Goodbye pills?

One of my goals for this year is to get myself healthier so I don't need to take so many medications. Currently, I take meds for asthma, allergies, high blood pressure, acid reflux along with two antidepressants, and I get sick of swallowing all those pills everyday! Now, I am hoping that if I lose weight I can get off the HBP meds. I'll probably always need some allergy/asthma meds, and stomach acidity has been an on/off lifelong issue so a few of those will probably have to stay.

Which brings me to the antidepressants. I am hoping with my recent strides, I can go off prozac altogether, especially because I don't feel it having a huge bearing on wear I am in my emotional health right now. I have been on various doses of it on and off for over 10 years. It started with depression at 19, went on, off, on again. Then, six years ago I went on it for PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) and since it seemed to help my frequent bouts of depression I have been on it ever since. In that time, my dose has fluctuated between 20 and 60 mg a day. At one point, a therapist told me I might be burnt out on it, and my doctor increased the dosage (which I thought was great since I suspected BPD at the time, and read that higher doses of prozac can help it. But with the higher dose I didn't notice a huge change in mood stability (besides feeling a bit out of it and numb), but I did have the unpleasant side effects of sleepwalking episodes and brief hallucinations upon waking up (the worse - waking up to see about a hundred guns pointed at me). I learned recently that prozac can inhibit REM sleep (hence the sleep episodes) and even though I'm only on a 20 mg dose right now, I wonder how it is effecting my sleep, since in two recent sleep studies I only entered REM sleep once per night (you should have 3-4 REM stages per night). So I talked to my new doctor about it last week, and both he and my therapist are supportive of my kissing prozac goodbye, with the understanding that I will go back on it if the need arises as well as as a few of my good friends to hold me accountable and tell me if I seem to become depressed enough to go back on it. However, since I live in Bleak SnowyWinterTown, my doctor wants me to wait until spring to avoid any dives into Seasonal Affective Disorder. Which is fine with me. I've made more progress in the last 6 months of DBT and one-on-one therapy than I ever have in past six years with Prozac, so I'm happy to wait a few more months to try my life with one less medication in it.

I am also currently on Elavil, which seems like it might stick around for a while. I was on it in the past for insomnia, and am on it again now for chronic headaches which nothing else has been able to treat. Time will tell if it helps the headaches: if so, I will keep it and if not it will be another pill to say goodbye to.

I am fully in favor of taking medication when it is beneficial to our mental health, but I have learned that for some people, like me, simply re-learning how to live can make a huge difference. So maybe, meds aren't for me anymore. We'll see...