TO LYNX4, I really enjoyed your post addressing anxiety and your move to semi agoraphobia, as I am experiencing exactly the same thing.I have been thinking about the state of the world and find that home is the safest place to be right now. I have so little control in many areas,including my pain as it can be unpredictable,that when I can relax and take my medication in peace, I have some semblance of order.I stopped taking my Lexapro last month and just wish that Hydro tolerance does not increase so rapidly, as I would much rather self- medicate with my Hydro and nothing else!

Several of my books on Systemic lupus erythematosus mention that opioids had been used successfully for depression until they fell out of favor in the mid 1900's.

When I came across this thread I started searching online to see if I could find more recent research on the subject. A lot of it I did find you had to have a subscription to read the articles, so that would not help add anything to this discussion.


Finally in one of my books I found an active link that discusses this.

While it is actually an article about the use of Buprenorphine for the use of treatment resistant depression, it references the use of opioids in general for depression.

One of the better things about this link is that it has a good bibliography at the end of various studies that may supply further help to those interested in the subject.


Opioid as antidepressant



I entered into a search engine the first line of a chapter on this subject from one of my more technical volumes, and came across this article .
When opioid use was recommended for depression and pain

While that site states that they own the article in question, it seems to be a summary of the chapter in my book, rewritten in layperson terminology.




edited: for some reason I cannot link to the second article. working on it

hi. I get agoraphobia at times and i dont know why. I am not as bad as I was but it is horrible thinking you are going to die:( When I had my last one I had pre-prepared a mantra saying this feeling will pass you are not going to die, its just a feeling.I knew the panic attack would end and that really helped me get through. One thing I continually worry about is the meds making agoraphobia worse. I hope not:(

I will sign up to this forum to share some thoughts on this from someone who has a vast background of many anti-depressants and panic attacks and depression since 13 years old.

Well first of all lets clear our heads a sec and think about this objectively........

When someone says "hyrocodone helps my depression" it just sounds likes a very very ludicrous statement. Almost immediately the word "drug addict" comes to mind. I too once thought that, like so much of the general public. But I wonder why we can label this or that an abusive, addictive drug when its parent compound opium has been used effectively for centuries for ALL types of mood disorders.

This country has some kind of issue with demonizing or villainizing ANYTHING that deals with dopamine...While we fiddle with ways to recycle old drugs (celexa,effexor)and play with serotonin and norephineprine, other countries are actually making newer anti-depressents which mess with dopamine. But you cant dare mess with dopamine in America!!!....thats the stuff of cocaine and heroin and much more.......Supposedly dopamine makes ALL things addictive. Food,Sex,Cigarettes,Caffeine,etc..

And while we are on the subject of caffeine......Up till a few years ago there was a very nice article on the web titled "the caffeine zombie in america" It was a FASCINATING read. And led me to believe just how many mental disorders are caused or aggravated by caffeine ingestion at ANY dosage.... YET you never hear one bad word about caffeine "is bad".........no we just hear how bad cigarettes and beer are. We gobble just hordes of the stuff when we wake up and all day till we go to bed...

Why??? Because caffeine makes you work harder.....makes you an obedient little Borg drone......Yeah employers love that!

And how does it do this??????? DOPAMINE - A neurotransmitter in the brain which I BELIEVE is the head honcho......It's the train and about all others are the track steering it into different sections of the brain for different effect.


Serotonin may enlist tranquilizing properties and norephinephrine some drive and excitement.....But NEITHER of those substances will EVER make you "feel" an actual emotion good OR bad....If anything they supress bad emotions just like a advil mask a headache or something...while whatever caused the headache or whatever is prolly still there you just can't "feel" the pain anymore...People stop complaining cause hey there cured!!! right? WRONG............

A TRUE anti-depressant would actually make you "feel" a positive and happy emotion......not just be a "zombie" If you don't effect dopamine you just dont get any positive emotional effect I am sorry........

You can ask ANY Psychiatrist thats worth their salt, how an anti-depressant ACTUALLY works, and why it takes a month to effect behaviors, and well....they will tell you no one knows why...

Cause they don't.....Its very possible, if you ask me, that some kind of "adapting mechanism" is going on and its HOW the body adapts that really gives any of the AD drugs ANY efficacy at all.

What scares the [censored] out of most of the society is ANYTHING, that can give you a "quick fix" good feeling or euphoria. Because its well understood that anything that can do that causes dependency and addiction. An again the reason why is dopamine. Your brain has a feedback system with dopamine. In a normal brain, dopamine release is part of the reward system and anything you can "take" to get instant gratification is sorta like short circuiting the system. And so the brain compensates by lowering your dopamine levels......this is dependence and addiction. One must take more and more of a "drug" to achieve the same high or buzz.
Maybe in the future a method could be devised to inhibit this feedback system and then the same dosage could be used for a certain effect indefinitely...This would have tremendous benefits in not just recreational drug use, but also in pharmacokinetics, as in the case of Parkison's disease for example.


