If your risk aversion is low, may I ask why are you choosing not to trial low dose Abilify for yourself or your son?
First, I'm pretty sure that no doctor in NZ would prescribe it, so I'd have to get it from a somewhat dodgy source, I'm not even sure if I could legally import it and it might not be good quality.
Second, anecdotal evidence is difficult in diseases where well-being fluctuates and where the symptoms are quite subjective (i.e. pain, fatigue) I've seen my son try to convince himself that he was well when he started a school that he really wanted to be at. He seemed quite a bit better (but still ill) for a couple of months, only to deteriorate to a very bad state indeed. The Rituximab Phase 3 trial showed us that people with ME/CFS can often report feeling very much better on a placebo treatment. I mentioned the Mendus ME/CFS CoQ10 study - people on the blinded trial reported no benefit above those on the placebo, while people on the open label study reported significant improvement across a whole range of symptoms. I'm not saying that the improvements people have reported on Abilify aren't real, just that we can't reliably attribute them to Abilify.
I know that Ron Davis believes that Abilify has helped Whitney, but I have difficulty seeing the disease I have in Whitney's detailed description of his disease. If Whitney's disease looked exactly like mine, I would be more persuaded.
Even putting aside the problems with anecdotal evidence, the accounts that I have seen haven't been of complete and long-lasting cures, and I haven't seen many of them. I may have remembered poorly, but they seemed to be mostly mild improvements that don't hold. If 50% of 200 people who were trying it were reporting on social media that it's marvellous, I think we would have heard more on this thread, and I'd look a lot harder at it.
Third, and probably most important, the Stanford study was the opposite of convincing. Even with what appears to be a considerable positive bias, from memory, the improvements reported weren't impressive. It, and a subsequent report from a patient who participated (maybe there were two reports?) suggested that the clinicians have a hobby-horse and are not acting in a scientific way.
Fourth, the explanations about how Abilify might work in ME/CFS don't seem very convincing to me.
Fifth, I do consider side effects. Of all the types of drugs, I'm not keen on taking something that messes with brain chemistry, especially as I would not be taking it with the support of a doctor and have very limited family support.
The combination of all of those mean that I haven't spent a lot of time looking at it in detail, with the exception of the Stanford paper.
