@Background Pony #434A
Seratonin is a wierd neurotransmitter involved in memory and motor control, and junk science links seratonin to feeling good.
This junk science runs deep, mostly because phychiatrist don’t have to know dick about actual physiology.
Depression can occur as a result of any metabolic pathway being disturbed. It is a lack of phasic glutamate, dopamine or noradrenaline activity in the corpus straitum, resulting in a reduction of reward seeking behavior and poor self assement. Tonic levels of noradrenaline can still be high causing intense, aimless anxiety.
Serotonin just doesn’t change much between people so it’s hard to pinpoint what it does. Serotonin drugs can make you sleep, they can make you trip balls, it can help with urinary retention.
Happy people have more 5htp, a seratonin precursor, this led to the idea that serotonin causes happiness, but the actual connection never held up.
Serotonin is still a glutamate analog, and as a result serotonin drugs can cause changes to adrenergic and dopaminergic systems.
Drugs that actually make people happy are the most addictive and destructive drugs in the world, and controls a large portion of the worlds economy. Cocaine, and methamphetamine for example, which act chiefly on dopamine and adrenaline and we use these drugs in the most treatment resistant cases of depression.
Edit “but what about pain pills, DXM or sauce. “
The inhibitory drugs like alcohol, heroin and even pregabalin can cause a steady flow of excitory feel good neurotransmitters, and or lower the phasic threshold of these systems so you’re easier to satiate. This is why these drugs compete with the core dopamine drugs as most addictive.
Heroin might be more addictive than amphetamine. DXM is related to heroin but I like it because it’s disassociative effects counteract it’s addiction potential.