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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards

the big antidepressants scam

chasingabee

chasingabee

Bluelighter
Joined
Dec 31, 2012
Messages
165
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inside a jar
the other day my doctor offered to prescribe me antidepressants for my depression/anxiety but i said i wasnt sure and that i would think about it first. so when i got home, naturally i googled antidepressants and started reading up about it on wikipedia. (i know its not exactly the best place to look but seems to be my main source of knowledge these days).

so reading about the therapeutic efficacy, its says that placebos get 31% to 38% symptom reduction while antidepressants give 46% to 54%. thats not bad but i calculate that it means placebo effect counts for about 70% of the antidepresants effects. also, i read somewhere else that the antidepressants could have done better in the clinical trials because their side effects make people realise they are on the active drug and that further enhances the placebo effect.

then i started reading that industry sponsored drug trials commonly had 'ghost writers' who were statisticians who presumably manipulated the results of the trials to make it seems as if the drugs were effective.

then i read about the publication bias of clinical trials in which trials that showed that the drugs were not effective were less likely to be published and that the trials that showed positive results could be published more than once.

now all of this makes me pretty skeptical about the whole antidepressants thing. couldnt it all be a big multi billion dollar scam by the pharmaceutical companies to make money? i mean just think of all the people in the world taking these drugs and the money that can be made. is it not possible for there to be a lot of corruption? or do you think the drugs really work and that im making up some kind of conspiracy theory?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antidepressant#Controversy
 
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I suppose but the true pharmacological effect of selective serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors and MAOIs is still there...
 
They do work, they have their side effects.I've been on effexor xr 75mg/day for a little over a year now and it took about a year for me to feel any real effects, but it did work.You will probably have to try a few different meds before you find what works for you.

I was on paxil at first which didnt do much but make me blackout and turn into an asshole when i drank, i quit 40mg/day cold turkey.DONT EVER quit any of these drugs without talking to your doctor and getting weened of or you will go through 2 weeks or more of living hell.

Also theres certain recreational drugs you cant do, be sure to checkout this thread.
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/108959-Antidepressants-and-Recreational-Drugs-(long!)

Also i forgot to mention im on effexor for social anxiety but it goes hand in hand with depression.
 
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for people who are severely depressed they (SSRIs) have some effiicacy (proven) for the rest of us they do not do a god damn thing whether people believe it or not. If effexor took a year to work i bet it was just your life that changed that made you feel less depressed and had nothing to do with the effexor, this is why we do double blind studies and reproduce them, Those studies show these meds do not work at all, with the exception of extremely chronically depressed patients. It's a bullshit scam that has brought pharm companies massive profits so much so that they even bias the shit studies they do.

^Mike, i believe your Dr. has brain washed you, effexor doesnt do shit for anxiety in fact it most often makes it worse. I was the same way once, trusted my doc but go read the studies, not the ones conducted by the fda and the pharm companies themselves but unbiased studies if you want to see the truth.
 
if you read my post youd realize im on it for anxiety and not depression, and it has worked i see a dramatic difference.

One time i couldnt even talk without being nervous, couldnt even look at an attractive girl without tensing up and twitching like a tweaker.I would get hot and anxious standing in line at the store, i could go on and on but what it comes down to is that i could barely function socially and now im leaps and bounds from where i started out.

I agree they dont work for everyone but in my case i have seen results.
 
paxil doesn't do shit for me by itself. i'm basically only taking it because my psych has given me klonopin and ambien as well. and the vistaril, well....i have LOADS of that bullshit i haven't taken. i don't know. i probably don't have enough serotonin, isn't that a reason for OCD? and my childhood OCD was pretty classic OCD, the general anxiety didn't start until later. anyway, i'm pretty much on the fence. on one hand i feel like i'm poisoning myself daily (yes, i know, funny to most of you because i'm comfortable with the klonopin) and on the other hand i feel i'm being 'responsible' for taking it.
 
dude mike, you do know serotonin has nothing to do with anxiety right? Norepinephrine and other adenosines are the culprit. I'm sorry but the effects you feel are placebo. You take a pill, so you must feel better right?


I totally agree with chasingbee, antidepressants are a scam, and doctors reel in the cash because everyrine they prescribe antidepressants they get a bonus from the pharmacy companies. No joke, they just want their money. The companies pay the doctor a certain amount to advertise their product. Ever noticed when a doctor keeps pushing a drug on you and completely supports the drug? It's because they make money just by prescribing and when you fill the script

Antidepressants are a scam, they are as worthless as a saltine cracker .

