He was concerned about the non-stop squirts, non-stop thirst, and stomach pain, so we are discontinuing the lithium.

I told him I feel blah, bored, and boring. I've always had a wicked sense of humor, which is reflected in my speaking and writing. I told him my friends want to know what's wrong with me adn why I am no longer funny.

He said if I'm going to be on mood stabilizers, that's part of what they make stable. You're kind of in the middle. So I need to decide if I want to be stable or be funny.

That kind of bothered me. I don't want to lose my personality.

And I told him that I have not felt creative. I was going to spend this time off working on some of my writing. It's not cool for a writer to lose her creativity.

He said we'll discontinue the lithium.

He prescribed Ambien, since I am still having trouble sleeping. I wasn't happy with the metallic taste of the Lunesta.

He looked over my chart from the early 1990s and said, "You were on lithium before. Why isn't it working this time?"

I said, "I was taking Prozac with the lithium back then, and this time it's lithium by itself."

He looked things over, and said that this most recent bout of hypomania was probably set off by the anti-depressants that my regular MD prescribed a little over a year and a half ago.

"So let's get you sleeping well and see how well you do without a mood stabilizer and without an anti-depressant," he said.

If I start to feel depressed, I'm supposed to call and he'll prescribe Wellbutrin.

I'm sure this will happen in the not-so-distant future because I really believe that I also have Seasonal Affective Disorder, so once the days grow dark and dreary, my old friend will visit me.

Now I'm looking forward to getting my personality and my creativity back.

I'm definitely staying in therapy so she can help me learn some coping skills. That's a big thing I was lacking all of those years when I was unmedicated and not in therapy -- I wasn't able to cope and I didn't understand about triggers.