[thechat] O Brother, drugs, movies, and hats

[seb]

> > Thanks for the replies. This was a good time to not
> > be ignored! :)

Hey Quackamoe, hope I'm not too late. I've been there, so I have an idea of
whoat you mean.

> > The mothers little helpers and such things mentioned
> > are mainly tranquilizers whereas Paxil tries to level
> > out the amount of serotonin in the brain

Paxil is, in general, pretty good. I've not actually used it (I got Lithium.
Yay.), but I do know people that have been prescribed it, although one was
for severe PMS. Apparently, it takes a while to kick in, even with 50+ mg
doses. She says, however, that it makes it pretty much impossible for a girl
to achieve orgasm, so she stopped taking it!

I'd be happy to hear how you get on with it offlist.

> In the UK, whould you find yourself checking into
> hospital because of depression, the very first thing
> they do is take a blood test.  The very next thing
> they do (I'm told in about 90% of cases) is pump the
> patient to the gills with iron.
>
> Iron is one of the 'fuels' for seratonin production
> and simply being 'not anaemic' isn't enough if you're
> prone to depression: you need to have a *lot* more
> iron than that.

Having been given iron, my advice is *not* to take it. Yes, iron is part of
seratonin production. However, iron is idfficult to find in sufficiently low
doses not to causes real harm (unless you're pregnant). The amount of iron
that UK hospitals pump into depressives has only questionable effect, other
than making you puke your guts out over a period of days.

> Smoking, incidentally, makes the situation dramatically
> worse.

Oops.

> Preferred method round my manor is to take about 4 of
> the one-a-day iron supplements you find at the chemists
> with 2 pints of orange juice (aids absorption) when
> you start to feel things on the slide.

Multivits. With multivit Tropicana. Lots of sleep. And Bran cereal. You need
about 40mg iron per day if you're vegetarian, or 20mg if you're not. (Iron
is absorbed more easily if you eat red meat. Bugger.)


Seb.