BS Subby.

See Atropine and Digitalis.

Molavian: Or a big fat placebo. It's all the same crap.

Heh. Farnsworth.

Procedural Texture: I beg to differ.
At least in the dosages commonly sold, SJW is a very mild antidepessant and woefully insufficinet for serious depression.
I've tried SJW, Zoloft and Celexa, and SJW is not remotely in the same class.

SJW is not for "real" depression. It's just for mild wobblies. I'm taking it right now partly for my PTSD and partly because I'm just flaky and my f*cking ex is a stalker.

Baron Von Supercock: Anyone that thinks Prozac and the likes are placebos should try this experiment - take a normal dose for a couple weeks, then stop cold turkey. You ever see the heroin scene from Trainspotting ... well not that bad, but still hard to get through.

Maybe for you. I've stopped taking prozac several times cold turkey. It worked like magic, had no side effects, and when I stopped, I didn't feel a thing. Except I became depressed again later and had to take it again...

Antidepressants saved my freaking life, I don't give a damn what anybody says about them.

rvagirl81: Aww, what I came here to say has already been said. One more vote for "drug interactions", then. That stuff works on the same pathways as a shiat-load of other drugs. Psychopharmacology can get pretty messy, and SJW isn't an easy one to work around.

Well I was late to this, but it actually has nothing to do with 'psychopharmacology" - it inhibits a liver enzyme that metabolizes many other drugs, changing their blood levels and active components.

Also...if you have depression...maybe this will help someone...

The worst thing for it - yet the first cure many try - is alcohol.

It is a huge help to talk to someone you trust (not your MD) and tell them everything you're going thru.

Eventually you may outgrow the brunt of the symptoms - only took me 30 years, so don't hold your breath.

Stress is an enemy for many with depression - if this is you simplify your life til you can't simplify any more. I can't be married or own a house or have a pet, and have to live well within my means, very simply. ymmv

the_be_sharps: If it were a placebo, why would they post warnings on the labels for people that are bipolar not to take the herb, because it can trigger mania, just the same as antidepressant therapy without lithium or other mood stabilizers?

To drive sales?

/heads down to the store for some st jons warts

Or you could try exercise. It works just as well and it's most significant side effect is sexiness.

Wanted for questioning.

I think there certainly can be a psychological effect of taking any medication. If you believe it is going to work, it adds to the biochemistry.

I think that drugs should be used sparingly, only in the most serious cases. The rest of it should be psychological, as well as attempts to get to the root of the problem. I think there is an encouragement to take drugs when therapy or discussing the problem would help just as much.

fedexrico: 18DeadMonkeys Radio: elvisaintdead: Rusty McSukit: I just don't even care either way.

whatever.

who cares? it's all pointless anyway.

not that it's going to change anything

I hate you dad!

Remember that anecdote is not the singular of data...

odinsposse: Or you could try exercise. It works just as well and it's most significant side effect is sexiness.

That doesn't work on real clinical depression either. I used to be an athlete....until I became so depressed I could barely get out of bed. But I still worked out!

/and smoked a lot of pot so I could go to work.

KrispyKritter: Years ago I made the mistake of mixing my daily depakote / effexor / risperdal cocktail with my vitamins. Within minutes of downing my meds and OTC's I knew i was in trouble and my wife to me to an ER.

I tried to get off Risperdal. After eight months of excruciating pain I started having uncontrollable crying spells in public places. I crawled back to the pill and have been fine for the last year. I also have an adverse reaction to multi vitamins. Have never been allergic to anything before.

/oh yes, the meds are worth it

1) SSRIs have been proven to be MUCH more effective than MAOI and Tricyclics. Plus MAOIs interact with every other freaking drug in the world. Go ahead and google Mono Amine oxidase inhibitors
Plus Tricyclics have up to a 45% rate of people quitting because of side effects.

2) SJW has been exposed as having a minimal effect, similar to a placebo.

3) Guys, this is freaking science here. There is not a lot to debate. There is empirical evidence to demonstrate these facts and no freaking know it all farker can debate it.

