w00t w00t booyah

What makes that okay? The fact that I'm a sane and functional human being on drugs, whereas without I am not. I consider it no different from someone who needs insulin, and I don't like the 'addiction' and anti-pill mentality which prevents a lot of people from ever trying meds - which leads to suicides and ruined lives. I take birth control to keep from going psychotic and hitting things, too. If that's an addiction, I'm okay with being addicted to sane functionality, because it's a lot better then psychosis and suicidal depression. But calling it an addiction just adds to the burdens people face in getting help.

Which isn't to say that I think meds are under-prescribed. But I think a lot of mild to moderate cases of mood issues are getting pills when they need therapy - not to mention a ton of people with biological health issues, like pain, which get called 'depression' as a convenient label.

Cymbalta actually has an on-label for fibromyalgia now. I am not convinced that it's any more effective than the handful of cheaper, older antidepressants which many fibro people take offlabel for nerve pain, but this lets the Cymbalta people make money. Still, I'll take the research and add it to the stack; we'll take all the pain research we can get, even funded by chemical salesmen.

There are different chemical flavors of depression. In my case, my depression appears to be norepinephrine rather then the usually assumed dopamine. Dopamine antidepressants make me worse, and if I hadn't done my research I'd have been either cycling or off the drugs and not getting the help I needed, because therapy never made a dent. Cycling doesn't mean the drugs aren't right, but it may. There's also a lot of people who cycle through meds saying that the first one didn't work, when in fact it's likely to be a compliance issue.