not the motorcycle diaries

I found this a therapeutic read for my own full-body walk through the drowsing and dyspeptic valley of paroxetine:

“… there is particular significance in the oral administration of antidepressants: there is an intimate connection between the gut and depression, making intervention via the gut an especially felicitous means of treatment for depressed mood (Wilson, 2004a). (…). In most cases, the gut itself is not the target of therapeutic action; the drug is being released into the body some distance from its intended site of action (Katzung, 2001). The pathways from the gut to that target site are often circuitous, and it is these pathways that have arrested my critical interest … the physiological itinerary of an antidepressant takes in every organ of the body.

(…)

My hypothesis is this: the biological disintegration of mood is a break-down not of the brain per se, or of the liver or the gut—it is a breakdown of the relations among organs. The pharmaceutical treatment of depression has to be the management— not of a place or a centre or even a neurological pathway—but of an organic capacity to connect. When they work, SSRIs reiterate the serotonergic networks that traverse the body and reanimate the natural affinities among organs. Effectively administered, SSRIs can promote a profound, long-lasting, organic empathy.”

- Elizabeth A. Wilson, ‘The Work of Antidepressants: preliminary notes on how to build an alliance between feminism and psychopharmacology’, BioSocieties 2006 1:125-131.