I'm not awake enough yet to write a good reply to your question. I suppose I want to try to live as normal a life as possible in spite of the depression.

There's a fairly new book called "Eat Move Sleep: How Small Choices Lead to Big Changes"
that I am interested in reading. It focuses on making small changes to diet, activity, and sleep habits. Small changes are about all that I am capable of at the moment, and I agree strongly with a statement from the book "I treat my diet, activity, and sleep as if they are deeply interconnected."

If I could afford it, I would definitely go to a holistic or naturopathic doctor for treatment. They usually don't take insurance, though.

Social connections are another area that I have let degrade greatly as a result of my health problems.

I suppose I think that if we're lucky, our meds will make us well enough to work on all the other areas needed to make a healthy life. We may never be able to leave our meds behind, but I like to think that we can live a good life even with our illness.

I do know a couple of people who managed to get off meds and pretty much "get over" their depression. It involved huge lifestyle changes - job change from full-time to part-time in a field that they loved, healthy eating, lots of time outside in the sun, nutritional supplements, regular massage, low stress lifestyle.