I posted here probably three months back that I had started taking SAM-E for depression. So far, I've used Nature Made and the CVS store brand...both seem to work about the same, so I grab whichever one is on sale.

Basically, it does seem to help some, and is probably worth a try for those who are looking for an over the counter alternative to "real" antidepressants. I've tried as little as 200mg a day and as much as 1600mg a day (max recommended dosage). My mood and outlook was the best at 1600mg/day, but it also made me feel anxious and I felt like my heart was racing a couple times (I'm a 5'8" 200lb male), so I dialed it back to 1200mg/day and lost the anxious feeling.

Problem is, SAM-E is not cheap...even on sale. For the past 2-3 weeks I've been at 400mg in an attempt to save money, and I've been feeling fairly stable (even through a friend's suicide last week), but can definitely feel myself sinking into my old usual dark place from time to time. I think I'm going to try 800mg for a while and see if that is enough to keep my moments of feeling down from getting out of hand.

For pretty much the entire time I've been taking it (no matter what amount), I've felt a pretty huge difference in mood. More energy, smiles feel more natural and less forced, outlook on life has improved (quite a bit at 1200-1600mg/day...just barely at 200-400 mg/day). It might be really helpful for some people who can afford the expense and who aren't super depressed.

I'm going to continue taking it for now, but I feel like it's not strong enough for my depression which has been with me for many, many years. It's been nice to smile and laugh and feel generally better, but life still feels like a chore every day and I'm not necessarily more active or getting more stuff done. I'm still hoping that I just have so many layers of negativity, self-doubt, depression, anxiety, etc that it's just taking a while to work through all of it and that I will eventually feel like living life again. But, for the time being, it's more like the SAM-E is just making things more bearable, but not necessarily much easier.

So, it might be really helpful for those with a lighter depression...probably not too helpful for those who are more seriously depressed. I should mention it's done absolutely nothing for my social anxiety. At any rate, not the solution I was hoping for, but at least life has been tolerable.