Antidepressants - Blog Posts

So, I don't even know if anyone will ever see this post and pay attention to it, but I am currently almost a week without my antidepressants and I have started to go down the rabbit hole of thinking I'll never be able to get top surgery or any kind of surgery... I am barely able to buy the testosterone without going to doctors appointment, I don't even know if doing that will unalive me but I rather die trying to be who I want than live miserable...

There's nothing better in the world than deciding to sleep in and waking up well rested only to find it's still early enough in the morning to take your meds without messing up the schedule

This painting of Golden Frieza I made a few weeks ago

Three days of no meds and sleepiness and full stomach. I wonder how it would be when I start taking my meds again from tomorrow.

Just dissociating after crying and spiralling for losing a bunch of hair, courtesy of my antidepressant and lack of self care. Enough living for today.

"Hug is an antidepressant"

—Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.

question for elder punks:

im a baby punk and I take meds (antidepressants and anxiety meds), is it acceptable to take these and get them from a pharmacy (only spot their dealt out bc prescription) and still be punk, or does that go against the anti-capitalism belief (which I do believe in plenty).

If it is against the core beliefs, any other place I can get them?

I did it! I start my antidepressant today but I’m so nervous/not excited for side effects lol

I am cautiously optimistic that things will go well and I will feel better.

So far the thought of taking them is all hypothetical. Like I can’t imagine how it would feel to feel anything but what I always have.

Wish me luck!

I’m seeing my doctor for an antidepressant tomorrow morning.

I’ve had depression since I was 10. Any period of time where I felt happy or safe was always temporary. With some therapy I made it past some of the hardest years of my life, and when I realized I was going to keep living, I decided I didn’t need treatment. I never asked for meds, and I didn’t look for therapy after I aged out of the program I was in.

I didn’t have friends or family that supported me, or even offered to talk. I understand now that none of them would have known what to say.

I wasn’t living. I thought that surviving was the point, and for a while it was. I survived some things that I don’t wish on anyone, but now I want to live.

I want to get up in the morning. I want to spend time going to coffee shops and farmers markets and travelling. I want to romanticize my life, not just drag myself through it.

I don’t know how tomorrow will go. I don’t know if I’ll have to try ten different meds before something works but I want to try.

I spent 30 years scraping by, hoping tomorrow comes and goes quickly.

I want to live again. 

I hate drinking meds! It makes me so sleepy...I mean... I just wanna read a book, not sleep!!.⁠·⁠´⁠¯⁠`⁠(⁠>⁠▂⁠<⁠)⁠´⁠¯⁠`⁠·⁠.

This Comedian Nails Why The Mental Illness + Creativity Connection is Ridiculous

How Do Antidepressants Work? (Video)

Your brain is a network of billions of neurones, all somehow connected to each other. At this very second, millions of impulses are being transmitted through these connections carrying information about what you can see and hear, as well as your emotional state. It’s an incredibly complex system but sometimes things go wrong. Despite extensive research, we are still not certain on the biology that underlies mental illnesses- including depression. However, we have come pretty far in developing effective treatments. 

(Image caption: Antidepressants move G proteins out of lipid rafts in the cell membrane. Credit: Molly Huttner)

Why do antidepressants take so long to work?

An episode of major depression can be crippling, impairing the ability to sleep, work, or eat. In severe cases, the mood disorder can lead to suicide. But the drugs available to treat depression, which can affect one in six Americans in their lifetime, can take weeks or even months to start working.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered one reason the drugs take so long to work, and their finding could help scientists develop faster-acting drugs in the future. The research was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Neuroscientist Mark Rasenick of the UIC College of Medicine and colleagues identified a previously unknown mechanism of action for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, the most commonly prescribed type of antidepressant. Long thought to work by preventing the reabsorption of serotonin back into nerve cells, SSRIs also accumulate in patches of the cell membrane called lipid rafts, Rasenick observed, and the buildup was associated with diminished levels of an important signal molecule in the rafts.

“It’s been a puzzle for quite a long time why SSRI antidepressants can take up to two months to start reducing symptoms, especially because we know that they bind to their targets within minutes,” said Rasenick, distinguished professor of physiology and biophysics and psychiatry at UIC. “We thought that maybe these drugs have an alternate binding site that is important in the action of the drugs to reduce depressive symptoms.”

Serotonin is thought to be in short supply in people with depression. SSRIs bind to serotonin transporters – structures embedded within nerve-cell membranes that allow serotonin to pass in and out of the nerve cells as they communicate with one another. SSRIs block the transporter from ferrying serotonin that has been released into the space between neurons – the synapse – back into the neurons, keeping more of the neurotransmitter available in the synapse, amplifying its effects and reducing symptoms of depression.

Rasenick long suspected that the delayed drug response involved certain signaling molecules in nerve-cell membranes called G proteins.

Previous research by him and colleagues showed that in people with depression, G proteins tended to congregate in lipid rafts, areas of the membrane rich in cholesterol. Stranded on the rafts, the G proteins lacked access to a molecule called cyclic AMP, which they need in order to function. The dampened signaling could be why people with depression are “numb” to their environment, Rasenick reasoned.

In the lab, Rasenick bathed rat glial cells, a type of brain cell, with different SSRIs and located the G proteins within the cell membrane. He found that they accumulated in the lipid rafts over time — and as they did so, G proteins in the rafts decreased.

“The process showed a time-lag consistent with other cellular actions of antidepressants,” Rasenick said. “It’s likely that this effect on the movement of G proteins out of the lipid rafts towards regions of the cell membrane where they are better able to function is the reason these antidepressants take so long to work.”

The finding, he said, suggests how these drugs could be improved.

“Determining the exact binding site could contribute to the design of novel antidepressants that speed the migration of G proteins out of the lipid rafts, so that the antidepressant effects might start to be felt sooner.”

Rasenick already knows a little about the lipid raft binding site. When he doused rat neurons with an SSRI called escitalopram and a molecule that was its mirror image, only the right-handed form bound to the lipid raft.

“This very minor change in the molecule prevents it from binding, so that helps narrow down some of the characteristics of the binding site,” Rasenick said.