Thank you for sharing that. I feel it's important more people share their stories. I am planning to write a book to share my experiences including the solutions I found that helped me, the problems with the healthcare system that I have encountered along the way, and my proposed solutions for that as well.

I am grateful to be able to say I survived and learned my lesson regarding medications in my early 20s (35 now), after an SSRI caused me to develop severe hyperacusis (hypersensitivity to sound) - where I could hear at -14 Dbs at different frequencies, could hear through a soundproof sound room, etc. I was in what I considered a torture state for 8 months, after which I had years of post-traumatic stress from the experience to try to deal with - which is mostly what got me into yoga.

Prior to that a different medication had given me intense burning sensation through my body, however the doctor to counter that (not believing me either) just put me on 4mg of benzodiazepine per day - which eventually the burning sensation caught up and surpassed the numbing of the benzos. I had other very negative experiences from medications. They all made everything worse - with doctors not listening, while essentially lying and continuing the medication experiment on me - until I stopped trusting doctors. There is a very real problem of indoctrination and of industrial complex influencing the healthcare system including inherently being integrated into the education system.

The first medication I was put on was at 17, it's always shocking to hear about children and young teenagers being medicated - and I know it's common that medications are the first thing tried without even much basic testing other than to do blood work to see if nutrient levels et al are within a normal range.

I have a complex history more than relating to depression. I had been diagnosed with depression - though I later learned from my own research and seeking answers/solutions - my depression was caused by a disconnect to emotion/a developmental block likely caused by painful childhood ear infections, and that was only unblocked through a sound therapy called Auditory Integration Training; at 1,000 Hz frequency if a person has an imbalance showing there then they 100% will be depressed: medication won't help them, talk therapy won't help - they're just stuck in that state. There's a book called "Hearing Equals Behaviour: Updated and Expanded" that shares the science, case studies, research on it all. The neat part is you can do a diagnostic through an audiogram and get concrete evidence of the imbalance before actually doing the sound therapy - and it's non-invasive and it will help development continue properly for at least 6 months - so you continue to get improvement.

There were also food sensitivity issues that caused some of my problems, one of those foods being wheat - where interestingly there is also an association to wheat and ear infections. Wheat fully acts like an opiate for me, where if I had even a single slice of bread made with wheat within 20 minutes I'd start to feel relaxed/almost euphoric - and then within 45 minutes I'd start going through withdrawal, irritated/irritable; imagine eating wheat (hits of an opiate) 2-3 times per day during your body-brain development, and how that could impact development of your nervous system/brain. It was in fact the audiologist who helped me with the hyperacusis who told me to stop eating wheat, and so eventually once I was healthy enough and not eating it - I could really notice the impact of when I would accidentally eat it.

My journey of pain and suffering unfortunately didn't end there though with medications. Fast forward to about 3 years ago, skipping plenty of details: as I did more and more holistic health practices I eventually stumbled into Ayahuasca ceremonies. Ayahuasca is considered a plant medicine and my overall experience is that it is healing. Many people describe a single ceremony as to being the equivalent to 100 therapy sessions - for how much emotion you process in a single night, the insights you can gain about yourself, your environment, the universe; Ayahuasca's main mechanism is breaking down the ego mind, meaning that it can breakdown layers of coping - suppressed/repressed memories - while having you in an environment and state that allows you to process those emotions/experiences that at the time of the suppression/repression the person wasn't able to process them for whatever reason. I had emotional benefit from the ceremonies - among giving me clarity on , unfortunately I wasn't only exposed to emotional pain - however I was also exposed to physical pain from a series of old injuries throughout my life - starting at the age of 5 or 6.

The past few years I have been slowly healing the pain mostly through stem cell injections. It's been a slow process for a few reasons, partly that regenerative medicine is relatively new - and because my case seems to be quite unique and how debilitating/disruptive the amount of physical pain I had severely impacted my executive function. I'm normally in Toronto and area, though currently in San Francisco to pass some time and be in a warmer climate, needing to wait another 2 months for the next stem cell treatment in Colorado; it's hard to quantify though the last treatment I had ~2 months ago reduced the pain overall by ~60%.

It looks like we already follow each other on Twitter - can't remember where we know each other - maybe through AVC or where we would have met? I remember your name though! Maybe it was at a Mashable conference many years back..