Hi - You asked me to weigh in with my opinion, so here I am.
Ugh. Your husband's treatment reads like a pharmaceutical nightmare to me. It is an unfortunate failing of our current mainstream approach to medicine, that we rely too much on medical "band-aids" and do too little to solve the underlying causes of problems.
Mirapex belongs to a class of drugs known as dopamine agonists. These drugs have definitely been shown to trigger impulse control disorders in some people, like compulsive gambling or compulsive sexual behavior. The following links are to recent medical journal articles detailing that association. I suggest you send them to his doctor who prescribes the Mirapex and to his psychiatrist who prescribes the Effexor.
Of course, to ask your H to give up all his meds and not give him anything to deal with his symptoms would be cruel and possibly dangerous. In the best scenario, you would explore causes for his disorders, and treatments that could improve his conditions without using drugs that may affect his brain in bad ways. (BTW, People magazine at one time ran the story of a religious, upright father and husband who very uncharacteristically began compulsive gambling after starting a dopamine agonist drug).
Some thoughts for you: Restless Leg Syndrome: - restless leg syndrome may be associated with iron deficiency in some - he should be tested for this, and if his iron levels are in the lower part of the normal range, he might benefit from a brief course of iron therapy (excess iron is not good). - magnesium can be helpful with RLS. 400 mg before bedtime really helps my H. (Alcohol depletes magnesium, that might be one way alcohol aggravates RLS.) - early bedtime is helpful for RLS, since it tends to start later in the evening. My H knows that if he can get to sleep before 10 pm, he can usually beat it.
Depression: - there are many known physical causes of depression. Hypothyroidism, B vitamin deficiencies (especially folate or B12), testosterone deficiency,and traumatic brain injury are just a few causes. - there is a company called Neurosciences that does urine testing for neurotransmitters. Instead of guessing at whether serotonin, dopamine, or other neurotransmitters are low, this gives us a way to measure more directly what's going on. It's an "alternative" test - ie not mainstream yet - but the docs who use it often then use targeted amino acid therapy to try to balance neurotransmitter levels. If you go to their website, you can get them to send you a list of doctors in your area who use this type of test. - I also like a test called a FIA from Spectracell. This test measures nutritional deficiencies by looking directly at how your blood cells grow in different media with and without extra vitamins. (For instance, if you have enough B12, your cells will initially grow the same in media with and without B12. If you are B12 deficient, your cells will grow faster in the media with B12). This might help pinpoint if H is deficient in anything in particular or has a higher-than-average need for a particular nutrient. Again, this testing is still considered "alternative" by some docs, although many insurances will cover it, so don't expect your regular doc to be open to ordering it. - fish oil helps with depression, and would be healthful for him for other reasons as well.
How open is your H to seeing a different doctor? In an ideal world, he would be best served by a functional medicine doctor (see the Institute for Functional Medicine) with a background in psychiatry or neuroendocrinology. I know a great guy in Northern California. Short of that, a family physician or internist with a functional medicine bent could probably help.
At the very least - if you could get H off the Mirapex, and onto fish oil, a good multivitamin, and a sublingual B12/folate/B6 combo (they have them at Trader Joe's) that would be a start.
