There’s a difference between intoxication and treating the chemical imbalance behind depression or anxiety. For one thing, treatments for anxiety only target the anxiety: they don’t impair the person the way that weed or alcohol does. (They can have other side effects, of course.)

Drugs for anxiety treatment do wear off, but not the same way that weed or alcohol does: something like Celexa takes a few weeks to build up in the system, and don’t lose effect 12-24 hours later if you miss a dose. I’m not sure how long you’d have to stop before it loses efficacy entirely.

I’m not Nancy Reagan, though: I would not advise people to self-medicate with booze or pot if they’re suffering from depression or anxiety, but I’m not going to preach at anybody who is doing so and thinks it’s working for them. I will say that I’ve seen that end badly, though. I can think of three people I’m close to who’ve tried it and have had problems with addiction: all of them are now sober and (I believe) on regular antidepressants.

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andoando 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Im prescribed adderall for ADHD. It is a high. You feel more positive, more productive, more forward looking for a few hours and its back to baseline or worse when you crash.

As for impairment, it really depends. If weed removes your anxiety and lets you relax, its benefit could be greater for what youre doing than the impairment it causes. And adderall, SSRIs can cause impairment of sorts too.

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cluckindan a day ago | parent | prev [-]

”There’s a difference between intoxication and treating the chemical imbalance behind depression or anxiety.”

There is no significant, rigorous evidence that depression or anxiety are caused by an inherent ”chemical imbalance”.

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joquarky a day ago | parent [-]

Am I an idiot or is it not glaringly obvious to everyone that the cause is our individualistic hyper competitive culture?

	▲	contravariant a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I won't call you an idiot, but assuming that all cases are simply people being sad is a bit simplistic. Some people are going to be more susceptible to depression, for whatever reasons, and improving someone's surroundings is probably going to prevent or alleviate depression to an extent, but to people who are depressed now it's somewhat pointless advice.
	▲	zdragnar a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		There are plenty of historical records of people having anxiety or depression. There's almost certainly a link between the prevalence and modern, always-on culture, but to suggest that it alone is the cause is blatantly wrong.
	▲	anal_reactor a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		"Patient is chronically lonely" isn't really a diagnosis, even though it should be.