The point I am making here is we simply just don't know enough to just write off opiates and their mechanism of action on depression and anxiety. Were all the ancient Greeks and Chinese wrong???

In recent years there have been steps to make newer anti-depressant drugs that may possibly involve dopamine such as wellbutrin(bupropion). The first few weeks of wellbutrin kinda provides a "quick fix" type of feeling. A synthetic "happy" feeling that poops out in a bit. It is also interesting to note wellbutrin is thought to work on the dopaminergic system.


I had my first panic attack around 13 years old walking home from school oneday. And they have effected me off an on all my life untill I was in my late twenties where they slowed down.

I also got to expierience "endogenous" depression as its known..........But now? I feel apathy....like an android I guess lol. Nothing is ever really good or really bad. I normally dont give a [censored] about nothing. I dont get much of anything from anything.....food, sex, whatever.....just dont care....Through time I have took many AD's including tricyclics,ssri's,snri's,and other new ones like buproprion.

And well now ,Hydro LOL...And I am here to tell the naysayers there IS something else to this stuff. And I don't just mean the "pop" buzz which no doubt fades away with time unless you increase to insane dosages. Some kind of effect that comes from time or cumulative use...Anyone can have a quick fix one night stand, much like a 12 pack of beer, but thats not what I am getting at here.

I am feeling something that is much more natural and transparent.....definately not zombie......something alot more human....

But addiction is chaos right?.............But what if creating chaos in a sea of apathy ain't such a bad thing
*shrugs*

Great post Destros. Maybe our friend martind, who will clearly disagree with you, and who is, well I don't know who he is exactly, maybe an addiction spealist, will weigh in on this?

"You can ask ANY Psychiatrist thats worth their salt, how an anti-depressant ACTUALLY works, and why it takes a month to effect behaviors, and well....they will tell you no one knows why..."

True.

And what's more, in the USA Research on Dopamine related
AD's seems to have stopped. And, Nor epinephrine seems to
give a little too much of a kick reaching steady serum state,
so...Ban research there as well. That'll show us.

Very well thought out post. Thank you.

At your service. There's no question that opiods in general will improve "mood" and mask depression (whether endogenous or situational) in most people initially. Key word is initially.
I think the earlier poster has already identified the problem with long term use of drugs like hydrocodone to treat depression. Anyone who has taken this drug for any length of time likely recognizes the unavoidable onset of tolerance, ever increasing dosages, inter-dose withdrawals and the inevitable absence of the euphoria felt during early treatment. Antidepressant meds, on the other hand, are formulated to regulate brain chemistry without any of these downsides.
Trying to compare the psychoactivity of opioids to antidepressants is like comparing Lil' Wayne to Mahalia Jackson. Apples and oranges.
Rather than trying to debate the poster's personal dopamine/seratonin theory, I'll just repeat what I have said before on this subject. Unless you have been actually dx'd with Treatment Resistant Depression (which is rare), you will find that treating depression with drugs like hydrocodone will ultimately lead to many more problems in the long run than the initial depresion. It is a bad idea and bad medicine.

Agree. This argument rests on tolerance, and Lil' Wayne.

off-topic, but salty you are so funny

Any doctor who is honest (and has taken an opioid before) should admit that they are the most effective antidepressant available - for a short while. I don't believe that anything can be done to prevent tolerance and maintain long-term efficacy, because medicine - and science in general - does not work like that.

I do believe, however, that the SSRIs have questionable efficacy in some form of depression simply because the drug tianeptine, which works entirely in the opposite fashion, is said to be quite successful at relieving depression.

Oh, and anyone who is taking SSRIs or tricyclics, if you want to try tianeptine, don't switch suddenly from one to the other. It's likely to be like SSRI withdrawal but quicker and harder.

The only fast, [durable] anti-depression tx I've seen is
ECT. Not politically correct, but often
efficacious. Doesn't work for all, but some swear by it.

A large part of the problem regarding treating depressive medical conditions with opioids can be found in the study of the regulation mechanisms surrounding serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, etc. and the role these neurotransmitters play in human behaviors.
There are drugs that inhibit the reuptake of dopamine, for instance, but opoids are not among them. Most research has identified that cocaine, amphetamines and other stimulants have shown the most consistent effect at inhibiting dopamine reuptake. Thus, one of the theories about them as treatment for ADD/ADHD.
There is much confusion and urban myth involving the actual chemistry that takes place in the human body when exogenous opiates like hydrocodone are ingested. But generally, the result is a binding which takes place most strongly in the mu-opiate receptors in the brain and GI tract. These are the same receptors activated by the body's natural endomorphin peptides.
All of which has absolutely nothing to do with dopamine stimulation, reuptake regulation or inhibition.
So if the diagnosis is depression, treatment with opioids is not only potentially problematic in the future but it also goes against all medical science known to date. It might feel good but so does crack initially and I don't think anyone is advocating that for treatment of depression.

