No, not a neurologist. I am a visual artist and a musician. I am also a long time pain patient going back 30 years. I'm also a very curious guy and I like to know all I can about the medicines I take and the sciences that affect life, especially genetics. I have worked with people with developmental disabilities and I have a son with Down's Syndrome. People with developmental disabilities often times have an axis 2 diagnosis involving mental health. For everyone. before Genesight testing, many people spent years looking for the right psychotropic med to help them. They would start a new one and the doctor would tell them, "it'll take six weeks to four months before you know if this is going to work." When it didn't work they were told it would take a certain amount of time to get off that drug. Then they would have to go through the whole process again and realistically, it was simply a crapshoot. I went through this with my 34 year old son back when he was 12 and it became obvious he would need psychotropic meds. I went through it myself when I was visited with severe depression. You couldn't blame the doctors because what medication to take was really just a guess. They would base the decision on what had worked for others.

It's not that some of these drugs work and some don't. They all work when you are able to metabolize them. However, everyone is different in what they can metabolize or digest. I can eat beans with very little problem. My son eats the same beans and could clear a good-sized stadium with bad gas.

Some doctors still have the God complex and they don't want a cheek swab and someone outside their practice telling them what drugs they should give to their patients. These were the doctors who thought they had some insight about what drugs worked based on their experience. The truth is you can't know what drugs will work unless you know what a person can metabolize.

Genesight testing has made a world of difference for my son as well as for myself. Many doctors are too busy to take that 15 minutes to register with Genesight. My heart goes out to them. Our medical professionals have been working like rented mules even before covid-19. My own doctor wasn't registered for Genesight testing so I plugged my ZIP code in to the Genesight website I got the names of doctors close by who were registered with Genesight and found someone who was perfectly happy to test both my son and I and explain our results to us. I then took the report to my doctor and it made part of my permanent medical record.

This is doubly important for pain patients. Many people hate to admit that they're depressed and when they are told they might be depressed when they complain of pain they can be very resistant if they feel that their doctor is trying to put them off or not medicate them because they're blaming depression. It's very common for comorbidity between pain and depression meaning that they occur at the same time in the same person. We know that depression increases the intensity of our experience of pain so it is essential that we receive proper treatment when we need it. In addition not just any pain med will work the same way for everybody. I knew that morphine didn't work well for me. That was confirmed by my Genesight test results. Analgesics and psychotropics are 2 of the 3 classes of drugs that Genesight testing is good for. One day I think there will be gene testing for all classes of meds, especially chemo drugs.

Just out of curiosity, what made you ask if I was a neurologist?