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beauflow, you come across just fine. Your disillusionment is understandable (to me, at least.) I hope I haven't just reinforced it. Again, your boyfriend just doesn't put a foot wrong when it comes to sensible feedback. He might be the real voice of reason here. While I believe that the points I've made are valid, my view is probably tainted by my own disillusionment. That can be contagious, especially because you are perceptive. Nobody has actually handed you a paper with a prescription written on it . . . yet. I had a friend who decided she wanted further evaluation and talk therapy, but not medication, which she tried and found of no help. She continued to fill the prescription and, then, just didn't take the pills. She flushed them. But she went to her appointments to talk. She made some serious recovery from being housebound to being able to be out working and taking classes. I can't seem to condemn what she did. I would rather she could have just been honest. But I won't second-guess her. She believed she would have been discharged from getting any help, had she done things the straight forward way.
When I was 19 years old, I went to a psychiatric clinic run by a prestigious hospital. I was invited to be in an experimental study for a new medication. With the med, I would have gotten talk therapy too. I walked out saying, "No thanks, I don't need to be drugged." By the time I was 25 y.o. I was in pretty bad shape. It turned out that I really did need medication. (At this point, I was having suicidal thoughts and coping by episodic drinking when my fears felt unbearable.) I improved a lot on the medication.
Still, I wish that at age 19, I could have been given a chance to talk things out with a capable professional. Instead, I deteriorated for another 6 years. I should have had every right to decline meds when I was 19 and still get treatment. It is written in the patient's bill of rights that they give you that you have the right to participate in decisions about what to accept and what to decline. Read that paper. If you've thrown it away, then ask for a copy and really read it. Think about what it says. Maybe you can use that to support getting what you need and not what you may have no need for.
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