I did it – I switched p-docs after more than a month of trying. He said I was going through parental issues with him, seeking approval and feeling anger. Perhaps that’s why I was leaving? No, it was because he is out of my insurance network and a little extra money goes a long way toward making a body happier.

I’m not happy that I left him. I feel like I’m losing a friend – a friend who saved my life a year ago whom I’m now dumping because he likes to eat out at expensive restaurants and I can’t come along for the companionship.

I can’t say I recommend what I’ve done throughout my therapy “career,” which is to switch doctors after one year or less. I’ve done it with every doctor I’ve had, and it’s led to a severe lack of continuity. I don’t know who I am in therapy, really. It’s all still a guessing game of how to act with each new doctor.

At least with this switch my current (old?) therapist is interested in keeping me on my medications, which I can’t say for my last one, who let me leave her care without even so much as a warning of what going off Effexor would feel like. Not pretty. Mind zaps, body zaps, depression and anxiety working their way out of the corners to aggravate me again. Slowly, I became full-blown depressive-manic, by which I mean I was depressive aggressively, irritable to the n-th degree, and hopeless. Almost violent, mostly toward myself.

I have a new doctor lined up. I don’t know much about him. I started seeing him while I was trying to decide what to do about leaving my current doc. Awkward sessions commenced. He told me straight up that he couldn’t be my doctor while I was still going to the other one, that he couldn’t touch my medications (that I could tell he wanted to meddle with). Long pauses ensued. Now I can go back with my head held higher and report, like a good little boy, that I’ve left my other doctor and I’m all his. See? Mommy and Daddy issues again. Something to work on, clearly.

I just hope he doesn’t take away my precious Clonazepam.