I'm not sure if anyone is still monitoring this thread but I thought I would post my two cents. I suffered from a bought of debilitating depression about 10 years ago. It was brought on by stress which i don't handle very well. A year on prozac and therapy, and some major changes (getting rid of the crappy job i had) and I was pretty good. About 3 years ago I suffered another attack of depression. Could not get out of bed and miserable. Much worse this time.

Over the years I had gotten married, have two children, became self employed with a pretty good business - so this time the stresses werent things that could just be removed. My MD put me on Effexor XR. After about a week i started to feel better and then I took a nose dive and went back to the pit of despair. My MDs answer was more Effexor XR. He upped me to 225mg. For someone without medical insurance this was REALLY expensive.

I managed to climb to a point of being able to function but it was very up and down. I started seeing a therapist and things would stay good for about 6 weeks at a time followed by a not so bad period of depression. About a year later, I fell into the deep depression again. My therapist and I considered that I might be bi-polar or and we suggested to my medical doctor that I might try an add-on drug like Abilify. He was reluctant because of the nature of these drugs. My therapist offered two options. One was that i seek the help of a medical psychologist who could evaluate and better prescribe what was needed and the other was to see a friend of hers who was a naturopathic MD. I opted to try the naturopath first.

The Naturopath was AWESOME! She had a waiting list of 2 months but made room in her schedule to see me immediately. Diet and excercise were among her first recommendations and she gave me all kinds of nutritional info and a diet and excercise plan. I had put on about 35 pounds since I got on the Effexxor. She also put me on Adrecor and a 5HTP spray. I took the spit and pee test - and the results came back. Even with the Effexor I was producing almost NO seratonin. Several other levels were out of whack as well.

Based on this, she adjusted the amount of the Adrecor and the Spray that I was using and added Travacor. That was a year ago and I have been consistantly happy since. It was like a veil of clouds was lifted. I really missed me! And I gotta say - I have sorta gotten away from the diet and excercise plan. Thus, I have been unable to shed the additional weight. I see my MD later this month. I am still on the Effexor but I was to go off it and see what happens.

Conculsion - The natural stuff is expensive and not convered by insurance - but it is natural, has no long term effects and IT WORKS!