Could not be said better. good post.

I will be interested to see if your opinion on this changes if/when your source is no longer there, or for some reason you can no longer afford it. I agree that it does make depression seem like it is not there, and make you feel as tho you are on top of the world. It makes it seem like you have no problems, are energized, and can do anything. This feeling will not last long however.

Please take it from someone who abused Hydrocodone and Oxycodone for a few years. I started out taking Vicodin as perscribed, I ended snorting 10 80mg oxycontin a day. Withdrawl is horrible, makes you do things you would never ever dream of doing to avoid it, and addiction will totally ruin your life. It might not be today, tomorrow, or even this year, but eventually, unfortunatley, it will happen.

Mike, I wish you luck...

It has been published in numerous scientific journals & extensively reported through media (BBC, ABC, USA Today, The New York Times, The Wallstreet Journal, etc.) that antidepressans DO NOT WORK; they are merely a placebo effect.

They do however elevate mood, & make you feel better, but don't have any more efficacy than do sugar pills (of course minus fluoride found in many of them, the high rates of suicidal tendancies/thoughts, increased violent tendancies/thoughts, and other harmful side-effects & long term effects); meaning they don't work any better than placebos.

Source: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/archive/1549-1676/5/2/pdf/10.1371_journal.pmed.0050045-L.pdf

I for one can vouche for myself that hydrocodone & other opioids/opiates do work better than any antidepressant, BUT opiates are highly addictive and as was mentioned by many other posters tolerance builds rapidly, therfore higher and higher dosages are needed to acheive the initial results (euphoria, pain releif, loss of anxiety/inhibitions, anti-depressant). With that being said hydrocodone and or other opioids/opiates should not be used on a daily basis to treat depression, although I do think more opioids should be synthesized (Kratom seems to be a great non-conventional & significantly less addictive opiate (I say opiate because Kratom still hits the MU receptor although not derived from papavar somniferum poppies as all other opioids are) to start with) as possible treatments for depression....

Also, I do have to disagree with Kimberly5555----when pertaining to opiate addiction or drug addiction in general for that matter. I have used many opioids as prescribed starting at age 16 (before I knew about the euphoria) from hydrocodone to oxycodone and beyond, but have found a way to effectively avoid addiction; self discipline, a strong will, & taking frequent breaks from opiates & dealing with the pain unmedicated (however horrific it may be)for an alotted time frame to allow tolerance levels to decrease.

The problem it seems today is that most people are prescribed a drug to be taken "X times a day" without being warned of the dangers of addiction, rapid tolerance effect, and the possibility of withdrawel (if used every day; which in most cases prescribed drugs are intended to be used every day). This effect, in itself I beleive, is responsible for alot of drug dependancy in the US and other countries as well as the lack of natural coping skills to deal with anxiety/pain/depression that would otherwise be acquired with the abscence of drugs, "pharmaceutical" or otherwise.

It is your right to disagree with me, but I was not talking about you or your circumstances. I was talking about the OP, and the circumstances they have stated in their post. You state clearly that you have taken frequent breaks, and use discipline, and also state deal with pain unmedicated. The OP of this thread is taking them to help depression, I'm assuming a doctor would not prescribe opiates for long term depression, so the OP is doing so on his own. NOT under a Dr. supervision. LET ME SAY AGAIN.. ASSUME. The OP did not mention taking breaks, using discipline, or going without and just dealing with the depression.

If you are going to quote me, I only ask that you do so pertaining to the circumstances of my statement. Not your situation. I never stated that people who are responsible with medication will get addicted. If you want to quote me on that, feel free.

What I was refering to when I quoted you was how I opposed your general statement (or how it appeared to me) that at some point all opiate users will enebidably get addicted based on my experience. I guess I didn't look @ it from the circumstances your statement was trying to convey & I do agree that if some1 uses opiates to try and treat depression on a regular & consistant basis without restraint (which is definately hard) they will end up addicted whether it be physically, psychologically or both.

& I am almost certain that no doctor in this day & age would prescribe any type of opiate/opioid as a treament for depression unless they were very open minded or willing to possibly give up their liscence to practice. However I do think (and there is evidence) that opiates are a valid treatment for depression, just not in the long term or as an every day regimen.

