Years ago, about 15 years ago, I forbid myself from doing research relevant to psychoactive/tropic drugs. I think I did this because, even at that time, there were so many schools of thought on medications that effect our neurotransmitters and very few of them were supportive or for the approach at all; and I didn't want to placebo myself. Now, all these years later, I am off medication and feel incredible (not manic).

This new feeling encouraged me to start looking in to the effects of these drugs, and what I found is not at all encouraging. I found that medication can even facilitate mental illness and they can strip a person of their emotional abilities (that explains so much in my particular case). The most disturbing of all, reading it multiple times on multiple sites, is that medication can seriously impair cognitive function.

I'm not looking for an excuse to put my addiction or alcoholism on, just feel like these medications stole too many years of life. Again, I am responsible... but medication did not help matters.