Comment by artagnon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by artagnon | Hacker News Reader

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Depression and anxiety are independent. It's possible to be depressed and anxious, depressed and non-anxious, anxious and manic, and manic with no anxiety.

I wouldn't recommend LSD to people with anxiety, as raises anxiety. I would _mildly_ recommend it to people who suffer with depression, but have a low level of anxiety. And yes: it does help break out of rumination cycles, and weaken old neural connections.

You make it sound like negative thoughts are the _cause_ of depression. This is not the case, although they are correlated: when you're depressed, you tend to have negative thoughts, which can drive you deeper into that very depression.

What I would recommend strongly to people with depression is a prescription anti-depressant (it can take a long time working with a good psychiatrist to find one). Possibly light smoking as well, if the person is otherwise healthy.

There is no silver bullet here. Certain people have certain imbalances in neural chemistry, and small doses of the right prescription drug can help correct that. For chronic symptoms, people have to be on the drug for a lifetime; for others, a few years.

"Chemical imbalance" is a dangeous over-simplication or at worst a total fabrication; pharmaceutical marketting copy. Whether SSRIs are helpful or not, I'm always surprised by the lack of awareness of side effects and the fact that the medical system is simply not equipt to help you in dealing with discontinuation. ACT therapy, for instance, has been immensely beneficial in reframing my own mental health issues (Anxiety being primary), and I get the added bonus of not having to treat the side effects of my side effects' side effects, which is kind of a relief...having witnessed the fallout of this drug or that when taken chronically for years and the little help that can be given at that point; chemical imbalance indeed.

Can you expand on the light smoking? Haven't heard that one before!

I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that it’s for the MAOIs in tobacco, which is cute and I thought about that occasionally when I was smoking. I would highly suggest that no one smoke, because if you’re getting a benefit from the MAOIs in cigarettes then you’d probably be a great candidate for any number of low-dose ssris and the rest of the pro/cons list tilts heavy con for smoking.

Not to mention there are much less unhealthy ways of consuming nicotine, such as gums and patches.

I just found snus, which purports to lack many of the health drawbacks from other forms of tobacco, as well as any heartburn issues that come with smoking or gum. Most of that is hearsay from old Swedish men, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

MAOIs are distinct from the nicotine, which is why smoking is more addictive than vaping; they're sort of a pleasure-catalyst in my understanding. In some ways its dissapointing there isn't a vaping product containing these.

I think there is; the cigarette companies came up with a stick of tobacco (looks a lot like a cigarette) that gets inserted into a vape that heats it up.

Yep, use the gum instead, 99% of the benefits with 2% of the downsides

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