Dasus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Alcohol is a depressant my man.
Neurologically speaking, so in a different context, yeah, but neurological depression also seems to lead to actual depression, the mood disorder, which also show up as neurological depression.
We really need better imaging tools to measure neurotransmitter activity, would make for several advancements I’d say
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 2 months ago
Abuse of any psychoactive drug on the regular leads to depression. It isn’t just this concept of depressant or stimulant or even related in any way. Any stimhead can tell you all about the suicidal ideation inducing comedowns and inability to get anything done after stopping use.
Dasus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s a biased generalisation.
While abusers of psychedelics are rare, they’re generally manic and psychotic moreso than depressed.
Yes, depression can be caused by any addiction and abusing stims can cause a lack of neurotransmitter due to exhausting the resources for the body to do so.
It’s a bit different than using something that’s a direct depressant though.
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 2 months ago
Depressant isn’t linked to depression tho. Get that idea out of your head completely. Like seriously go read some neuro textbooks and stop getting your pharmacology info from tiktok. Depressants depress the CNS… depression is a mental illness.
Also I’ve abused psychs and known a few others that did and I wouldn’t call any of our our activities/side effects manic or psychotic by any means. I know one person who had a family history of schizophrenia that had negative effects like that from their abuse. But just the one. I’d be interested in scholarly articles about the subject tho since I have biased data, and apparently, yours is not at least from what would construe from your comment.
Dasus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Isn’t linked?
That’s just wrong. Correlation is a link. The long term high dose use of any CNS depressant correlates with actual depression (the psychological issue [I added the brackets because you seemed to miss when I specified the difference earlier.])
Oh wow, an anecdotal story, well that just proves what you’re saying is 100% correct.
Science couldn’t possibly disagree
“Pure” psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin rarely cause any sort of abuse, really, but I’ve been on a drug abuse closed ward and the manic people were generally in there because of CNS stimulants of all sorts. Psychedelics are just less likely to yield any long-lasting harmful effects compared to say smoking crack or snorting meth.
So yeah, while a CNS depressant isn’t the a thing that directly causes psychological depression as such, you can probably see how they’re linked from the following analogy; imagine that I tie your legs together. That doesn’t remove your ability to walk, per se, as long as you remove the restraints. But if no-one removes them for 50 years, do you think you’d walk as well as before?
In much the same way, yes, CNS depressants are linked to depression, and alcohol and benzos are the clearest examples.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8238014/#:~:….
americanaddictioncenters.org/…/depression#:~:text….