4) I have been on several of these for 2 freaking decades and even I dont know enough to comment on them personally, I can only tell you what the research says. My experience is nothing compared to the facts.

5) Screw SJW.

Arsenic is "all natural" -- should I embark on a course of treatments naow?

TheSwissNavy: Stress is an enemy for many with depression - if this is you simplify your life til you can't simplify any more. I can't be married or own a house or have a pet, and have to live well within my means, very simply. ymmv

I'm in the same boat. I'm unable to have relationships of any kind. I would highly recommend getting a dog however, if you have the means..

Heldenbrand: I think there certainly can be a psychological effect of taking any medication. If you believe it is going to work, it adds to the biochemistry.

I think that drugs should be used sparingly, only in the most serious cases. The rest of it should be psychological, as well as attempts to get to the root of the problem. I think there is an encouragement to take drugs when therapy or discussing the problem would help just as much.

That's because pills are cheaper than $$$$/session visits with a shrink.

In the pharmacy industry, I've seen countless studies (not meta-analyses like this one) and none of them have shown SJW to be anywhere near the effectiveness of modern SSRI's.

Also, there's no way you can control the exact dosage of active ingredient in SJW because its a naturally growing plant... dosage could vary from one pill to the next.

If you're going to put drugs in your body, use the good stuff. Hell, with insurance, most people don't pay more than $10 a month or so for generic SSRI's, so it's not even worth it.

cryinoutloud:
That doesn't work on real clinical depression either. I used to be an athlete....until I became so depressed I could barely get out of bed. But I still worked out!

/and smoked a lot of pot so I could go to work.

Same, however I was placed on Celexa years ago. I hated the way it may me feel because it felt like a mask. It seemed like I was forced to be in a good mood even though I knew I wasn't. It just numbs you. I don't think I got back to the "normal" way of feeling emotions until two years after I stopped taking it. I haven't taken anti-depressants since. I've refused to take any and have decided to address the issue through therapy. It's been one of the hardest things I've gone through, but it's been the most effective and although I might have a ridiculous stress level I can say that I am happy.

Although, I understand in some cases it is necessary. I just think they shouldn't be taken unless absolutely necessary.

Philibuster: If you like SJW as an antidepressant, I have some freaking sweet 102x caffeine dilution tincture you are just gonna love for your insomnia.

I promise, no side effects with it, SJW cant say that.

"May cause you to crap out food before you even eat it."

/Srsly, one sip of coffee and it's like 'voom!'

I used to suffer from depression until I found an amazing cure. I began to like it. Once depression became fun, it was no longer depression.

cthu1hu: I'm in the same boat. I'm unable to have relationships of any kind. I would highly recommend getting a dog however, if you have the means..

Cats help, too! Don't forget the cats!

Before they enact legislation to ban it, the gubmint will probably change the name to San Juan's Wort to make it sound scarier.

SuperCatBarf: One of the best treatments for depression is someone telling the patient how pathetic and stupid they are, then sticking around and and advising them how to get their shiat together and insisting they do so.

Another treatment involves the patient growing up and realizing that everyone else has been through the same crap and getting over it.

If you're chemically depressed, great. Take a step back and realize that you are, in fact, a superstar. Tons of people want to be you--take some time to assess your status, and realize that you're a rarity among humans. Rarity equals specialness--so yes, you're special, thus, people envy you.

There is some truth to this. I wasted many months of my life going through the mental health system post-deployment. It wasn't until 6-9 months later I realized I wasn't depressed or hung up on PTSD and besides some minor adjustment issues, I just realized I wasn't coming back to a glamorized rockstar life, got my shiat togethor and moved on. I kind of wished I didn't have all the family & friends support saying go "talk about it" etc that encourgaged me to think in those terms.

Animatronik: This is some kind of a meta-analysis, not a controlled clinical study.

