Waking in the Dark

The doctor who was telling me that I had a mental disease called depression was not trained as a Psychiatrist, but he began treating me, seeming to have a handle on my problem. He had been our family doctor for several years, and I did have confidence in him which is important to start with when dealing with depression.
The first step was to get my body chemistry back as close to normal as possible with drugs, it seems to me, since he started me with Valium for the first week or so until the antidepressants had time to build up in my blood. I think as I look back and after I have been exposed to more doctors’ opinions, I was fortunate that this doctor was forward thinking enough to try to work with me. Of course, it could have been a disaster too if he had guessed wrong, and I had gone off the deep end becoming violent, or suicidal. He did take me off one of the meds after a short time and I went backwards for a week or so, this was how precarious my body chemistry was evidently. He apologized for putting me through another bad time. I was not that much away from a time in history, when I would have been put into an institution and subjected to shock treatments, or who knows what. I count my blessings and shudder when I think of what could have been. I was off work at this time for another month, at which time we took possession of our little eighteen acre farm, with another old farm house, but more livable and with more room and potential to become "Home". I went through quite an education, or period of growth starting at this time.