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  • TDS Moderators: AlphaMethylPhenyl | paranoid android

Does self-medicating for Depression ever work out okay?

No it does not work. People who use and abuse drugs may think it does work or people will rationalize that it does at first; but overall in the long run it does not work and is a very dangerous thing to do.

Trying2ISO-If you or your friend are depressed and want to go on medications have them see a doctor or medical professional, and don't self medicate with any drugs.
 
I find that 1mg of suboxone helps with my depression a hell of a lot more than any of the other meds or drugs I've taken. I wish suboxone would be looked at as an anti-depressant for people like me who absolutely 0% chance of serotonin levels returning to anything close to normal without medication.
 
I thought it worked alright, at the time anyways. I've suffered from Major Depression since my early teens. When I first tried opiates (Percocet 7.5s, to be exact!) it was like I was a whole new person. I wasn't so much feeling high as I was feeling "normal" - it was like this mysterious chemical was made for me. This of course led to heroin addiction, loss of my job, fiance, and car. But you know what? I was (and am) genuinely happy and compassionate. It's a very love/hate relationship, that's for sure. I'm on Suboxone now, and as blue1995 says above, the Suboxone helps way more than other SSRI/SNRI meds ever did.
 
To add to the answers already above I would like to say that the only self-medication that I think would be good are the natural methods of dealing with depression such as exercise, meditation, yoga etc.
 
self medicating works amazing, why not try it?
waittttt....4 years down the road when your tolerance could kill an elephant, your depression and anxiety is 10 times worse than what you began at.
on top of that, youve endured emotional derail and a psychological meltdown.

short term it works great, but it cant last forever.

they say when you use drugs, emotionally, you remain at the same age as when you started abusing drugs, and only begin to catch up when you stop. that relates to depression immensely in my opinion.

on a side note, you have to look at the normal treatment..another drug.
they say drugs are bad, yet all problems are treated with them. theres a difference..but ive always pondered that.

take it for what its worth, and good luck fighting your demons
 
I don't think drugs of any kind are a long-term solution if there are core issues lingering behind the scenes, but I disagree that CBT and other methods are necessarily useful. Talk is cheap... I did talk therapy for years and although I felt better about certain issues that triggered my anxiety, it was life experience and psychedelics that helped me to break through. In the past year I've discovered that ultra low dose ketamine has brought me a lot of stability. It's not a magic substance, I still have to deal with my issues... but that brain-frying traumatic stress that happens whenever shit goes down? It repairs that for me.

Taking endlessly about problems is just dwelling. Therapists that make you revisit past traumas over and over are doing you a disservice. You can learn your way out of certain behaviors and coping patterns. You can do body talk and other physical therapies to train your body to react differently.

If CBT works for some people great, I'm not totally dissing it. I just find that modern psychologists and psychiatrists are paid friends.
 
Works for me... after taking all sorts of medication over many years and still not being even remotely okay I tapered off everything. Now every once in a while if I feel like I have an episode I'll self-medicate for a couple of weeks and that helps me get over the episode. Diagnosis is bipolar. When I was on medication I was severely depressed 90% of the time and batshit manic 10% of the time... now... I mostly only venture into the hypomanias, self-medicate that with stuff that helps bring me down & sleep. Touch wood, no depression since coming off meds.
 
i do think mild depression can be treated by self medicating with weed..i know 2-3 cases where these guys smoke pot daily and it seems to help their overall mood..they tried anti-depressants with not much success..however, if you are taking strong euphoriants like opiates or cocaine in an attempt to elf-medicate you WILL crash and burn eventually and then be in a much worse state than before..that guy that told you he was using cocaine, xanax, weed and ambien on a daily basis to combat depression, he probably hasnt been using that combo for long..its going to turn on him eventually..
 
i wonder for the sufferers of Dysthymia, what has helped them long term...?i know for a fact people do not choose to suffer from this as its one of the hardest to treat..
 
belfort said:
i do think mild depression can be treated by self medicating with weed..i know 2-3 cases where these guys smoke pot daily and it seems to help their overall mood..they tried anti-depressants with not much success..however, if you are taking strong euphoriants like opiates or cocaine in an attempt to elf-medicate you WILL crash and burn eventually and then be in a much worse state than before..that guy that told you he was using cocaine, xanax, weed and ambien on a daily basis to combat depression, he probably hasnt been using that combo for long..its going to turn on him eventually..
Click to expand...

