It's not hospitalization level depression, more like therapy level depression. Fortunately it hasn't been bad enough where I had to go to the hospital. I have gone to therapy to try to do it without meds, but the problem is that I go to therapy, try to come up with coping mechanics, stop going to therapy and then relapse, and the cycle's gone like that.

With your backstory I certainly can understand why you don't want to try out drugs. For many therapy will be enough to get back to were we belong, and for many it won't. That's however up to you and your therapist to decide.

I can try to explain why antidepressiva doesn't work like painkillers/opiodes. Hopefully I'll make it understandable, but I'm not the best at these kind of things.

Let's say your body normally has 10 "painkilling molecules." Now if you are hurting severly you might need more than that to make the pain more acceptable. So you take painkillers that give you another 5 of these molecules, to a total of 15 in your body. Now if you do this for a long time, and overdo it, what happens is that the body says "hey, it's only supposed to be 10 of those, why is there always 15? Maybe if I lower my share to 8, it will be better". So now with the same dose, you have 8+5=13. Now that's not enough to kill the pain, so you increase the dose to 7 for a total of 15. And then the body lowers from 8 to 6 and you increase the dose and so on.

Now if the doctor handles this properly this shouldn't happen of course. Sadly it seems like your dad wasn't taken care of to the extent that he needed and deserved.

Antidepressiva work differently. Now normaly say we have 10 "happy molecules" in the body. If you are depressed this level is lowered, so your body releases less of these. Maybe 8. Now what antidepressiva does is that it raises it back from 8 to 10. It does not however increase it over the normal body amount. Now if you recover from the depression your body itself will start making 10 of these. If you continue on the medication you will however not reach 11 or 12, but you will stay on 10. Seing as you never go above what's normal the body won't start to lower it's own production, so when you stop taking the meds you won't miss them. 

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I hope that was understandable, and I hope it helps you. Medication is certainly not always the answer, and it might very well not be the answer here as well. 

I try to avoid painkillers and such as well, for the most part the body is quite good at sorting out it's problem on it's own and doesn't need us interfering. Trying to avoid it so long as possible is a good way of dealing with that sort of thing. Sometimes are body needs some help though, and for that reason we shouldn't underplay the helpfull effect medication can bring in some situations.  A bit unfair to call it poison, seeing as it's the primary reason we don't have an average lifeexpectancy of 25. 

Do agree though, beer does taste shit 

Weed and alcohol, my own paranoia stopped my addiction, haven't touched either for years.

My family has been addicted to drugs all my life. Almost every single family member has had trouble with addiction in all kinds of drugs. For example my grandma smokes a pack of cigarettes every day and drinks a 12 pack of beer every day. Same story but with different drugs for many of my other family members.

Thus I don't do any drugs at all. That doesn't mean I have escaped addiction though. I have been addicted to the natural dopamine before. This has included simple things like over 400 days /played on World of Warcraft or even a simple caffeine addiction.

I can break addiction by challenging myself, if I have to prove something to myself then I will.

I take Methodone every day, have for over twenty years , the Australian state of Tasmania where I live produces 50% of the worlds commercial opiate production, so when I was young it was easy to make opium tea or tar, just walk in to a field and get the harvestable poppies then brew it up I won't mention the details of the process , I used it just socially, but when I traveled I got into Heroin, came home and with support from the local drug and alcohol service helped establish a methodone program run by local pharmacies under the auspices of the state health dept ,you get a monthly script from a participating doctor take it to a participating Pharmacy and pay $5 perday  for your dose this payment covers the clerical costs, the methodone its self is supplied free by the federal govt ,everthing else is handled the same as anyone with a regular script except the script lasts a month andyou have 2/3 take away's allowed per week depending on where you live and you have to sign a sheet, my pharmcy is great and the 5 pharmacists who own and run the pharmacy have become friends with the major partner becoming my best friend , he tells the tale of how some pharmacists when he was chairman of the pharmacy board complained to him about pharmacies handling methodone maintanence , his response was it's voluntry and with pharmacies being in most communities they  are the ideal places for such an endevour and  helping addicts helps your community, also he would point out the hipocracy that every pharmacy fills scripts for a great many people like "auntie may "who has for years been on high doses of drugs that are addictive and are recommended for short term use and these same pharmacies have no problem looking after those addicts.  

Ka-pi96 said: Still waiting for someone to offer to sell me some drugs so I can find out if I get addicted or not...

Lol go to highschool I've been offered free weed a crap ton. still never done it though :P it smells awful anyways

Really sorry to hear this, can be very testing when it's a family member who chooses alcohol over being that family member people know and love.

Had an Aunty who was a meth head. After the birth of her second child she decided "Enough was enough".
Got help, got off it, went to university, got a full time job, bought a house, got custody of her kids back and is now living the Australian Dream.
My brother is a Stoner, out of all the drugs, I am glad it's that one though.

I used to be a full blown chain-smoking cigarette smoker.
And I decided that once my addiction exceeded $200 a week, I would give it up. That was 3 years ago going on 4. And that was my first quit attempt in that whole 17 year period.
I honestly don't understand how people keep falling back into the smoker trap.

Granted I made allot of other changes at the time, cleaned and scrubbed everything to remove the smell from my home, clothes, everything.
Even stopped visiting friends who were smokers (They understood), stayed away from people who smoked in Public... The lot.

I haven't even had the slightest temptation, the smell of it turns me off, it's disgusting. The smell from someone who just had a smoke is also downright awful.

It's got nothing about being strong or weak.

I'm gonna let Satan explain this one. Good explanation, six years ago a close relative of mine died of hepatic cirrhosis, after decades of alcoholism.

He lived with an aunt of mine whom I'm certain suffers from serious neurotic disorders, so things got pretty nasty. I'm sorry I don't have any useful

advise to offer, since in this particular case things didn't end well at all.