Regarding pill pushing, I do trust my doctor to be prescribing medicines that he feels will be of best benefit to me within the scope of his knowledge and experience. In other words, he prescribes the most effective medicine he can and considers our financial situation to boot.

As an example, he wallowed around trying different standard medications like venlafaxine and bupoprion because they were available in generic form and cost effective to us. It was only when he couldn't make them work that he moved me Viibryd (which has no generic equivalent).

Now to answer the question more generically ... I don't trust anyone. I know what's going in me and the mechanisms it uses. Same doctor was stunned when I mention that once I dropped under 150 mg of venlafaxine, the side effects wore off, but the drop in norepinephrine took its toll on me. I knew that 150 mg was the break over point when it started to work on norepinephrine levels as well.

Why don't I trust him? Because he's really not that interested. And as proof, he'll go out of his way to make sure my wife's meds are current and available. I'll go to pick mine up at the pharmacy and he won't have called them in. (When we were both just in to see him!) I'll have to have the pharmacist call to get them filled.

So, to sum up. I trust he isn't working just to line his pockets, but he sure could care less that I'm there.