How long have you been taking cannabis for depression? I've been using it for over 10 years and I get extremely suicidal and other HORRIBLE things happen to me when I don't have any, which has totally changed my views on the whole "weed is harmless" mindset I used to carry. I am a daily/hourly user and I definitely am a polydrug user, of what people probably consider the most hardcore (opiates+methamphetamines+benzodiazepines+an ounce every two days of medicinal MMJ and concentrates which is my main source of THC) compounds. But I'm not a daily user of methamphetamine and i know that the suicidal tendencies are NOT linked to my use of these other way more hardcore substances, I know it's the THC because it's happened to me when I was only using THC and went on vacation and had to go through multiple federal ports of entry (the kind of major/most airports where federal law doesn't recognize my Cannabis Card, like how San Francisco International airport is not cool with prop 215, but Oakland Metropolitan Airport couldn't care less) and on these trips I had to buy weed from a street dealer (something I have not done in YEARS) to stop the thoughts I had running around my head, and the voices and schizophrenic-like state that I was also experiencing kept telling me to hurt, to kill, to steal, to do all these things that I'm not into in my normal, medicated, state of mind. All of these symptoms, positive and negative (clinically, not recreationally) disappeared after the first bongload, and it was almost like as I blew out that cloud of smoke, I could see and feel the evil leave my body.

But hey I'm clinically insane in the membrane, been suffering with MDD w/ suicidal tendencies for years along with a dozen other psych diagnoses, the usual common ones but to debilitating levels/extents of anxiety/panic, insomnia, etc. (Chronic Treatment Resistant Insomnia and Panic Disorder, both should be written in size 72 font) I've tried every drug I can can think of (Except the RC bullshit, I don't practice that religion or any legal highs, after the 2c- compounds were banned I said PEACE to RCs).

Currently, I am trying my hardest to A) Cope with depression and B) not use ANY street drugs or anything that's not legally prescribed to me, or taking my prescribed medications in any way other than as directed. Obviously, the addict inside me gets depressed because I have to be "good" (or what they call, doing the right thing in spite of everything your mind and body tell you..) plus, I don't ever treat myself by scoring drugs or anything, C) I just feel as if anything were factual, I feel more trapped due to my dependency on benzodiazepines and the whole western-medication-is-the-first-and-only-way-to-fix-problems.

I feel brainwashed for having been put on benzos at such a young age and I don't even know how it's affected my development, or my extensive past of hardcore IV drug addiction, you name it I've done it, like I said, but honestly OP, the only thing that ever helped me with anything was (and I know this may sound lame but secretly to you, scary, but you MUST) confront. the. underlying. CONDITIONS! And get help doing it! you don't have to do it alone, that's what therapy, BL / TDS, friends and family etc are for.

That's all for now.
.~/TC OUT\~.
 
I self medicated for depression with methadone (opiates are euphoric and thus serve as a strong anti-depressant to me) and marijuana with great success for many years. The only downside is being a slave to a substance. Are you willing to give up your freedom to live comfortably?
 
Yes. But it will come crashing down eventually, whether it works for a few months, or a few decades, what goes up must come down

And once you do, you are a Slave to a substance, if you cannot get it one day, it will be so horribly painful you will remember it for the rest of your life.
 
The only way in which self medicating has ever worked out for anyone has been if they're young, do it for a few years, then as they get older and more mature their depression/anxiety lifts naturally. Of course in that case a person woulds till be sabotaging themselves because using drugs as a coping mechanism just causes a person to not develop other coping mechanisms of their own, so even if everything happened to work out in the end doing drugs won't help anything at all.

