Hey, Ninae,
There are several medications indicated for depression which I believe are useful. It can be hard to think that there's anything effective out there when opiates or benzodiazepines make you feel alright so fast. I personally find just about every symptom of my illness to be fixed by potent stimulants, so people react differently. Anyways, to start, I love science, so...
venlafaxine and mirtazapine have downstream action on the opiate receptors which reliably contributes to their antidepressant effect; those two are about the closest to an opioid that you'll be prescribed for depression. Furthermore, as you can see, trazodone, tricyclic compounds, some SSRIs, abilify, and other agents used as antidepressants can have nociceptive effects/increase levels of endogenous opiates too.
http://www.biochemia-medica.com/con...dorphin-concentrations-trazodone-treated-rats
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3178949/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278584608002376
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/cpd/2009/00000015/00000014/art00005
http://www.akademiai.com/content/74521366806r7x7n/
Some reading on depression which might help you understand the process of recovery a bit more:
https://publications.ki.se/xmlui/handle/10616/38952
Depression is about physically healing the brain through habits, which habits medications allow you to develop. A common misconception is that one should be able to take a pill and feel not depressed.
A lot of people think depression is just a deficiency in neurotransmitters too. Its not so simple, and to be honest no one totally understands how antidepressants; scientific knowledge of the brain is far behind that of any other some. For some people I don't doubt depression is caused by a general deficiency in serotonin, but it can also be caused by too much of something in the brain. That's why anti-psychotics are sometimes used to augment anti-depressants. Maybe your depression is a combination of too much of something and too little of something, or a deficiency in several things; there are many ways to confront the issue, drugs increasing levels of neurotransmitters at specific sub-types/sub-units, drugs increasing levels of some neurotransmitters while decreasing levels of others, drugs working by transminase-inhibition/agonism/monoamine oxidase inhibition/antagonism/reverse-transport. The list goes on.
Though we don't know much about the brain, it can be ascertained that different drugs affect people differently. For instance, some people think buprenorphine is a god-send for their depression, while others find it impairs their ability to experience pleasure. Schizophrenics usually find stimulants dysphoric; depressed/bi-polar people find them overall more euphoric than the general population.
If you have bi-polar disorder I would recommend looking into lamictal; its supposed to be really good for the depression side of the disease. Lithium is also a good option.
sup adam,
The tolerance to the therapeutic indication of various benzodiazepines, as with all psychotropic drugs, only builds to a limited extent if used as directed. Your implication seems spot-on: benzos aren't indicated for depression; they're more likely to cause it than help it, save clonazepam and alprazolam, which have demonstrated antidepressant efficacy in clinical trials.
They are an easy way out, like opiates for depression. That doesn't mean they don't work long-term or that they shouldn't be used based on an ethical standpoint, but other classes of drugs probably should be tested first because abuse of prescribed drugs is a big risk in people with mental illnesses, which can be just as bad or worse than abuse of illegally-manufactured drugs.
Also, I don't usually express strong personal opinions on this site, revert to ad hominem arguments, or otherwise bring emotions into the mix without being sufficiently prompted, but this may be an exception, and I don't think my stance is necessarily radical, or at least its generally agreed upon by doctors. So here's me letting loose:
*To all who it applies*: If you are prescribed a controlled substance for a psychiatric disorder, and you abuse it, you're <
not being too smart> and don't deserve the drug. Plain and simple. And you know it too. Its like an evangelical pissing on a statue of jesus.