I think what puzzles me the most and makes me question using meds for ME is that I can have days when I feel perfectly 'normal'. The noises in my head are gone, the sadness is lifted, the energy is up, etc etc. Those days make me wonder why would I want to be taking meds on a daily basis when I can have days like these. Why can't there just be a way to take meds as needed is always the question I grapple with. On those days when I can't move no matter how hard I try to will myself to 'do the work' I beg for relief and wonder if I shouldn't be getting back on the seroquel or effexor or whatever it would take to stop the madness. I look back to when I was taking them and for me the side effects were frieghtful and I could never know for sure if the good days were because of the meds or just one of those good days I would have now and then with or without meds.

I think I sometimes read articles like this and when I am on the up swing they justify my resistance to med treatment. If I read them on a bad day they enrage me that there just isn't some quick fix I can get to stop the insanity.

I get told alot from friends and family not familiar with BP or any other mental illness or disorder that totally oppose psych meds that all my problems are related to menopause or my thyroid condition or just plain old self absorbed obsessing for that matter. I know I am through menopause and I do everything possible to ensure my thyroid levels are adequately stablized. When new information comes my way I check it out. Partly because if there is some truth to it then I want to know that and partly I need to be able to say to my so called supportive friends and family that its not 'just my female hormone'. Maybe I want them to 'give me permission' to use meds. I come here and listening to others talk about meds helping them makes me think I should try again and then when I talk to friends and family they give me those funny looks and suggest I am crazy or heading down a slippery slop. Then all my other rationales including 'I can take better care of myself and I will be okay'.

Like I have already said in my babbling about this (sorry but I am like you perpetuallysad.... confused, frustrated and looking for the right answer to fit me) I know that successful treatment usually involves a combination of things. If meds can improve the quality of our lives and help us do the other things that will improve our health then it makes total sense to use them.

I can flip flop on this subject like a fish swimming up stream to spawn. One day I am crawling my way to the doc to say 'give me the meds' the next I am cancelling the appointment and fixing myself a protein drink. crazy making.