Years back, when being treated for major clinical depression, someone asked how you could tell if someone was clinically depressed. Someone else (and I forget e

Years back, when being treated for major clinical depression, someone asked how you could tell if someone was clinically depressed. Someone else (and I forget exactly where I was for this) said, "You respond well to anti-depressants." The average person, given various antidepressants (or at least certain ones; I've not kept up on all the research) would not get any benefit. Desipramine, for example, is not some all-around, casual-use pick-me-up. I think this is true for at least some ADD drugs; how does a person respond to stimulants? Do they calm down, or do they get wired? Ritalin and Adderall used to calm me down; so did black beauties when I was self-medicating. Eventually they stopped doing anything for me. Unfortunately there is, to my knowledge, no objective marker for various mental conditions. You have to try things and consider the context and see what works or doesn't, and you may never really know exactly why, or what the underlying problem is. ADD? Occasional distraction? Depression? Bad time in your life? Bi-polar? The lines are blurry.