Posted by fachad on February 4, 2003, at 8:10:11
In reply to Re: ADHEDONIA QUESTIONS ?? please read » fachad, posted by LAURA777 on February 4, 2003, at 6:12:21
Laura777 wrote: "as far as stimulants go the only experience I ever had with them was cocaine and i absolutely HATED it , sorry for the strong words but the depression that caused was off the charts ..."
Yes, I had a similar experience with cocaine. I only tried it three times, but each time it was horrific. I felt great for about 20 minutes, and then I was in hell for hours. I only tried it a second and third time because I thought my negative experiences were a fluke.
My negative experience with cocaine led me to a paradigm shift in my thinking about depression and it's treatment.
I actually started antidepressants because of my cocaine experiences. I had been very depressed for most of my life, but prior to trying cocaine I would not even consider AD medication.
I was in college at the time and had a professor who thought psych meds were worthless. He would go on an on about how they only treated symptoms, without addressing the underlying causes, which were always cognitive/behavioral/psychodynamic.
At that time, I fully believed that people who took ADs were wasting their time and money, and were only masking the symptoms that they needed to feel to be motivated to address their real problems.
My experience with cocaine totally changed that belief.
The three times I tried cocaine were enough to completely convince me of the chemical nature of affective states. I observed that on cocaine I came down much sooner and much harder than my friends.
The terrible depression that followed cocaine use for me did not arise from "psychodynamic issues" or "behavioral patterns" or "negative thinking" - it was purely a chemical/biological state. And it was not helped by any amount of insight, or rational thinking...it was just pure biological depression.
That experience gave me the insight that depression could be genuinely biologically based, and the fact that cocaine affected me differently than my friends was further evidence for me that there were neurochemical factors contributing to my lifelong depression. I don't know how long it would have taken me to figure that out, or if I would have ever even considered medication, if it had not been for those hours of hell following cocaine use.
poster:fachad
thread:138954
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030204/msgs/139298.html