I can pretty much promise that the guy you're talking about is going to crash and burn eventually...particularly because with benzos that seems to already happen fairly regularly even under the best of circumstances.

Oh, and my personal take on the CBT/medication thing is that some people respond better to one, others to the other (which I've also read), and generally best to both in tandem. It would depend entirely on the person though.
 
tricomb said:
How long have you been taking cannabis for depression? I've been using it for over 10 years and I get extremely suicidal and other HORRIBLE things happen to me when I don't have any, which has totally changed my views on the whole "weed is harmless" mindset I used to carry. I am a daily/hourly user and I definitely am a polydrug user, of what people probably consider the most hardcore (opiates+methamphetamines+benzodiazepines+an ounce every two days of medicinal MMJ and concentrates which is my main source of THC) compounds. But I'm not a daily user of methamphetamine and i know that the suicidal tendencies are NOT linked to my use of these other way more hardcore substances, I know it's the THC because it's happened to me when I was only using THC and went on vacation and had to go through multiple federal ports of entry (the kind of major/most airports where federal law doesn't recognize my Cannabis Card, like how San Francisco International airport is not cool with prop 215, but Oakland Metropolitan Airport couldn't care less) and on these trips I had to buy weed from a street dealer (something I have not done in YEARS) to stop the thoughts I had running around my head, and the voices and schizophrenic-like state that I was also experiencing kept telling me to hurt, to kill, to steal, to do all these things that I'm not into in my normal, medicated, state of mind. All of these symptoms, positive and negative (clinically, not recreationally) disappeared after the first bongload, and it was almost like as I blew out that cloud of smoke, I could see and feel the evil leave my body.

But hey I'm clinically insane in the membrane, been suffering with MDD w/ suicidal tendencies for years along with a dozen other psych diagnoses, the usual common ones but to debilitating levels/extents of anxiety/panic, insomnia, etc. (Chronic Treatment Resistant Insomnia and Panic Disorder, both should be written in size 72 font) I've tried every drug I can can think of (Except the RC bullshit, I don't practice that religion or any legal highs, after the 2c- compounds were banned I said PEACE to RCs).

Currently, I am trying my hardest to A) Cope with depression and B) not use ANY street drugs or anything that's not legally prescribed to me, or taking my prescribed medications in any way other than as directed. Obviously, the addict inside me gets depressed because I have to be "good" (or what they call, doing the right thing in spite of everything your mind and body tell you..) plus, I don't ever treat myself by scoring drugs or anything, C) I just feel as if anything were factual, I feel more trapped due to my dependency on benzodiazepines and the whole western-medication-is-the-first-and-only-way-to-fix-problems.

I feel brainwashed for having been put on benzos at such a young age and I don't even know how it's affected my development, or my extensive past of hardcore IV drug addiction, you name it I've done it, like I said, but honestly OP, the only thing that ever helped me with anything was (and I know this may sound lame but secretly to you, scary, but you MUST) confront. the. underlying. CONDITIONS! And get help doing it! you don't have to do it alone, that's what therapy, BL / TDS, friends and family etc are for.

That's all for now.
.~/TC OUT\~.
Click to expand...

i havent smoked weed in 15 plus years..weed never did much for me besides just kind of relax me and make me tired..if i were to smoke weed daily it would probably make me more depressed but we not all built the same..i know a few potheads that seem to manage a pretty busy, happier lifestyle on it..

some people i have talked to have had good success from using small doses of phenibut daily..others go overboard and get into dosing 20 grams a day..its all an individual thing and thats why its such a hard thing to treat
 
I would say that it doesn't work, but my partner swears that a combination of mushrooms and marijuana saved his life. He smoked marijuana, which gave him a break from unrelenting misery, and then all of his symptoms of depression disappeared following his first encounter with magic mushrooms.
 
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