I'm sorry, Dan, that your depression is out of control. I'm very familiar with how that feels. It is disabling.

My own experience with pdocs is that they are quite willing to try different meds. I've learned thru bitter experience not to hang too much of my hope on the meds. An old med that I've used for a long time, amitriptyline, does make an important difference for me. I don't think I'll ever stop taking it. But it doesn't really prevent depression. It makes it easier for me to do what I need to do. In that way I am better able to climb out of depression. But I keep falling into the pit and having to climb out over and over. I was on a slew of meds. That slew didn't make things better. So I'll stick to this one drug that I trust.

It's interesting to me that you have symptoms of anxiety. It has seemed to me that depression can be the result of anxiety. Anti-anxiety meds, like benzos, didn't help me much either. I think the main thing is to stick with your meds in an organized fashion. That's one leg of the stool, so to speak. The other legs are to have an organized pattern for your daily living - awfully hard to keep to when depression comes down . . . and to have some satisfying interaction with other humans - awfully hard, also, to manage when you are depressed.

I don't think your Lexapro stopped working. I really believe that the meds do the same thing one day as another. How we feel changes because our lives are very different from one day to another.

It could be that the Lexapro never did you any good in the first place. Maybe you just hit an interval where you were improving for reasons independent of taking the Lexapro. When people say that controlling depression is a matter of "getting on the right med" I can not connect with that at all. A number of things have to go right and a helpful med is just one component . . . and possibly not the most important component.

If you are grieving the loss of people you have loved, no pill can fix that. My theory is you have to crowd out the grief with caring about new things in your life that mean something to you.

Not everyone who goes through an experience of terrible loss becomes chronically depressed. I think that's because they get too interested in the things they still have in their lives after the loss. And they go on to bring new things into their lives. Also, the support of others is huge. If you don't have a good network of social support, then that is probably a lot of the problem. Humans are not designed to deal with things all on their own. If you have had to do that a lot in your life, then you have known a terrible stress that I think is worse than the loss you are dealing with.

Caring friends can't just be manufactured out of thin air, though. Maybe you could talk a little more about your losses and about what you have for social support. I hope you find coming to PC helpful. It's not the total answer, either. No one thing is. It takes putting together a lot of things that help a little.