Depression is associated with underactivity at serotenergic and norandrenoeric synapses. Antidepressants such as Prozac tend to counteract this, but how? Supposedly it works by blocking the reuptake of serotonin, correcting chemical imbalance and so and so! The concept can be difficult to understand, since both the recipient and giver of serotonin is cells inside your own head.
A conceptual illustration of SSRIs function (not pharmacokinetically correct)
One can think of Prozac as something which solve the unfair and dysfunctional distribution of serotonin between to different cells. Let`s say…
You own a small exclusive candy shop, then Madonna drops by to get some chocolate. She pays with a 100 dollar bill. Now, lets say cash is like serotonin, which in this case makes you the recipient-cell, and Madonna the donor-cell. Because she payed with a 100 dollar bill and the chocolate was only 2 dollar, she expects to reuptake some of the cash she sent out, right? Now there are different solutions to this exchange conflict, with an SSRI like Prozac for instance, the reuptake is inhibited. You are unable to give back any money, don’t really have that much change available, which makes Madonna unable to reuptake the the changes i.e you keep it, now you have more cash (serotonin). Yey…and you are not that depressed anymore!
Anyway, generalising, one can say In depressed people the mechanism for “keeping cash” which fairly and neededly belongs to you is dysfunctional. You always fail stopping the other part taking back too much cash. You become depleeted, sad…and brooke. SSRI helps you stop people taking your money, though prozac does not work for everyone, more about that later!
Posted by kishikaisei 
