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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.
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!
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.
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.
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