It is a meta-analysis of controlled clinical studies. There is nothing inherently weak about well done meta-analyses. But here's what the press release DOESN'T tell you: First off, this analysis was published back in 2005, so it's hardly new (not that there's anything wrong with that). Second, here is the actual text from the Cochrane Library's record:

Authors' conclusions
Current evidence regarding hypericum extracts is inconsistent and confusing. In patients who meet criteria for major depression, several recent placebo-controlled trials suggest that the tested hypericum extracts have minimal beneficial effects while other trials suggest that hypericum and standard antidepressants have similar beneficial effects. As the preparations available on the market might vary considerably in their pharmaceutical quality, the results of this review apply only to the products tested in the included studies.

Plain language summary
Available evidence suggests that several specific extracts of St. John's wort may be effective for treating mild to moderate depression, although the data are not fully convincing.

Extracts of St. John's wort (botanical name Hypericum perforatum L.) are prescribed widely for the treatment of depression. They seem more effective than placebo and similarly effective as standard antidepressants for treating mild to moderate depressive symptoms. Beneficial effects for treating major depression appear minimal. Side effects are usually minor and uncommon. However, as extracts of St. John's wort can influence adverse effects of other drugs, patients should consult their physicians before using St. John's wort. The results of this review apply only to the preparations tested in trials; the content of marketed preparations might vary considerably from those tested in trials.

chu2dogg: fedexrico: 18DeadMonkeys Radio: elvisaintdead: Rusty McSukit: I just don't even care either way.

whatever.

who cares? it's all pointless anyway.

not that it's going to change anything

I hate you dad!

Meh, I just cant get worked up over the whole thing.

When I cold-turkeyed off of 10mg Paxil ( a low dose) I took SJW to help with the side effects. It took some of the edge off. It might have been a placebo effect, but I felt better.

I took St. John's Wort for a while. It works really, really well at turning your poop green.

worlddan: I used to suffer from depression until I found an amazing cure. I began to like it. Once depression became fun, it was no longer depression.

Yeah yeah...you don't suffer from insanity; you enjoy every minute of it.

/Of all the things you've lost you miss your mind the most

Baron Von Supercock: Anyone that thinks Prozac and the likes are placebos should try this experiment - take a normal dose for a couple weeks, then stop cold turkey. You ever see the heroin scene from Trainspotting ... well not that bad, but still hard to get through.

Been there, done that. Back when anti-depressants were the rage for people with A.D.D because of the bad rap all the amphetamine salts like Ritalin were getting and my BMI was under 18. Nothing happened on or after taking them(Yes, cold turkey). Welbutron was equally ineffective. Equally frigid poultry when I stopped.

/unmedicated
//still skinny as shiat.

I work at a pharmacy so I'm getting a kick out of these replies.

No seriously, I'm all for people self medicating, but don't go off suing and asking the professionals on what to do if you overdose, have a bad reaction, have a bad cross interaction, or god forbid sue someone or some company due to some negative results. Its your life, its your body, just don't biatch and complain or sue others because you screwed yourself, using your personal expert judgment.

I've been taking SJW for a few years to deal with mild depression with absolutely no side effects and it's worked fine for me. Maybe it's a placebo effect but it's doing the job.

On the other hand after reading this thread I'm freaking the hell out and wondering if I'm going to take the wrong allergy pill and kill myself becuase I take SJW. Or that pot's going to mess up my system or something. Which, admittedly, is becuase my problem with anxiety is bigger than my problem with depression was.

Yay! More American drug worship!

viperdriver: Yay! More American drug worship!

YAY WEED!

/screw SJW.

But no an hero's ITT

Depression is almost always a symptom of improper environment or upbringing. You can object to that by saying, "I grew up with every comfort and I'm still depressed," but that's exactly what I'm talking about. Our modern society is not the ideal environment for how we evolved. We evolved to live in small, closely-knit communities, to hunt and work for our food and shelter, and to have leisure time spent with real social and physical contact. Every convenience gives you a little blip of short-term utility and happiness, but in aggregate your environment is very poor, despite having everything you need to simply survive, like if you were to lock a dog in a hotel room all day. You will not find a depressed dog absent some kind of improper upbringing or neglectful environment, it's not a genetic problem. It's a symptom, not a cause, and so it is for human beings, and every other animal. Depression is your subconscious mind and body telling you, "This environment is wrong for you," so that you'll leave what makes you unhappy. It's an evolutionary stimulus. But you can't leave anymore, because there is no longer a frontier or any real way to opt out of society, so you're farked. It is a social contract that was signed for you long before you were born, and you can't opt out of it ever, except by killing yourself. So just take your meds and keep band-aiding the problem, because there's no way to correct this massive market failure anymore, absent a sweeping change of law and values in this country, which is very unlikely to happen in at least the next half century.

