anxiety, decreased libido, and decreased interest in previously fun activities, etc. This is why you will almost always see someone who has used opiates for a while for recreational purposes, start to shut out anything else in their life except for using opiates, because it keeps their mood elevated. If they were to go through withdrawal and never take opiates again, suddenly the world around them feels "dull" and they feel disconnected. Given enough time and detox, however, any opiate addict can return to a sense of "fulfillment" without drugs.

 

Also, to answer someone's skepticism regarding inhibition of the GABA sites, yes, opiates do, to a certain extent, inhibit these sites. Alcohol and benzodiazepines also inhibit these sites. Oftentimes, when an opiate addict cannot score their painkiller of choice, they will resort to taking a benzodiazepine such as diazepam or clonazepam, which inhibit GABA, and it lessens their withdrawal symptoms from the opiate, but really, all they're doing is substituting one drug for another.

[rogerxd45]

there has been some research into suboxone as an anti-depressant

 

its main use is to opiate addiction but it doesnt cause the "high" that methadone can. suboxone can cause a high if your not addicted to opiates but if taken every day there isnt any euphoria

 

here is a google search for the anti-depressant stuff with suboxone

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=suboxone+antidepressant&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS307US307&ie=UTF-8&aq=0&oq=suboxone+ant

 

suboxone is actually the brand name and is not a "true" opiate its real name is Buprenorphine

 

Buprenorphine is a semi-synthetic opiate with partial agonist actions at the mu opioid receptor and antagonist actions at other opioid receptors

[Tyler Durden]

I think they've tried low dosages of ketamine (the horse tranquilizer) as an anti-depressant as well. Sometimes it's used in analgesia, too. Apparently the anti-depressant effects last for weeks at a time after only one dose.

 

here it is:

 

http://www.ketamine.com/antidepressant.html

[jrobi47]

time to drag up an old post. I was goggling this topic and this post came up first and several searches later i found a nice paper on the subject so i thought i would link it here http://blog.ecu.edu/sites/opiates/files/2011/02/Opiates-as-Antidepressants.pdf enjoy the read