First off, I think you made a good choice. If you have Andy's books and are amalgam-free, you're probably ready to get started. But there is one fairly important thing that needs to be mentioned before you do.

Andy wrote his books several years ago, and it is now almost universally accepted that the dosage in his books is a little high to start out with. I'm sure he'd change them if he were to write them today. He typically says 25-100 mg of ALA, or 50-200 mg of DMSA. The truth is you should probably start off taking only 12.5 mg of ALA or DMSA to start. You may have to back up and do even less, particularly with ALA. OTOH, if you can tolerate these dosages, you can move up pretty quickly in small incremental increases until you reach the maximum dosage that has no or very minimal side effects.

Using less of a dose does not reduce chelation as much you might think. The effect is not linear, but according to a comment by Andy that I can't find at the moment, he typified it as being 'somewhat less than the square root.'

Here's an example.

Square root of 12.5 is about 3.5
Square root of 50 is about 7.1

So doing 50 mg of ALA will be a little less than twice as effective as doing 12.5 mg. 50 mg may provoke some serious side effects, whereas most people who are not very ill or very sensitive can handle 12.5 mg with no or very few problems.

Ok, I don't want to make this too complex, but just want to get the basic idea out there. Start off with smaller doses than stated in the book, and increase in increments to find your comfort zone. It will make very little difference in chelation speed in the long run, and will be the safest route for you.

Good luck!