There's enough depressed alcoholics in my family that I can't condone using alcohol to cope - self medicating like that is hard to titrate appropriately. The difficulty with options like heroine and alcohol is it's super hard to walk a line where you're not causing harm.

And that's really why you need a medical doctor taking the edge off your symptoms and therapist who helps you deal with the underlying issues themselves. Medicating and go is a terrible, terrible idea.