jbar19: 1) SSRIs have been proven to be MUCH more effective than MAOI and Tricyclics. Plus MAOIs interact with every other freaking drug in the world. Go ahead and google Mono Amine oxidase inhibitors
Plus Tricyclics have up to a 45% rate of people quitting because of side effects.

2) SJW has been exposed as having a minimal effect, similar to a placebo.

3) Guys, this is freaking science here. There is not a lot to debate. There is empirical evidence to demonstrate these facts and no freaking know it all farker can debate it.

4) I have been on several of these for 2 freaking decades and even I dont know enough to comment on them personally, I can only tell you what the research says. My experience is nothing compared to the facts.

5) Screw SJW.

WTF are you talking about? SSRIs aren't noticeably more effective than other ADs and ADs have shown to have questionable effects over placebo in many studies.

Procedural Texture: I beg to differ.
At least in the dosages commonly sold, SJW is a very mild antidepessant and woefully insufficinet for serious depression.
I've tried SJW, Zoloft and Celexa, and SJW is not remotely in the same class.
Go talk to your doctor if you're seriously depressed, kids. It's not a headache or a cold. Being depressed pretty much disqualifies you from being qualified to accurately assess and treat your own condition.

There is such a thing as the "reverse placebo effect", you know. Your belief that it's ineffectual simply because it's over-the-counter can have the effect of making it less potent than it otherwise would be. You're also arguing from an extremely limited sample size. In short, there is nothing remotely scientific about what you just wrote.

Fact is, ibuprofen has a greater anti-nociceptive effect than even morphine. It's thought that as much as 70% of the its analgesic effect of morphine is due to the placebo effect. People believe it's more potent simple because it's more tightly controlled and harder to obtain. "Ibuprofen is over-the-counter so it can really do much" is the thought and it's completely invalid and fallacious.

The same is true of allergy medications. No prescription allergy medication, despite being vastly more expensive, even compares to Benadryl in terms of efficacy.

That's not to say that over-the-counter medications are always more effective, either. The truth is that there is no real rhyme or reason behind much drug regulation. Well, that's not quite true; it almost always boils down to the acquisitiveness of the pharmaceutical companies, politicians, or both.

OscarTamerz: serotonin drugs and leave the herbs to dippy hippies.

Thanks for that marvelous gem of armchair psychopharmacology/neurology/psychiatry. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about; please leave the treatment of depression - and the treatment of all diseases for that matter - to qualified and competent medical professionals.

If you're one of those people who's actually drunk the D.A.R.E. program/DEA/CIA/Government/GOP/Pharmaceutical company/Lifetime channel kool-aid, who believes that we should take only those substances proffered and recommended by big pharma and the FDA because "there always safer and more effective than those darn evil life-destroying street drugs", I'm afraid I can't help you; you're too far gone and brainwashed. I'll make an honest effort but I'm afraid it will be entirely in vain:

The fact is that the serotonin hypothesis of depression is nearly dead. It's now thought that SSRIs (probably a misnomer) achieve their effects by somehow increasing levels of various neurohormones, such as allopregnanolone, which help the mind to heal the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory and emotion, and which is seen under mri to be shriveled in the brains of people with depression. All mental disorders, other than certain personality disorders, involve neurodegeneration - even depression. What happens is that protracted stress raises glucocorticoid levels which suppress the expression of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor which helps to preserve and grow new brain cells; normally when these glucocorticoids reach the hippocampus, the hippocampus sends a chemical signal to the pineal gland telling it to stop producing these glucocorticoids, but if the hippocampus becomes sufficiently damaged, it ceases to be able to send these signals, the result being that the person enters into a vicious cycle: glucocorticoids damage the hippocampus and cause him to be more depressed which increases stress levels which increase glucocorticoids levels which further damage the hippocampus etc...

