DrugBuyers.Com Free Message Board: HOW IS HYDRO & DEPRESSION RELATED???

When you first discover opiates, you think you have found the holy grail. Here is a drug that makes you the person you always wanted to be and it feels great.

If you take it every day, that lasts for some time, few months.

Then you get to a point where you're not really getting the good feelings, you're just kind of apathetic and lazy and numb. It's not that great, but you are still wishing you could get that original feeling, so you keep using.

Then you get to a point whre you have no good feelings, and your only high is relief from withdrawal. At this point, the old feelings that bothered you in the first place come back little by little.

You always, throughout this whole process, have the option of waiting 8-12 hours between doses and you will get a mild high- but it's nothing like you used to get.

This has happened to millions of people throughout history using opium. You must give Ma Opium the respect she deserves, or she will beat you into submission.

Over the long-term, opiates make depression worse. They prevent you from dealing with the issues that made you depressed in the first place. You cannot heal while you are anesthetized to reality- how can you possibly address a painful issue from your past while you're high and love everybody?

What I've described above are the personal experiences of many, many, many people. Go to an NA meeting, you'll hear the same thing. Go to a messageboard and read the progression of someone's posts- you can see a clear, negative change.

There are some conflicting studies- some say that opiates are the answer if they are given in very controlled quantities. More recently, attention has been given to buprenorphine and tramadol as antidepressants. Tramadol is even used in Europe as an antidepressant, but understand tramadol is not your typical opiate- it also has effects on serotonin. And bupe is DEFINITELY not a typical opiate.

No other drug exists that can so quickly and so powerfully relieve so many mental issues. Nothing a therapist can say can do that- but over the long-term with the right therapist, you have a good shot at dealing with and fixing these issues. Don't try to understand therapy, just go there and talk about your feelings. If you've tried three therapists who didn't work, try a fourth and discuss why the other three didn't work. If words can hurt people, words can help people.

On a side note, drug abuse mimics depression. A patient with either disorder may have the same exact symptoms, aside from the drug-related behavior. This is a well-documented fact in the DSM/IV and many other mental health textbooks. If you weren't really depressed before drug abuse, you are in need of a reality check.

Not saying anyone here is a drug addict, and I'm not saying don't take your pain meds to avoid depression. But it can and does happen and has happened for thousands for years. Chronic pain- better to be relieved of pain than any opiate side effect. But if your chronic pain is such that it could be adequately controlled by means other than opiates, do yourself a favor and go that way.

We do not yet truly understand depression neurochemically. Yes, PET scans do show differences in serotonin levels in non-depressed patients. But what does that mean? IS using an SSRI the right way to fix it? Why don't all SSRI's work for everyone, then? There are many unanswered questions, the only thing that is certain is that depression is still- at least on the biochemical level- a mystery. More progress is made every day, but we are far from the magic pill.

-yawkaw