Re: OP with amalgam

Trapper,
My psych is near and dear to my heart... he is a DO instead of an MD to begin with, so he tries to consider the whole person in his treatment. I feel very comfortable with him. He also recognizes my training and intelligence, and is encouraging of my desire (which waxes and wanes) to continue on to medical school. Although I would prefer to be an ND. NDs are neither trained nor licensed to practice in my current state of residence.

I am not one to totally turn my head from psychiatric medications. I can not function as a normal human being without heavy doses of antidepressants, as proven by many years of crazy behaviour (which I now cringe to remember as myself.) Alternative treatments provided little/no relief from my disfunctional brain chemistry. It's something I inherited. Pretty much all my relatives are nuts... and anyone who's functional is medicated.

I am trying to step down from as many medications as I can. Right now I have a plethora of health issues and an accompanying number of prescriptions. Hopefully this journey into better health will snowball in a good way, if I can continue to find treatments to solve the underlying problems.

Yes, it is all suspect when you're under a psych's care. But you know what? That's OK with me right now. If someone had intervened with my mother's depressive episodes, it would have spared me a lot of pain as a young person. I KNOW she asked for help... she had thyroid prescriptions to show for it. Low thyroid mimics depression. She ended up self-medicating with alcohol. We are now discovering that the behaviors of Depression are passed along to the next generation just like the tendencies to severe Depression are passed along in our genes.

Oh, that's enough for now. Probably TMI and I've GOT to get some work done... sometime today!