It is not a rabbit hole. You are getting an education. Nothing worthwhile is easy, from earning a degree and licensure to losing weight or becoming successful in business.
Yes, you can make a nice living as a therapist, and you don’t necessarily need a doctorate to be one. LCSWs who practice to the maximum earn over 100k per annum. Of course, you can parlay your earnings by investing wisely and make much more money than that. Classically, psychologists (PhDs or PsyDs) earn more than LCSWs, while psychiatrists (MDs or DOs) make a king’s ransom.
However, to become a psychiatrist, you’d have to be willing (and able) to get into medical school and schvitz for four years, plus another four years of residency and possibly another two years for a fellowship. Along the way, you will need to pass a host of board exams. So, in order to become a psychiatrist, we’re talking about ten solid years of blood, sweat and tears, give or take. (The path to becoming a psychologist is fairly coextensive.) But if earning a half-million to a million dollars a year as a therapist is your object, that’s what you have to do. No offense, but your tentativeness and impatience indicate that medical school or a PhD may not be in your future.
That being said, while nothing worthwhile is easy, there are far easier ways to become wealthy. There is a Harvard graduate I heard about who drove a truck for a few years while investing his earnings in growth stocks and became a millionaire.