That's absolutely true.

I belong to a SAD forum. It was the first thing I diagnosed myself with, back in autumn 2004. I stuck around the forum after I started figuring things out because I wanted to share my knowledge of alt med; if someone had been there to do it for me, it would have saved me a lot of suffering.

A few people have thanked me for it in the past. Unfortunately at the moment the clientele there seem to be pill-poppers, almost all of them. As far as I can tell, none of them are interested in alternatives; it's as if they'd rather suffer every winter than entertain the notion that there could be an actual cure for them if they did some work. I try to be patient and quiet until someone wants to talk to me but mostly what I see at the moment on any thread is people saying "go see your doctor . . . if your med doesn't work, find another that "suits" you . . ." It's hard to endure that.

One person who seemed very glad to have had my help in coming off an antidepressant, recently panicked and is now on Seroxat (Paxil). God what an idiot. I have said nothing to him, which is probably the best thing.

At the end of the day we need to be there for people who are open to this knowledge, which can be hard to come by. People need to choose this path for themselves. It just makes me very sad to see them rejecting that knowledge in favour of drugs. It's going to take a big, big shift in people's thinking to ever get them away from the idea that drugs can fix you and accept that their health is actually their own responsibility.