Crazy meds!

So, I recently got functional health insurance (THANKS OBAMA), and with it, the financial means to deal with my very, very long-standing depression in a manner that doesn't involve ineffective OTC herbal crap, questionable internet semi-drugs that may or may not be legal, or alcohol abuse.

I've been into the local mental health center a couple of times in the past month, and both the admitting doctor and my current psychologist agree that medication would probably be very helpful for my particular case. Of course, crazy meds are tricky things to get right, as a quick search for Effexor horror stories or any search about benzodiazapene withdrawal will tell you. My only previous experience with antidepressants was about three months on Celexa a few years ago, which I dropped due to a combination of money issues and the fact that it made me pretty lazy...it did, however, improve my mood a lot and gave me the ability to actually function in social situations.

Anyways, since I would like to get this right as quickly as possible, and because getting in to see a prescribing psychiatrist is quite difficult, I would like to know if anyone here has experience with antidepressants that they could share. QUICK EDIT: I'm slightly inclined towards Cymbalta or Effexor at the moment, because while the discontinuation effects are scary, they're supposedly very good for long-term treatment, and frankly, I expect to be on something for the rest of my life; I've been dealing with various levels of depression for about 15 years now.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I probably should have clarified that I have appointments with both a therapist and a prescribing doctor set up already, since I think I gave the impression that I was going to order random pills from some shady online pharmacy. My weird semi-public, semi-private insurance covers mental healthcare 100% and has no co-pays on most drugs except for weird evergreened stuff like Pristiq and Nexium, so at least any treatment regimen I start on should be stable instead of some weird on-off rushed thing like my previous experience with Celexa.

Anyways, I did kind of expect that different medications would affect people differently. It is good to see that therapy helped a lot of people out, since I definitely have a lot of weird self-defeating/self-destructive thought patterns that are (relatively) easy to identify but much, much harder to actually deal with.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Quick update: Unfortunately, thanks to the wonderful upper Midwestern winter, my second therapist visit did get delayed for a bit until tomorrow morning. That said, I did get in to see my prescribing doctor, who put me on Celexa. Only been on it about a week, but it's already doing me quite a bit of good! Less irritability and social anxiety, and I think I'm hitting the point where my energy and mood are improving too.

Just wish the yawn would go away.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.