I sent my psychologist an email yesterday basically saying that I was having a hard time with the secrecy and wishing I could talk to someone about it. (I NEVER email him, so this kind of contact is very unusual of me...) He sent me a reply AND called me this morning and advising me to get my psychiatrist's help as I wean from my medications... Saying that my psychiatrist is ethically bound to help me, even if he does not approve of what I'm doing. Is that true? It seems to me like the shrink could just tell me that I should still be taking ALL of my medications, and refuse to help me off of them. I also don't want any confrontation. I was planning on canceling this Friday's appointment and just disappearing...

I really don't want to tell my psychiatrist about this, but the fact that I'm experiencing withdrawals is making my psychologist very nervous. Not only is this out of his (the psychologist's) scope of practice, but he knows that he is on ethically very shaky ground for encouraging me in this decision-making process. I would never EVER hold it against him. I'm a grown-up and the decision was ultimately mine, but I think he's backpedaling a bit and feeling a need to protect himself. I don't blame him one bit, but I do feel like I'm losing my only real-life ally. He helped me come to this conclusion, and now he seems to be changing his mind on me. I completely understand why, but it's still hard.

So now what do I do? Do I go back on the Lexapro indefinitely until I meet with the new psychiatrist in September? Do I go back on a low dose of it to ease the symptoms, then face my current psychiatrist and ask him how to get off of it? Do I try to keep toughing it out and hope that my withdrawal symptoms will go away soon? I'm inclined to go with the latter.

Despite the fact that I discontinued two different mood stabilizers (Trileptal and Abilify), stopped one antidepressant (Lexapro), and decreased my dose of both Wellbutrin and BuSpar, I have noticed no significant changes in my mood... which reaffirms to me that I was being grossly overmedicated. Based on what I know about the nature of my illness, the odds of me rapidly going off the deep end (in either direction) are very slim (but not impossible), and that is a risk I am willing to take. I think it's inevitable that at some point I will become terribly depressed again, but no medication regimen has ever prevented that from occurring in the past... so what's the point? I don't want to wander around being overly drugged if it's not actually doing me any good, you know?

I'm not encouraging others to follow in my footsteps. I'd say that in the vast majority of cases, the psychiatrist's recommendations are probably the best course of action. Medication noncompliance is a HUGE problem in psychiatric practice, and I most certainly don't want to tell people to jump ship and dump all of their meds, because people generally stop taking their medications for the wrong (or ill-informed) reasons.

Do what's right for you, but be wise.