Depression and Addiction

Depression is a common cause of drug addiction and alcoholism. Many patients who present to Florida Detox are simply treating depression with Vicodin, Percocet, Oxycontin, cocaine, or alcohol. These drugs including alcohol give the patient an immediate dopamine surge in the brain’s pleasure center, this temporarily treats their depression.  The cause of depression in these patients is frequently an inherited deficiency of brain chemicals like dopamine or serotonin.  At Florida Detox and Wellness Institute, we correct the deficiency which stops craving for drugs like Oxycontin, cocaine and alcohol.

There are multiple biochemical causes of depression including hormonal deficiencies. The prevalence of depression in females triples after puberty.   Hormonal imbalance changes brain chemistry causing depression, anxiety and insomnia. These disorders ultimately lead to addiction.

Dr. Sponaugle’s research at Florida Detox indicates that many female patients suffer deficiency of hormones that modulate neurotransmitters in the brain.   Unfortunately, most doctors in America are unaware that serotonin activity is greatly compromised in a woman’s brain when her estradiol levels fall below 80 pg/nl. Even with normal serotonin levels, she can suffer symptoms of a low serotonin brain when estradiol is suboptimal. Estrogen dropout, postpartum and in midlife, can create tremendous depression and anxiety disorders in females. The initial evaluation of new onset depression in a female should always begin with measurement of estradiol and testosterone. See Hormones and Addiction, an article written by Dr. Sponaugle for the American Academy of Anti-aging Medicine.

Most doctors in America assume that all depression is caused by serotonin deficiency. We have known since 2001 that our brain’s pleasure center [nucleus accumbens] actually runs on dopamine. Dopamine deficiency is much more common in causation of depression than American physicians realize. Becuse they do not study new concepts in neuroscience or practice with tunnel vision, their knee jerk reflex is usually to treat all depressed patients with an SSRI mediation.

A classic depression patient presents to Florida Detox addicted to Vicodin after she has failed treatment for depression from her local physician. She has received multiple serotonin antidepressants all of which caused worsening of her depression symptoms. The only drug that effectively treated her depression is the Vicodin her friend gave her for menstrual cramps. Opioid pain pills cause a temporary release of dopamine from brain storage units. This is an effective but dangerous treatment that many frustrated, repeatedly misdiagnosed dopamine deficient patients will use.

Raising serotonin activity inhibits dopamine release to the pleasure center, and causes more depression in a patient whose depression is not from serotonin deficiency, but rather, a dopamine deficient pleasure center. When we accurately diagnose and treat these patients with dopamine enhancing medication, their depression subsides as does their craving for dopaminergic drugs and alcohol.