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5HTP for depression

phatass

phatass

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Still on the quest to find an AD that will work for me, i have ordered 30 , 100mg pills of 5HTP.

Do any of you use 5HTP as an anti-depressant? Do you combine it with another AD? Is it efficiant for severe depression? How long do you have to wait to feel any effects?

any thoughts and input welcome

thx
 
I've used it before, off and on. I've not been taking it lately, and I probably should start again. I would start by taking 100mg a night at bedtime. It might give you some weird dreams and/or help you sleep better.

What I noticed is that the effects build gradually over the course of a couple of weeks, but then you hit a plateau of sorts. I imagine that upping the dose would increase the plateau, but I won't go over 100mg because I don't want to cause any serotonergic problems (I take Desoxyn daily at 20mg, and it actually exerts a very strong effect on serotonin). You should notice the effects within a couple of days of starting, but it's just going to be that you wake up and everything is just a little better every day. The sun shines a little brighter, theres a little more of a bounce to your step, etc. It's not a miracle drug, but I think it definitely can be a useful tool in mild-ish depression. For severe depression, I couldn't say. One thing I noticed about it (although I can't say it was the 5-HTP for sure, as I had recently started my Klonopin and Temazepam Rx's) is that in the mornings, for about the first hour to two hours after I woke up, my emotions would be all screwy. Like, I would be walking to work and listening to my iPod, and a song would come on and it would make me incredibly sad, and the next song would come on and it would make me all pumped up and ready to take on the world. It was weird, so I stopped taking it.

That only lasted an hour or two every morning (from when I opened my eyes, so this includes showering and all that; it shouldn't affect work or school or anything it's just annoying), but the rest of the day I was in a good mood.
 
I use it in conjunction with the rhodiola rosea, passion flower, theanine, and I take omega-3 and vitamins too. (Important vitamins are the B group, B12 in particular which is best taken sublingually.) Together these have lifted my major depression. I take the RR in the morning, and 5-HTP (200 mg) in the evening.
 
^cool, i'm looking into natural "remedies" for depression, stress, anxiousness, insomnia, and all these problems i've been battling with, with benzo's and neuroleptics so far, and i'm wondering if they can actually compare, i know the herbal remedies are better in the long run, but will they really make a difference for someone who needed 3mg xanax and 4 mg lormetazepam and meprobromate and cyamemazine to get through the day....
 
phatty- from all the research ive done on 5htp, just eating a couple bananas a day and a couple of glasses of milk will work better than the 5htp capsulses can.

if you UTSE youll find a thread i made on 5htp vs l-tryptophan for anx/dep and basically what i said above was stated by several senior members.
 
I never found em good for sleep or anxiety... I say its all placebo :) Just my opion though..
 
I am also thinking about taking 5htp

However could I end up doing more damage to my mental health in the long run by going on 5htp.

I mean whats it like coming off? Surely what comes up must go down?

cheers
 
bighooter said:
I am also thinking about taking 5htp

However could I end up doing more damage to my mental health in the long run by going on 5htp.

I mean whats it like coming off? Surely what comes up must go down?

cheers
Click to expand...

Thers no "come-up" or comedown.. Just contains vitamins and L-tyrosine and other crap that you get from healthy food
 
Oh right fair enough I might buy some today then.

Does the same apply to St Johns Wart? Because I have a bottle of this and
it says on the back that you should consult a doctor before taking it.

Or is that just if your very unfit I take it like obese or something or really old?
 
I'm pretty sure that that is the stuff my Mum tried. We found it worked pretty well, I mean, it gave her a lot of motivation to get up and do things, which was half the problem most of the time. Only thing was, the effect didn't seem to last longer than a week or so.

I've been taken Ginko Biloba for around a year and I swear it is the best thing I have ever done. I wouldn't take anything else now.
 
I believe this thread is best suited for the Healthy Living forum.

-> Healthy Living

I've tried using 5-HTP for up to a few months at a time. I usually dose after doing mdxa and then keep taking it for a while even after I recover. It does seem to help me with depression to some extent, but it's hard to gauge exactly how much it helps..
 
I've been using 5HTP very regularly for the past few months, and honestly I have noticed a big difference in the happiness factor.
 
bighooter said:
Does the same apply to St Johns Wart? Because I have a bottle of this and
it says on the back that you should consult a doctor before taking it.
Click to expand...

That's because St. John's Wort is/acts like an MAOI, which are dangerous to take if you're unaware of possible interactions with other meds and certain foods.
 
I took 5-htp for a couple of years, and found that it took a bit of the edge off. I was still quite depressed, but it made the all-encompassing black hole depressive episodes rarer. Possibly placebo effect, although I did notice a tolerance developing over time.

It did however make my anxiety a bit worse, and either it made my lack of emotionality (flat affect?) worse, or I just noticed it more. Oh, and I was bitchier to others. And it's not cheap if you take it all the time.

Psychologist >> meds, herbal or otherwise IMO.
 
5-HTP is good for serotonin depletion, but in reality, this is rarely the underlying cause of one's depression... it's usually just the way your brain is wired, not the amount of serotonin in it. You can believe it's that simple but its not.

5-HTP never helped my depression but always helped with hangovers
 
Eat turkey. Seriously. Add it to your diet. It contains tryptophan (sp?) which is what 5-htp is metabolized into. It is the most natural way of getting the chemical you want. It does make a lot of people drowsy, so try eating turkey a lot for supper, maybe a sandwich with whatever other meal you may be eating. When you buy the pills, they are made completely syntheticaly.

And as always, as you probably know, excercise and hobbies cure depresssion naturally as anything out there.

I did use 5-HTP for depression and it didn't do much for me. It could be used as a supplement to the other options I threw out there, though. But it is likely the most harmful.
 
I am shpongled said:
5-HTP is good for serotonin depletion, but in reality, this is rarely the underlying cause of one's depression... it's usually just the way your brain is wired, not the amount of serotonin in it. You can believe it's that simple but its not.

5-HTP never helped my depression but always helped with hangovers
Click to expand...

Oh yeah I used to eat them things coming down from E and other substances. Worked like a charm.
 
I used to take 5htp for the awesome dreams it gave me, but stopped when I realised how flat it would make me (after only a couple of days, 100mg before bed). Exactly the same feeling as citalopram, but better, because it actually wears off by dinnertime. But it's really a horrible feeling. I think if your serotonin levels are fine, as most people's will be, then it may make you feel apathetic and dead. Good after MDMA and that's about it, at least that's my experience (and a few of my friends).
 
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