One interesting downside to SSRIs in general I heard about recently comes via Helen Fisher's research (http://www.helenfisher.com/) - SSRIs suppress the dopamine systems in the brain, and high levels of dopamine are associated with the 'artisan' personality type (manic, creative, risk-taking, autonomous). High levels of serotonin are associated with the 'builder' type (managerial, traditional, stubborn).
So by taking SSRIs to hack your brain's level of shyness you might actually end up dampening your entrepreneurial vibes and becoming a middle-manager. Crazy, huh.
Irrespective of the actual reason behind the result, I found this, through personal experience, to be true. I spent the greater part of 2 years on several SSRIs, and went from a creative writer/clever programmer/poetry writing (clinically depressed) geek to a quiet, emotionless "normal" person riding an emotional flat line.
Perhaps being depressed makes me more creative. Perhaps the medication suppresses something inadvertantly, who knows (AFAIK, no one does, at least for now). But there was a definite correlation between the SSRI and my creative side.
I know plenty of others, including myself, who back up the anecdote with the same story. When does an anecdote stop becoming an anecdote and start becoming evidence? ;)
I think HN needs to have more discussion on this point. For instance, I used to listen to Art Bell: his callers gave numerous anecdotes about UFOs, but I wouldn't say those anecdotes added up to evidence of any sort. On the other hand, if you know 1000 people, and 20 of them have seen UFOs, that's definitely evidence, all else being equal. (The people you know don't exactly constitute an unbiased sample, but they aren't a meaninglessly biased sample either.)
There is a personality questionnaire called the "Temperament and Character Inventory" which purports to partition personality into a few dimensions of temperament some of which (supposedly) emerge from the independent neurotransmitter systems of the brain. [1] So basically if you trust the test you could use it to gauge your dopaminergic and serotonergic activity level (among other things). I've not researched the test enough to draw my own conclusions about it. Thus I can't say this it is a "good" way to measure anything in particular. I've not taken the test yet as I am loathe to sit through 240 questions only to find out things I already know. But I probably will at some point. You can take it online for $14.50 though a website somehow associated with its designer C. Robert Cloninger, M.D. [2]
I write code for medical devices for a living; if a substance found in the body is therapeutically interesting, then someone, somewhere has built an instrument to measure it :-)
The comment author almost certainly assumed that the measurement would have a meaning - specifically, that it would determine whether he might benefit from a drug.
There is no doubt that we can measure the concentration of dopamine or serotonin in an aqueous solution (and eventually, within a brain.) Whether there can be any clinical point to such a measurement is debatable.
Read the actual arguments in the linked article, and refute them. The source is irrelevant.
Alternatively, ask an honest psychiatrist whether anyone has any solid idea just why the drugs work, when they work. Or why they don't, when they don't.
"How are the chemical imbalances which are the supposed basis for the prescription of "antidepressants" diagnosed? Is exploratory neurosurgery performed, using some technique that allows the surgeon to quantify synaptic transmitter levels? No, the very idea is absurd. Is a spinal tap, then, done to at least measure, on a gross scale, the distribution of neurotransmitter metabolites? Of course not – how many people have undergone spinal taps before receiving a prescription for Effexor®? Is blood at least drawn, to test something? No. This diagnosis – the diagnosis of the most subtle of chemical disorders in the most complex organ in the body – is made on the basis of the patient's report of feeling sad and lethargic. Try to imagine a hematologist diagnosing leukemia this way to get a sense of just how ridiculous this idea is."
"The principal reason for rejecting biopsychiatry (aside from the fact that intellectual honesty demands its rejection) is that it locates the cause of psychic suffering in people's "bad brains," and excludes the conditions of modern life, or anything else, from consideration as the cause of such pain."
Note also that the author defends your right to take any drug, if you wish to. However, he defends it from the personal freedom point of view, and attacks the (popular yet unfounded) notion that these drugs return the individual to some nebulous ideal of "mental health."
So by taking SSRIs to hack your brain's level of shyness you might actually end up dampening your entrepreneurial vibes and becoming a middle-manager. Crazy, huh.