Drugged Life: Opiates for Depression, Anxiety, and other Psychological Disorders

I'd rather be dreaming than living
Living's just too hard to do
It's chances not choices
Noises not voices
A day's just a thing to get through
Living's just too hard to do

- Loudon Wainwright (?)

In the 14th century the bubonic plague spread through Europe leaving an estimated 75 million people dead from the disease. A more modern deadly plague is depression; said to affect nearly 10% of the American population.
The first-line treatment for depression is pharmaceutical, usually with a class of drug called Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRI). These drugs have severe side effects including, excess sweating, headache, sexual disfunction, nausea, suicidal ideation, weight gain..... WAIT A FUCKING IRONIC MINUTE - SUICIDAL IDEATION - thoughts of suicide are really not a very convenient or safe side effect of a medication prescribed to treat depression. I mean let me get this straight - I go to the doctor for help with my depression and he gives me a drug that kills my ability to orgasm and makes me want to kill myself AND sends me into withdrawal if a stop taking it. Withdrawal that will involve staying awake for days, uncontrollable yawning, and having the most mind-fucking nightmares when you do fall asleep. Nightmares so terrifying that in spite of your deathly tiredness you are deathly afraid to sleep. And then there is the electric 'zaps' that feel like you have just grabbed hold of an electric fence in each hand that strike without warning throughout the day - and this is supposed to help you with depression how? You may think that I am exaggerating the severity of things but I haven't told you yet about how I got arrested and spent the night in jail.
I think it was between about a week and ten days after I had stopped taking the SSRI's when I decided to go into the town centre to see a friend or two and have a few drinks. I hitched a ride the 5 kilometers into town and walked the remaining distance to the supermarket. I bought a 1.25 Litre bottle of cider (about 5% alcohol) and started walking toward my friends house. I drank as I walked and managed to leisurely consume about 1/4 of the bottle in the hour it took me to walk to my destination, stopping to see if I could convince a pair of mormon missionaries to convert to atheism and get my free copy of the book of mormon. I failed at that task but did succeed in getting to my friend's house. I hadn't called or arranged anything and it happened that they were out. I continued on through the suburban streets and decided to try another friend. She wasn't home either so I continued on vaguely in the direction of home, taking my time and drinking my cider. I was walking along in the darkness when dark thoughts of mischief crept into my skull. I started looking for the telltale silhouette of a car's locking knob not properly engaged in the 'lock' position. After a couple of blocks I came across a row of cars neatly parked across the street from their owners' houses. Conveniently located on the edge of large public park, or, getaway route as I saw it. I spied an unlocked hatchback and quietly got in. I started looking through the car for anything of value and didn't find much more than a few loose coins and an old sports magazine. I suddenly had the brilliant idea of hot-wiring the car and driving home. Of course being quite drunk by this time, combined with the stolen car just wasn't great thinking, but it didn't get that far thankfully. I did manage to start the car and then promptly found the steering column locked and therefore not very much use at all. I grabbed my paltry loot and exited the car, then hightailed it across the park to a dark alley where I could sit and recover.
I think my brain was in a particularly chaotic chemical state at that time. Not only was I still going through withdrawal from my not very sensible sudden cessation of SSRI medication but I was taking some diazepam periodically and had taken about 10 - 20mg the previous day. Not to mention the cannabis I had earlier in the evening and the cider I had drunk through the evening. The cider was by no means an excessive amount in the context of my drinking of that period, but combined with the other circumstances of my neurochemical condition, it led to a very disordered and confused level of thought.
In this poor condition I thought that given my paltry score from the car, it would be completely reasonable to go back for more. It was while doing so that I leaned down to see if anything of value was stashed under the driver's seat. Doing so brought my stupid head down onto the horn for what I would later learn was the second time. The first time had been enough to alert the owners, who alerted the police, that some stoned idiot was fooling with their car. When I saw the lights approach I ducked down to hide and when they didn't pass I realised that the game was up. The disgusted looking policeman who opened the car door grabbed me out and proceeded to arrest me and bundle me off to jail where I was to be remanded until the morning court session. I was booked, and the I talked with a representative from the mental health services who explained what would happen, and also took notes of my side of the story. Then it was into a cold, lonely, liberty unfriendly cell.
I was not very much a fan of authoritarian types like policemen so was rather annoyed when my request for a drink of water was denied. This was incredible to me that such a basic necessity was being denied because of what I thought could only be spite. To bring them around to my way of thinking I proceeded to use the metal tab on my zipper to scrape the skin off the soft underside on each of my lower arms. With some impressive but not dangerous blood running down my arms I was soon brought a drink of water in a styrofoam cup. A small victory in a sea of idiocy.
I was found guilty but avoided a mark on my record by being accepted for 'diversion', a scheme run in New Zealand by which an offender is diverted away from the punitive type institutions and into the types of activities which educate about the downstream effects of your crime such as the effects of the crime on the victims, and the consequences of a life spent engaging in criminal endeavours. For me this involved attending a meeting with the police, my victims (a young married couple), my brother, and a community representative. I learned about how the incident had affected them and I was able to tell them about some of the circumstances of my struggle at the time. It was quite a reality affirming experience actually because it revealed the true nature of the crime - the extent of my idiocy and intoxication, and their initial fear and annoyance which had turned into increased vigilance and fear in relation to their own security and that of their belongings. It also became clear to me that faced with the information they now had about my troubles, although not changing their opinion of the wrongness of my crime, did at least allow them the freedom from ignorance of the nature of events. With this knowledge came the ability to fully process events and move on without lingering disturbance.
Given this experience I think it will be clear to you the reasonableness of my opposition to the widespread use of these toxic SSRI type medications. I wouldn't want to see them removed completely from the prescriber's arsenal but they need to be used with extreme caution and only with patients that have not achieved success with psychotherapy or other non-drug treatments.
Given the obvious danger associated with current medications it is only logical to look for alternative pharmacological solutions to the plague of depression and one idea that intrigues me is the use of opioid drugs. It is an idea that is an ultra-powerful electro magnet turned to high and attracting controversy every time it is mentioned in public.
Opioids have been used for thousands of years in the treatment of physical pain, but modern anecdotal evidence suggests that opioids may also be effective in treating psychological pain. The law in most places seems to prohibit the prescribing of opiates as a treatment for depression but that doesn't stop some sympathetic doctors prescribing opioids for pain in some part of the body when in fact the intended target of pain relief is the psyche.
I have heard of more than one person who on detoxing from a long-term opiate addiction developed symptoms, and were eventually diagnosed as suffering from bi-polar disorder. These same people had for years successfully maintained heroin habits with the high-functioning intellect required of the lifestyle.

So? Tell me what you think please.

A study of opiate use in chronic non-cancer-related pain and the effect its use has on rates of depression.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/729521

P.S. I will continue to look into this subject and will periodically present my findings on this and other subjects to the world and to those who accidentally find this blog.