I take Melatonin most nights to sleep better. Sure would love to have a serotonin pill as well.
In: Biology
That’s kind of what SSRIs do – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. The difference is that your body uses serotonin for a *lot* of things, and making you happy on command is kind of a bad idea. That’s what heroin does, by messing with neurotransmitters like dopamine. If you can get happy just by taking pill, you would never be motivated to do anything other than to get more pills. And, drugs like heroin come with a *lot* of negative side effects.
The better thing to do is to allow your body to produce its own serotonin when it already wants to do that. And then just slow down how quickly that serotonin goes away. All neurotransmitters have a process of *reuptake*. They can’t just sit there, forever, because then their effects would never turn off when your body needs them to. So, after a short time, enzymes in your brain clean up the neurotransmitter. They get broken down into smaller bits to be put back together into new neurotransmitters, or they get vacuumed up as they are to get reused.
SSRIs, as the “reuptake inhibitor” part of the name suggests, carefully (selectively) stop the mechanisms that remove serotonin after it’s been used. Instead, the serotonin gets to hang out around your neurons and continue to trigger the receptors that it was already going to trigger. You never add *more* serotonin to your brain, and you never add serotonin when your brain wouldn’t be doing it on its own. You’re just allowing the serotonin to work for longer than it normally does.
There are still side-effects, many of which can be thoroughly unpleasant. Weight gain is common, because among other things, serotonin is also present in your guts and helps regulate hunger and controls movement of your intestinal muscles. SSRIs are not always a solution for everyone, but they can help a lot of people.
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