The current belief is that the serotonergia of some SSRIs is far too weak at the doses they are taken to have a positive impact on mood. In fact, when they do have an effect, the effect is generally one of affective blunting, meaning that it simply reduces the amount of emotion the patient is able to experience rather than make the patient happier.

There is nothing more childish to me than the belief that herbs and street drugs are for dirty hippies or criminals or whatever else and that only scumbag, worthless human beings use them. Here's a fact for you, jackass: there is a very large percentage of depressed people for whom SSRIs have almost no effect and, yet, modern medicine has few answers for depressed people other than SSRIs. (There's also Noradrenergic and Specific Serotonergic Antidepressants; Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitors; Selective Serotonin Reuptake Enhancers; Sertonin and Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors; and Tricyclics. But they all deal with either Serotonin, Dopamine, or Noradrenaline (norepinephrine), which aren't necessarily the aetiological factors in all cases!) So perhaps you can imagine why someone who has tried the legal, orthodox route might become disillusioned and turn to street drugs as a last ditch attempt to bring some modicum of happiness back into their lives. (I'm guessing you don't have a problem with alcohol use, which almost always amounts to self-medication to alleviate boredom or depression. Just shows how utterly brainwashed you are.)

Anyways, I am one of those people for whom SSRIs are ineffectual garbage. The only substance that has ever been able to improve my mood and my interest in and satisfaction with life has been opiates. Your body produces endogenous opiates. These are: Endorphins (endogenous morphine), dynorphins, and enkephalins. These are essential to feelings of well-being and the ability to enjoy life. It stands to reason that a person could be deficient in these substances and yet you never see a doctor writing a prescription for hydrocodone to treat a person's depression and the DSM-IV recognizes no such disorder as "Endorphin Dysregulation/Deficiency Syndrome". For some reason it's thought to be valid to treat physical pain with opiates but not emotional pain, even though hydrocodone works just as well in both cases. It can be seen to be even more silly that this isn't done when you take into account that there actually exists a class of drugs that can not only prevent but also reverse tolerance to opiates. These are called: Cholecystokinin inhibitors, cholecystokinin probably being the substance that mediates tolerance to opiates. One such drug is proglumide.

Anyways, the point I'm am trying to get at here, rather clumsily I admit, is that the modern medicine ignores this possible treatment course for depression not because it doesn't have merit or because it has too many risks, but only because they have highly conservative idiotic attitudes like your own that get in the way of the carriage of their duty which is the maximization of their patients health and happiness. All drugs should simply be seen as a tool never to be outlawed or avoided in all cases, because there's always a rare soul out there who has a genuine need of it. It strikes me as a terribly hamfisted "solution" to make a drug illegal and unavailable for everyone simple because in a minority or majority of cases that drug is less than ideal or causes serious side-effects. (Personal freedom is another reason why they shouldn't be illegal.)

/Tell me something. If the one of - if not the only - danger of opiate use is tolerance (the only other which I can think of is depression of the central nervous system caused by excess consumption leading to death) and the tolerance factor can be removed with proglumide, why shouldn't a depressed person who's shown no response to SSRIs et al. receive it? I don't understand. Maybe you can tell all the incompetent, dogmatic, indoctrinated, farkwit doctors I've seen about this what idiots they are for me.

Gary Johnson will save us all

/ Really a good guy
// He's probably right

wmoonfox: Molavian: Or a big fat placebo. It's all the same crap.

You didn't read the article. You know how I know you didn't read the article?

