Heal Thyself

Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied by drink. ~Mark Twain, Note-Book, 1935

There's another kind of antidepressant, one that you can get over the counter and use as part of a home-treatment program. It's called alcohol.
Like other ADs, this one has side effects, but they're typically more fleeting and often less severe. You can even mix this one with more traditional antidepressants and get a heightened effect. And it works quickly and is out of your system more rapidly than the other ADs.
Depending upon your drink of choice, this can be a relatively inexpensive route. Alas, I don't think insurance will handle any of the costs, so you probably can't just get by with a co-pay. It would be cool if you could: Budweiser would be generic, craft beers premium; single-barrel whiskey would be more expensive than Jack Daniel's. Insurance might have a place after all. Someone would have to come up with a formula for the appropriate co-pays, dosages, etc. It would be complicated, but I think it could be done.
Some people would even make their own at home, as evidenced by the popularity of home-brewing. And I hear tell of distilleries in Appalachia, so it seems as if people have been self-medicating for a while. I wouldn't know the first fucking thing about developing a serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor at home. Grab some hops, yeast and barley, though, and you could be on your way.
Like any other kind of medication, alcohol holds abuse potential. My father medicated himself right into the grave at age 49. I found it perversely interesting when my mother gave me a measuring glass (a jigger) that my father used to use. "Here, son, this is the the gun your father used to kill himself. Enjoy."
According to a recent study, antidepressant use in the U.S. doubled from 1996-2005. The study found that 5.84 percent of U.S. residents aged 6 and over were using antidepressants in 1996, compared with 10.12 percent in 2005. That's an increase from 13.3 million people to 27 million people. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_87676.html
According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics for 2007, 61% of adults drank alcohol within the past year and 21% had five or more drinks on at least one day. According to a Census Bureau survey done from 2006-2008, the U.S. adult population (older than 18) was 227,431,128. So, 61% of that would be 138,732,988 people using alcohol. That's clearly more than 27 million. People consuming five or more drinks amounted to about 47.8 million, again more than people using more conventional antidepressants.
So let's say that those who don't binge have it all under control and imbibe casually, don't encounter any problems, etc. That still leaves nearly 48 million consuming five or more drinks. College enrollment in 2006 was 20.5 million, the Census says. So if we factor out the college kids, we have about 28 million people who consumed five drinks or more on at least one occasion, about the same as people who use conventional ADs.
So, why so much alcohol use? Probably not because people feel great to begin with. If you already felt great, would you drink? This is to some extent conjecture, but I suspect the widespread abuse of alcohol points to a broader feeling of discontent.
Aside from being readily available, alcohol (especially in the circles in which I travel) has fewer stigmas attached to it that antidepressants. No lie, I've heard adult alcoholics say they wouldn't take antidepressants because they didn't want to be drug addicts.
In fact, we create community events that have drinking at their core. Weddings, birthdays, going to the game, holiday parties, funerals, just sitting around in bars.... It's a cultural phenomenon. We couldn't do the same with other antidepressants, since they often take weeks to work, but it could be kind of cool to have a smorgasbord of such pills to choose from. Start out with a Prozac, switch off to an Effexor, cap off the night with a Remeron, of course.
Alcohol has its charms, more so than the pills. Its insidious nature, though, for some people, is that feeling of never being sated. Conventional antidepressants don't carry the same allure (I've had two of these pills, let me pop a few more). Alcohol, on the other hand, can create a feeling in some people of never being enough. Generally, one drink must lead to eight. So that gets more expensive and can create a host of other issues, especially if you want to drive. At least you can drive with the pills. Alcohol also can be toxic to the liver, as evidenced by my father, so that's another disadvantage, compared with the pills. And, generally, alcohol can really make you feel like shit the next day. The ADs don't typically do that, above and beyond the way you normally feel on them. If you get used to that side-effect feeling, then you don't wake up expecting something different. But maybe that's what people are like who use alcohol all the time. There's a quote attributed to Frank Sinatra in which he said he felt sorry for people who didn't drink because the best they would feel all day was when they woke up. I guess drinking is, though, like other antidepressants--you should use it consistently instead of going on and coming off. So stick with it, drinkers, and, if you're not already, you'll be feeling A-O.K. in nothing flat.