I want to share some personal, anecdotal insights into how SSRIs may have cured my major depressive disorder (MDD) after 20 years of suicidality.
I was born with ADD and barely made it through school. I managed to pass without really learning or doing homework, but as I grew older, depression, addiction, chronic pain, and even psychosis became such a burden that I felt compelled to understand what was wrong with me-something no doctor seemed able to fix.
Despite everything, I’ve always felt an endless amount of love every second of my life, which I suspect is due to increased oxytocin levels.
My depression first developed through years of lovesickness. Suicidal thoughts emerged, and the relentless cycle of hopelessness, stress, and chronic suffering began.
For two decades, existence meant pain and suffering. I remember talking to a friend who said, “She doesn’t understand. She goes to sleep each night with anticipation for the next day.” In contrast, I dreaded the next day. Waking up meant suffering. Living meant wanting to die. Feeling meant pain. The beauty of the world seemed to escape me. I tried to chase it, to seize my days, to enjoy the little things in order to hold on to my last glimpse of hope.
This struggle led to terrible eating habits. I lived off pizza for years, resulting in malnutrition.
Two decades of suffering forced me to adapt. I learned to focus on the positive things-staying positive was what kept me alive. But something deeply unsettling developed during this time with MDD: a constant, gnawing pain in my chest. It felt like an extreme thirst, but as pain. I later learned this was nociceptive pain, and it haunted me for decades.
For me, this pain became synonymous with depression. It made existence unbearable.
Twenty years later, I was prescribed SSRIs. To my surprise, a small dose completely cured this pain. When I stop taking them, the pain returns within a week or two. Now, I rely on this serotonin boost-I don’t want to return to a world of pain and misery.
Without chronic pain, I was finally able to enjoy life. I no longer had to suffer meaninglessly. My depression faded quickly. No depression meant no suicidal intent, and the bottle of helium and rebreather mask beside my bed are no longer needed.
Now, I can enjoy all the little and beautiful things life has to offer.
How this works is still a mystery to me, and I’m baffled that no one ever questioned or discovered that my suffering was related to nociceptive pain.
Intuitively, I suspect it might involve deficient cAMP production, leading to less glutamate being synthesized into GABA, which increases excitotoxic and excitatory stress. This also influences NMDA signaling, which could be the pathway causing this erratic pain signaling.
I’ve read that 5HT3 and 5HT1A pathways have disinhibitory effects on GABA type B, which blocks type A. Increased type A activity, in turn, inhibits NMDA signaling, which might normalize pain pathways.
However, if I’m honest, I have no idea. I just keep reading papers on PubMed and have no one to talk to about neuropharmacology.
I’ve barely scratched the surface, so for now, all of this remains hypothesis.