There is hope that the agonies associated with the psychotropics journey all people with bipolar undergo fade away.
The journey involves finding the medications that work and patiently discarding the ones that didn’t after giving them a fair chance. It is a mind-numbing process in the most literal sense, as many bipolar meds end up taking away cognition, drive, and emotional capacity to promote normal functioning. It was incredibly frustrating when I discovered a medication was useless for me as it felt like a wasted effort at times.
Then I find a med regime that works, and adjustments to make when bad things happen.
Then those “side effects” start to dissipate, and I begin to feel normal most of the time.
After that, I reach a point where I start to reduce my meds with my doctor’s blessing, which is a joyful, profoundly baffling experience. I know I’ll always need medication, but I get pieces of me back which I forget about by reducing them and eliminating some.
The worst thing I did was to stop my meds without my doctor’s blessing: bipolar then proceeded to stab me in the back. The last time I stopped my meds for two months I ended up in the hospital for over a month with a severe break on my hands to recover from.
Have any of you stopped your meds? What happened, why did you stop them, and how long did you stop them? What are psychotropics doing for you now – good and bad?
theothersid3 