hi. psychiatry is...not scientific. :-(

one psych drug might be great, another terrible, another mediocre at best. even previous experience with a particular drug or drugs int he same class aren't always a guarantee that another trial will turn out to be successful. and so...

ok. the way I -personally- look at it, for -me- and -my life- (the - - because I'm not any kind of expert, and I"m not trying to tell you what to do or talk down to you) is this: the drugs alter brain chemistry. The drugs almost always bring along some adverse effects. Is my state of mind and quality of life better with the altered brain chemistry from drug x, or is it worse, or is it just...not worth it?

I take an 'atypical' tranquilizer. there's lots of risks with even the newest drugs of that class (actually...any drug, especially the psych drugs...) that almost no prescribers will actually talk to you about once you've been labeled with something "severe" and/or "chronic." so....

obviously, I read voraciously, anyway, and since psych stuff affects me, personally, I read a good bit of psych material, anti-psychiatry material, on and on. The result is that I've been able to negotiate with 'treatment providers,' so I'm on a psych drug I do OK with at a dose that's acceptable to me, and they (reluctantly...) talk about long term ill effects, too.

that's me. maybe one day I'll make a go of life drug-free, maybe not. Right now...not a viable option.

In your post, you said you could handle your problems, but not this drug. To me, that means...paxil isn't making the cut in the pros vs cons, risks vs benefits analysis. Given how some people -do not- do well on antidepressants and also how a lot of prescribers seem to be trained to tell us all to "stick with it, it'll get better!," even when data shows it sometimes doesn't...sometimes it does, sometimes it gets worse....

do you think you can grab a hold of a prescriber and get something else? do you even think that drugs are necessary, in your situation, in your life? are non-drug options available to you? what (if anything...) has provided relief in the past?

:-)