Note:
While doctors making money from pharm.companies is very true, most of my.post is an opinion! Nothing more, nothing less. If antidepressants help you, good for you, but in my experiences they didn't do much at all. Mirtazapine helped slightly, but still didn't do much for me besides gain weight. The tricyclic and atypical anti depressants are more worthwhile than general ssris, but still they are mostly scams and I ended up worse than when I started them. Again, this is my.experience and opinion, I'm allowed to voice my opinion, kthnxbai
 
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laCster said:
Antidepressants are a scam, they are as worthless as a saltine cracker .
Click to expand...

This is very far from the truth. Some ADs, like mirtazapine, are very efficient at masking depression and its symptoms, while other classes are indeed more hit or miss. But the side effects are often too present for them to be significally improving the patient's life.
 
Yes I know effexor is an snri, which might make it cause more anxiety.

Debaser, you are right. Mirtazapune worked for me, I was referring to the general ssris like paxil and zoloft


For the info, I was just voicing my opinion, I was not inferring anything based on facts, I was just voicing what I felt
 
Eh was on lexepro, celexa and then zoloft...... none worked for me and they just made me more depressed as well as have weird dreams. I was on 200mg of zoloft at the end and they just wanted to raise it higher.... I stopped taking them... well first tried tapering and then said fuck it, stop completly taking it. I don't know if I will ever go back on an ssri... I can't even go on prozac because my sister had a bad reaction with it and attempted suicide on it so a psychiatrist I saw wanted to avoid giving it to me.
 
There are other ADs than SSRIs and SNRIs... Tricyclics come to mind... and a lot of other atypical drugs...
 
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I felt a true anti-depressant effect with a tricyclic, desipramine. It started to feel like there was a buffer between me and things that would normally bother me psychologically... mainly things in social situations. It definitely had a physical sensation of a cloudy aura. There was a slight glow to everything. There was a full absence of negativity. this was NOT a placebo. A doctor told me later that this is what an AD does when it works (and did so without having any knowledge of my experience). however, the effect happened early in my dosing, so it could have been what is known as a honeymoon period. I quit, because it interfered with adderall when i started back on it. dumb move...

It's certainly not as simple as ADs being "a scam" or "not a scam." They work, and they are also a scam. I would only resort to one if I literally could not get out of bed.
 
You can either try to treat your depression properly by taking antidepressants along with attending regular therapy sessions or you can choose not to treat your depression and possibly die from a suicide attempt because of it. Your choice. The antidepressants can certainly help with things that therapy simply cannot. If you are so depressed that you stop eating and cannot function because you can't get out of bed then how are you going to show up to therapy or keep a job? These are situations where medications can be extremely beneficial. Depression is a real, serious mental illness that has to be treated.

The medications are not evil, at least not the newer medications that would be used to treat you. It was the stuff back in the early days of psychiatric medications, in the 1950s and 1960s, that could cause terrible problems. The medications exist to help people live better, fuller lives. No one can make you take the medications, anyway, so if you want to stop taking them later on your psychiatrist or prescribing doctor has no choice but to safely taper you off of the medications when you want to stop taking them.
 
debaser said:
There are other ADs than SSRIs and SNRIs... Tricyclics come to mind... and a lot of other atypical drugs...
Click to expand...

I know, I'm just talking from experience and how I will never take an ssri again (most likely). Might try other antidepresants but then again I don't know.
 
Antidepressants are oftentomes prescribed to those who don't necessarily need them, and they may only work slightly more than placebo, but in my and others' experience they do work.

laCster said:
dude mike, you do know serotonin has nothing to do with anxiety right?

I'm allowed to voice my opinion, kthnxbai[/B]
Click to expand...

That first statement is not true according to current pharamcological thought. Thank you for your opinion. SSRIs have helped me a lot. I do think Remeron is superior, however.
 
One thing can be said with certainty. The pharmaceutical industry is big business, I doubt anyone here will dispute that. However, that doesn't automatically qualify it as a scam.

As brain chemistry differs in individuals no one medication can help every depressed person. Its trial and error, and also true that many people might not have the side effects outweighed by the benefit. For others, godsend is a better descriptor.

Even if your depression has lessened via placebo, your condition has still improved, no? It's only as much of a scam as you allow it to be, as the ultimate choice of how you medicate belongs to you.
 
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