Pharmacology - long term use of dyphenhydramine as an ssri?

[hoodabudda]

benadryl/dyphenhydramine is an ssri and swim has found that ssris help with his marijuana induced anxiety and wants to start himself on a daily 25mg dose daily for the ssri effect it has because he is a daily marijuana user. is there any long term effects of using dyphenhydramine daily?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphenhydramine

[Zaprenz]

SSRI = Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor

Dephenhydramine would not be classed as selective as its main pharmacological role would be H1 antagonism as well as many anti-muscarinic side effects.

5-HT re-uptake inhibition would be of relatively low potency compared to its other effects.

This is in essence why SSRIs were made, they were intended to be more selective with fewer anti-muscarinic side effects. [Or at least marketed that way]

Thats not to say diphenhydramine is useless - it can be used for anxiety but you couldn't really claim the effects were from its inherent 5-ht re-uptake inhibition alone and SWIM would imagine its use soley as an anti-depressant would be fairly crude or ineffective.

Anti-muscarinic side effects from long term use would certainly be no surprise: These could include for example dry mouth, urinary retention, pyschomotor impairment, cognitive impairment etc.

In short: Used to treat certain symptoms of depression (like inability to fall asleep) it may be of temporary use but to treat the other aspects such as mood it would most likely be ineffective - possibly even have a detremental effect.

Anyway hope this has helped a little.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good post

[Graduisic]

swims doctor recommended him to take diphenhydramine as a sleep aid. he never said anything about any effects on serotonin; which would be pertinent information as swim went to the doctor for an ssri.

swim notices a greater deal of similarity in mental state with diphenhydramine as he would from taking a tricyclic anti-depressant: amitryptaline

[sarbanes]

Diphenhydramine has such a long track record, its inherent safety has been demonstrated over its long history. Such small dosages probably wouldn't be cause for alarm, generally. Its a very weak SSRI - usefull for WD from tramadol (as not only does it help substitute for tramadol's SSRI effects, but potentiates the lower dose of tramadol as you taper down, and is a usefull mU opioid agonist potentiator, as many central H1 antihistamines are).

There is huge safety benefit in the huge population (guinea pigs) who have saftely taken it over the years. Do a Google Scholar on it, and try to come up with dangers. Since its an amine, there might be slight tetragonic concerns? This is why Pyralamine was WD from market. Maybe take a sustained rel Vit C with your daily dose - which is a good idea if you eat any nitrite cured meats, anyway. Anyway, getting off on major tangent.