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I compare this to giving a machine a hit with a wrench. So there is this cliché about machines which have hickups or stop working and then when you hit them har

I compare this to giving a machine a hit with a wrench. So there is this cliché about machines which have hickups or stop working and then when you hit them hard enough, they work properly again. But that doesn't mean they were designed to only work under continous beatings. Same thing with serotonin: In depressed brains, SSRIs will "hit" the brain, and that works surprisingly often, but it doesn't mean the brain was supposed to only work with high serotonin levels.

martin1975 11y ago
ECT hits it harder, and allegedly, in many cases, "reboots" it to a point of being normal (i.e. non-depressed), if the SSRI hits fail to work. Wanna hear something even trippier from my shrink's mouth? In cases where ECT failed - and not many at that - as an alternative, nicotine therapy broke the depression, restored feelings of normalcy. :) Obviously, they didn't have the patient take up smoking, since there are other ways to administer nicotine only without the 4000 byproducts of smoke, but it made sense, since I believe most of my family is depressed and the whole lot of them have been decades long smokers, to this day. Cool stuff huh? Grab that Camel pack now ;)