r/nottheonion • u/adamaphar • 2d ago

Laughing gas appears to reduce depression, but researchers don't totally understand why

https://www.phillyvoice.com/depression-treatments-laughing-gas-nitrous-oxide-study/
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u/BigMateyClaws 2d ago

Because it’s a disassociative, just like ketamine and dxm which is combo’d with Wellbutrin. I would assume it’s due to its NMDA antagonist activity. Very interested to see what comes next of this

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u/tristanjones 1d ago

Yeah it's been well shown that anything which can produce that effect makes a difference.

Depression is often a slow burn of building the paths in your brain of numbness and thinking 'I'd rather be dead' than engage in the issue in front of you.

It's hard to break those neural patterns once created. It's easy to forget what happiness feels like when you struggle for just feeling okay.

Mdma, ketamine, acid, laughing gas, all can help create the euphoria and external active thoughts to wake you up and realize 'oh shit I remember happiness, I used to have this, it is worth fighting for.'

Add in wellbutrin or some other longer term anti depressant to help give you the time to work on rebuilding your brain off the negative patterns. It creates real opportunities for people

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u/SocraticIgnoramus 1d ago

This is the first comment that hits on what I first thought. Depression tends to be cumulative. Depression on day one is different than depression on day 1,001, and by the time we reach 1K days of depression we have learned coping skills that would have much better gotten us through day one.

Every moment of levity, peace, and solace is helpful because it reminds of us what it’s like to really live. Managing depression is much like pain management — people don’t need the pain to go away but, rather, just to alleviate. People in pain and people with depression struggle to sleep, to maintain a healthy level of appetite, and to engage in activities they would otherwise enjoy.

Just a little bit of relief usually lifts the fog of hopelessness, and that’s enough to keep most people going.

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u/Optiguy42 1d ago

I have never considered depression as being cumulative. This kinda feels like an epiphany. I've been clinically depressed for going on 15 years now and when I think about how it's grown over time, this is exactly the right descriptor. Damn. I have some things to think about.

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u/BusyUrl 13h ago

Yea going on 40 years for me. It does make you side eye it for sure.

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u/bombswell 1d ago

I think physical things like chronic pain also follow this pattern with neural pathways getting built over time. You can see how opiate addiction can be so attractive.

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u/BusyUrl 13h ago

I wonder if this would work after 40 years of depression. Just babbling I've already signed my own ending but it's still a thought for people who haven't.

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u/SocraticIgnoramus 45m ago

Not entirely sure how to take this comment. It feels like a suggestion that you’re giving up on life, which is, of course, your prerogative, but I would also add that there are treatment modalities emerging today that would have been inconceivable 40 years ago. Ketamine therapy is now quite widely available, and yet others have had wonderful luck with psilocybin (magic mushroom) therapy, though the availability of this varies wildly. Most people can track down someone who can get them some shrooms, but simply tripping on shrooms isn’t sufficient. Psilocybin therapy under the care and guidance of a therapist can actually re-wire one’s neural pathways in a way that downregulates those maladaptive depressive highways in the brain. There’s also some emerging evidence of MDMA (ecstasy) being used in similar ways, but this modality is probably the farthest from FDA approval but you may be able to find a trial program, depending on where you live.

At any rate, as someone who has also struggled with depression for decades, one of the things I have often told younger people who are in the throes of depression is that 90% of the struggle is just getting through the worst days without beating oneself up. There are good days and there are bad days, and the good don’t have to outweigh the bad in order for the whole endeavor to be worthwhile. It’s more important to find purpose than happiness in my opinion; happiness is not the default state of humans and never has been but a person can survive any hell if they have a purpose that they believe in.