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Antidepressants In the Water Are Making Shrimp Suicidal
Antidepressants may help a lot of people get up in the morning but new research shows they are making shrimp swim into that big bowl of cocktail sauce in the sky. Alex Ford, a marine biologist at the University of Portsmouth, found that shrimp exposed to the antidepressant fluoxetine are 5 times more likely to swim towards light instead of away from it. Shrimp usually swim away from light as it is associated with birds or fishermen.
By hiding the light with a nice thick layer of oil?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I don't think it's that they want to die.
They probably just don't fear the light anymore.
with a some ground up anti-depressants and a flashlight. hope to catch some happy shrimp.
Since you can't really put a shrimp on a shrink-couch and ask it about its feelings,
Of course you can!
it is very hard to say whether the shrimp are "suicidal" or whether their fear responses are being blunted.
Ah well, that's true, since they aren't so big in the "answering" department.
The enemies of Democracy are
When the shrinks put me on SSRI to alleviate OCD, the reverse happened: I lost *all* motivation. I could not get up in the morning, and could easily lie 48 hours in bed without eating or drinking, on the edge of sleep. I felt like one of those Buddhist monks who go bury themselves alive in a cave, and self-mummify. I felt no negative emotions whatsoever; I knew the consequences of my behavior but didn't have any drive to stop. Needless to say, this was not good for my studies.
They removed it a month ago. I still feel glad whenever I feel any form of anxiety, however faint. Apparently, this side-effect is quite rare.
Emotions! In your brain!
Whereas some people see disturbing potential side effects of our best attempts to regulate brain chemistry, I see a business opportunity and a way to meet heavily-tattooed hot short girls.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
When I saw the headline, I wondered just how a shrimp becomes "suicidal".
Suicide is one intentionally taking their own life, not making behavioral or life-style choices that may increase the chance of an early demise. Unless their intent is to swim toward the light so that they can be killed, "suicidal" is quite sensationalist.
Otherwise, we could start describing all kinds of poor decision making and unhealthy lifestyle choices of humans as "suicidal."
Eat some shrimp; you'll feel better.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Lots of shrimp are already being affected by this. People take the antidepressants which then get into the wastewater which gets into the ocean. That makes it a real environmental concern (albeit a minor one; other ones are justifiably topping the list at the moment) and not a joke.
IMO it just goes to show that the law of unintended consequences is damn near universally applicable.
Your brain is not a computer.
Unfortunately, the use of antidepressants is still pretty crude. Often it takes multiple tries before the doctor and patient find the right combination.
But they can still be lifesavers. When I was in cancer treatment over a decade ago, I got so depressed that I was absolutely prepared to kill myself. I'd even put by a stock of heavy tranquilizers with which to do the deed. A doctor's assistant was taking some information from me one day and noticed, alerting my primary care physician and they put me on an antidepressant. Within a few weeks I couldn't believe I had ever even considered suicide. Within a couple of months I was off the antidepressants and that was that. This was the late 90's and the cancer treatment was completely successful and I've never had another depressed day since then. There's a lot of problems with the use and overuse of antidepressants, but I'm pretty sure they saved my life (along with a very alert and dedicated doctor's assistant).
We've got to get people to stop flushing old drugs down the toilet or tossing them in the garbage though. They're finding so many pharmaceutical substances in drinking water and soil and now the oceans that we're heading for bigger problems than depression. I can't believe there aren't already good methods for disposal of medications widely in use. All the hormones and antibiotics in my pork chops are bad enough, I don't need to get a pharmaceutical cocktail every time I take a drink of water.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Okay, after reading the summery of the study. Parasites in shrimp can cause them to travel toward light and swim against gravity. The parasites act as a serotonin modulator. One particular antidepressant Fluoxetine does the same thing. This action can be bad for the shrimp. The level of Fluoxetine was 100 ng/L. How many liters in the gulf? About 2.43400 × 10^18 liters. So we need to dump a littler over 24 million metric tons of Fluoxetine into the gulf to see this concentration? Actually I am asking, I could be wrong on my math.
Oh I get it, waste drugs should not be put into the ecosystem. They can affect animals just as much as humans. But the story this links to is just FUD and the study is behind a paywall.
There's depressed shrimp, bipolar shrimp, schizophrenic shrimp, manic depressive shrimp, pyromaniac shrimp (particularly dangerous at the moment), dementia shrimp, autistic shrimp, megalomanic shirmp, obsessive-compulsive shrimp, sleep walking shrimp, voyeuristic shrimp, shrimp gumbo, shrimp cocktail, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich... That's, that's about it.
My landlord killed himself with valium a few months ago, after a 12 year addiction. It was pretty obvious where things were headed, but his dealer^H^H^H^H^H^Hdoctor kept supplying him anyway. Eventually the temptation to keep upping the dose and feeling good overpowered his desire to live. A did a little research and found that this is a shockingly common problem.
Moral of the story: benzodiazephines suck. And your doctor may be more interested in paying off his student loans and buying a boat than being honest with himself about what's good for his patients.
What's the point? Struggle in the plankton race just to end up in some human's scampi? You work and work and end up covered in cocktail sauce? That's it, goodbye cruel world!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning