I finally got to see a psychiatrist through the VA. After reviewing my list of medications, she told me not to take alprazolam/Xanax (I'd been taking 0.5 mg for many years. I asked her why, since I take such a small amount--never more than 0.5 mg's, and ofter go 3-5 days without taking any at all. She said that doctors should not prescribe Benzos--never, and when I asked her why, she replied, "because they may impair your cognitive abilities." I got up and walked over to her where she was holding the list of meds I'd given her and proceded to point out six med's on the list which were more likely to cause memory problems: Depakote (for being bipolar), Lexipro (anti-depressant), Lipitor (because I'd had a mini-stroke several years ago), Gabapentin ( for pain/sleep--had service-connected injuries while in Vietnam and whenever I'd roll over in bed, I'd awaken from sharp pains in either of the surgicall-repaired shoulders), and Celebrex--also for pain. Every one of the above-mentioned med's are worse than the small doseage of Benzos I'd been taking, and I when I asked her why those med's shoulden't be removed from my prescriptions, she simply looked down, kept entering notes into her desktop, and when I questioned her again, she simply gave me a stern look and went back to her notes. You want to know how I feel about doctors. They're people who seem as if they're underpaid while making $3-4 hundred thousand dollars a year plus benefits, and exactly as you stated, "...don't know shit." I personally research all the medication the doctors prescribe, including the chemical structures, speak to pharmacists who usually know a heck of a lot more than the quacks I've seen, and most of them should have their licenses revoked. I have yet to find a doctor through Medicare or the VA who will even prescribe a couple of miligrams/month of Benzos so that I can titrate off the crap they had originally prescribed. Every time I see a neurologist (for Parkinson's), or a primary care physician, or in the last case an uncaring robot-like psychiatrist, I expect the worst (and usually get it--especially the being talked down to as if I were too stupid to respect their god-like superiority), or ask to be titrated off most of the med's I'm taking, my words fall on deaf ears. Doctors use their patients as guinea pigs while getting kick-backs from the sales reps for Big Pharma. Healthcare in this country is just another rotten business.