I know for me, my experience with antidepressants has been pretty disastrous. I just got all the side effects and if anything did work, it was not long before the improvements left. I could never sustain it on them for some reason. I just got odd side effects and I gave up.

It's hard to find something that works when you have mercury because mercury messes up so many things and causes reactions to so much, that it's limited what you can tolerate.

I'm sure you've heard all this before, but are you following a candida diet? I'm sure you've read in Andy's book that candida can cause it's own seperate misery from the mercury. Both of them go together and their toxicities combined can be the last straw for many.

If you're not following it, you might need to. The things that can really screw a mercury toxic person up are sugar, gluten and yeast. They are the culprits that make life even worse. Limiting them is not really good enough, they have to be eliminated in order to reduce yeast levels in the body. Even fruits and milk sometimes have to be also because of the natural sugar, though some get away with having limited amounts.

Are you using Andy's protocol for chelation? I think his is the safest around.

Hi, yeah you could try eliminating those things, not just limiting. Not easy of course. But the cravings start to disappear after a while, it's just the initial battle that's hard to go through. But after the body has gotten them out of the system, it can help it concentrate easier on other things plus can heal and renew itself better. Some find the candida diet alone can almost eliminate their depression and other symptoms. I don't know if I'd go that far, for me it USED to do that and I had my depression almost completely disappear by elminating sugar, yeast and gluten grains, among many other symptoms. I felt like a new person in some ways, but still had mercury poisoning affecting me in other ways.

I wish I could get that improvement nowadays, but I have other issues that are hindering my body from benefitting like it used to.

I'm scared to try ALA at the moment. Many people can only use very small doses of both DMSA and ALA, not the doses suggested by Andy, as they are too high for many of us. Many have to use 25 mg or lower to cope.

No wonder you feel like you're losing it. That is the highest dose I've heard of anybody using of ALA.

Tell me, did you use DMSA on it's own for a few months before adding ALA? That is crucial. 100 mg of DMSA is very very high on it's own, but 400 mg of ALA has blown me away.

You should be able to stabilise things again if you knock off the ALA and just take DMSA for a time (maybe at lower doses like 25 - 50 mg).

But don't use ALA until you have reduced your blood/tissue levels of mercury, otherwise you risk moving more mercury INTO the brain by using ALA too early. If you haven't already, you need to use just DMSA alone for about 3 months, then later add ALA. But again, at far lower doses than what you've been using.

Of course, you can get the mercury back out again at some point, but you can see the risks.

alpha lipoic acid causes a lot of symptoms/side effects even at relatively low doses, so no wonder you feel over the edge.

I'd concentrate on DMSA for a while and just use moderate doses of it. Maybe 25 mg or so. If you can handle more of it, ok, but definitely don't add ALA until you're ready and then only very small doses to start out. I would never go over 25 mg of ALA, until I was certain I could cope.

You may know all this already and have already done it. And if you have, I'd still go back to DMSA for a while to try and bring things a little back into balance. Adjust the doses down to tolerance.

Your symptoms should start to abate at some point, but you will really feel very unstable for a while. That would flatten anybody!

Hope you improve soon.