I refer back to my previous response regarding the medical difference between treatment of "endogenous" depressive conditions and the psychoactive effects of opioid use.
While someone unfamiliar with the pharmacology of psychoactive drugs might want to compare the effectiveness of opioids with SSRI's or tricyclics in treating depression, the fact remains that there is a chemical disconnect in this comparison.
It is clearly the euphoria side effect of opioids which leads to the conclusion that their use controls depression. However, based on the research that I've read, this is only a side effect that, like many side effects, disappears after repeated use of the drug. Opioids do not affect serotonin, dopamine or norepinephrine levels which are the diagnostic markers for depression.
So, if you want to theorize that a narcotic could be used short term to cheer someone up during a transitory exogenous depressive episode, then, sure, that might work. But so would moderate alcohol. And it is well-known how this often turns out for patients who do not have an underlying pain condition.
Every so often, some research group will come along with a break-through revelation that a morphine derivative has shown great promise as a treatment for various mood disorders. Sort of like the discovery that cocaine was effective at treating "melancholy" in the 19th century. Then the reality sets in that A really has nothing to do with B.
Almost all clinical depressive disorders have no business being treated with opioids. Ultra low dose buprenorphine treatment for TRD may be one exception that seems to be gaining some traction.

Well said. It is my experience that you may feel great on opiods (or opiates) for years, then the depression like symptoms creep in. After cutting or lowering the dose and eventual CT, then you may have to deal with PAWS. (Post Acute Withdrawal..)

You have to be kidding me with this post. Vicodin (Hydrocodone) was designed for pain management only. It also helps with coughs when taken in liquid form.

Here are some of the side-effects:
----------------------------------------
shallow breathing, slow heartbeat;

feeling light-headed, fainting;

confusion, fear, unusual thoughts or behavior;

seizure (convulsions);

problems with urination; or

nausea, stomach pain, loss of appetite, itching, dark urine, clay-colored stools, jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes).

Less serious hydrocodone and acetaminophen side effects may include:

feeling anxious, dizzy, or drowsy;

mild nausea, vomiting, upset stomach, constipation;

headache, mood changes;

blurred vision;

ringing in your ears; or

dry mouth.
----------------------------------------
Hydrocodone is highly addictive and can give you a feeling a fasle sense of euphoria. There are no studies to show that Vicodin does anything for depression. In fact, Vicodin makes you moody and those mood changes are generally characterized as "quick-tempered" and having a "feeling of rage." It messes with your head like that. In addition to that, Vicodin can actually cause depression, probably do to its dehydrating effect and that it makes you sweat very easily.

I wouldn't be quick to say that Vicodin relieves depression. What that says to me is you have an addiction problem so please don't give credit or attribute Vicodin for giving you self-esteem, happiness and success in life. If you tell your prescribing doctor that, he/she will immediately take you off of that drug.

Both me and my wife have to take hydrocodone daily for the rest of our lives for pain. At the same time we are both laughing at this post of yours. You have issues my friend and it's called addiction.

That's my 2 cents.

This is a terrible idea for an antidepressant. It is for pain relief. If you feel euphoria you probably took a dose of the medication used by abusers.

I agree that vicodin should not be used as an A/D. Mostly because the positive feeling it provides will not last (think months, years here) w/out increasing dosage or taking a break.

However, one who is opiate naive can get euphoria from a regular dose. I did/have.

i am prescribed vicodin for back pain and have never been diagnosed with depression but i will say that when i take my hydrocodone if im feeling a little down my mood does get better

Yes, it will for a few years. Eventually, when the hydro wears off you will feel depressed. Your body isn't making all kinds of natural chemicals, dopamine, etc in the same quantity while on hydro.

I found for more than a few years my mood feels better. However, i think it is linked to the pain i am in. I'm pretty depressed when i run out of my hydros and in quite a bit of pain. My dosage stopped giving me the "high" and just gave me some pain releif, which in turn made my mood a whole lot better. So for me it's my anti-depressent, but not the way you guys are talking about...

For me, at times I’ve needed the med for headaches or pain. Never experienced the mood elevation. But these were relatively low doses, and every person is different. Med definitely not an antidepressant.

CODEINE DOES THE SAME THING FOR ME, WHATEVER WORKS.
I AM A GREGARIOUS BALL OF ENERGY, NOT HIGH , JUST PRODUCTIVE
AND HAPPY. IT HAS PARADOXICAL STIMULATION WITH ME.

It does lift my mood as well, as the poster above mentions.
I dont get high' but get a lift BECAuse I am without some pain and feel like a superperson. the word euphoria comes to mind.

However, I felt the same way on the rare Good/pain free day back before I used pain meds at all.

It was a super energy lifted carefree feeling that occured naturally just by waking pain free.
Then of course I always over did physically and fell right back to 'normal'

I would never use hydro just for depression, as other posters say - it is short lived, would only help a little while.