You know how I know you fail at pop culture references?

mepiget: Procedural Texture: I beg to differ.
At least in the dosages commonly sold, SJW is a very mild antidepessant and woefully insufficinet for serious depression.
I've tried SJW, Zoloft and Celexa, and SJW is not remotely in the same class.
Go talk to your doctor if you're seriously depressed, kids. It's not a headache or a cold. Being depressed pretty much disqualifies you from being qualified to accurately assess and treat your own condition.

There is such a thing as the "reverse placebo effect", you know. Your belief that it's ineffectual simply because it's over-the-counter can have the effect of making it less potent than it otherwise would be. You're also arguing from an extremely limited sample size. In short, there is nothing remotely scientific about what you just wrote.

Fact is, ibuprofen has a greater anti-nociceptive effect than even morphine. It's thought that as much as 70% of the its analgesic effect of morphine is due to the placebo effect. People believe it's more potent simple because it's more tightly controlled and harder to obtain. "Ibuprofen is over-the-counter so it can really do much" is the thought and it's completely invalid and fallacious.

The same is true of allergy medications. No prescription allergy medication, despite being vastly more expensive, even compares to Benadryl in terms of efficacy.

That's not to say that over-the-counter medications are always more effective, either. The truth is that there is no real rhyme or reason behind much drug regulation. Well, that's not quite true; it almost always boils down to the acquisitiveness of the pharmaceutical companies, politicians, or both.

OscarTamerz: serotonin drugs and leave the herbs to dippy hippies.

Thanks for that marvelous gem of armchair psychopharmacology/neurology/psychiatry. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about; please leave the treatment of depression - and the treatment of all diseases for that matter - to qualified and competent medical professionals.

If you're one of those people who's actually drunk the D.A.R.E. program/DEA/CIA/Government/GOP/Pharmaceutical company/Lifetime channel kool-aid, who believes that we should take only those substances proffered and recommended by big pharma and the FDA because "there always safer and more effective than those darn evil life-destroying street drugs", I'm afraid I can't help you; you're too far gone and brainwashed. I'll make an honest effort but I'm afraid it will be entirely in vain:

The fact is that the serotonin hypothesis of depression is nearly dead. It's now thought that SSRIs (probably a misnomer) achieve their effects by somehow increasing levels of various neurohormones, such as allopregnanolone, which help the mind to heal the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory and emotion, and which is seen under mri to be shriveled in the brains of people with depression. All mental disorders, other than certain personality disorders, involve neurodegeneration - even depression. What happens is that protracted stress raises glucocorticoid levels which suppress the expression of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor which helps to preserve and grow new brain cells; normally when these glucocorticoids reach the hippocampus, the hippocampus sends a chemical signal to the pineal gland telling it to stop producing these glucocorticoids, but if the hippocampus becomes sufficiently damaged, it ceases to be able to send these signals, the result being that the person enters into a vicious cycle: glucocorticoids damage the hippocampus and cause him to be more depressed which increases stress levels which increase glucocorticoids levels which further damage the hippocampus etc...

The current belief is that the serotonergia of some SSRIs is far too weak at the doses they are taken to have a positive impact on mood. In fact, when they do have an effect, the effect is generally one of affective blunting, meaning that it simply reduces the amount of emotion the patient is able to experience rather than make the patient happier.

There is nothing more child ...

tl:dr
Meth makes me happy

Tacoby Bellisbury: good anti-depression medicine? Organic Trainwreck

Pass it. NAO!

/Depressive
//I *should* be getting a kick out of these replies...
///but I cried, instead.

My hippocampus is very small because I'm depressed all the time.

No, SJW is not effective for depression unless you have a very, very, very mild form. I took it and it calmed me down and made me sink deeper into depression. I was so mellow I was like, wtf, why fight it. I'll just lay in bed and give up.
Nortriptyline cured my depression/anxiety and stops my chronic neurological pain. I'm all for natural medicine when it works. With SJW it doesn't. So there. :P

I like pie.

Mija: chronic neurological pain

Uh, that's not depression....

If you're not depressed, you're not paying attention

SNRIs work for me. Unfortunately, I've crapped out on both Cymbalta (holy copay, batman!) and Effexor. Hoping that certain drugs in the EU will shortly make their way to the US.