ok, well since you seem like a good person, i'll respond in detail.:
=Wait a minute. Do not give yourself a MOAI under any circumstances. give it to yourself if you can't get a doc to, and getting out of depression is important to you. i took parnate, and got relief quickly. i wouldn't have gotten it from any pdoc i had visited, though my current one is ok continuing it, though he admits he wouldn't have started me on it. maybe you think that is risky, and thus 'never to be done', but wasting any bit of your life being depressed should count as risky too
=It needs a prescription. yes, that is a problem.
=It needs correct dosing and I presume fading. not really, broad range of doses all work; and i don't know what you mean by 'fading', but you need ~5 days for non fluoxetine sris, and a few weeks for fluoxetine for sri->maoi. ~1.5 weeks going the other way. this is written everywhere and yeah know something about a med before you take it, but at least this statement generally this isn't wrong.
=It ain't as simple as you think. It could go badly wrong.its quite simple to do, even if it does requiring learning something and following it consistenly, and anything can go badly wrong.
=If the shrink is reluctant ask for a RIMA they are safer. and not as effective
I think it is quite correct! I have taken this as far as I know. I am offering suggestions to refer to a shrink. Nothing more it is purely my opinion.
However to advise to use these MAOIs outside a script - is crazy that is certain. They regained a resurgence in popularity, particularly in the US and are considered for resistant cases. Any mainstream physcians handbook will give you this information. Fine if, for example, you gave yourself generic EMSAM thats your decision, I don't agree and I don't think its in Europe but I could be wrong.
RIMAs (reversible MAOIs) arn't available in the US, one is available in Europe or at least parts of Europe. Its just an idea.
I am very concerned by this last post. A patient will make errors of judgement - I will not go through the reasons. We talking about serious medication in what appears to be resistant case, it is a serious matter. I questioned the shrink - that was a mistake and I apologise. If you had pulled me up on any other post I could understand but not on this one. If you have anything constructive to say then do so.
shrinks are wrong a lot too; one thing i've learned is they usually know fuck-all about psychopharm; sometimes as much as the pdr (which is not much). 'patients' can make errors - sure, other people fuck up a lot. its probably worth noting that other people's decisions being different from your own doesn't make them wrong. taking a MAOI is often the right thing to do, even if a doctor doesn't agree. whats important is having someone competent knowing whats going in your body; many docs aren't up to the task, and its quite easy for a patient to be.
anyway, if you want advice on how to avoid problems with caution:
don't take with anything that reuptakes or releases serotonin (ssris, MDMA, dextromethorphan, tcas other than nortrip, desipr, or amytrip), that has tyramine (not tyrosine; mostly fermented things like sausages, soy sauce, fish sauce, some cheeses, real ale.). have a 5ht2 antagonist on hand, i like cyproheptadine, for 5ht syndrome. and a bp medication/cuff thing for hypertensive crisis, clonidine is ok (adrenoceptor antagonists have less rebound hypotensive problems, which is usually what causes actual damage).
anyway, i don't say they are the best for depression as first-line or second line, but after 2/3 classes of drugs, you should move on to something useful before cycling through drugs of the same class or any of the myriad combinations possible. and since the poster had benefit from various drugs, and hasn't tried much, i probably would say its not worth the bother of find it and skipping tasty food, but its not some dangerous thing either.