Do you take medications?

- Just recently began Naltrexone to help avoid alcohol abuse, but have taken no other psychiatric meds for over a year.

If so, do you like who you are on them?

-I did not like who I was on them. No personality, no creativity, no drive and ambition. And yet still cycled, just not to the extremes of the episodes leading to my initial and only hospitalization.

If not, do you like who you are without them?

-I did not like who I was without them either, but a very blunt and unsympathetic p-doc opened my eyes to the fact that no doctor or medication can just manage your symptoms for you. It takes a conscious effort on the part of the individual to make the necessary lifestyle changes needed to sucessfully manage symptoms.

Are you still battling to accept this diagnosis?

I have accepted this diagnosis, but I have not and will never accept it as a label. I am not bipolar, I suffer from a mood condition known as bipolar disorder. I will never again let it define who I am or how I live my life. It is too easy, for me at least, to use this label as an excuse for my actions, and I have found that to be unacceptable.

Are you battling the decision to take your meds?

-For a time I did battle it. When I made the conscious decision to stop medication therapy and focus on the underlying causes of return symptoms, it became clear what I needed to do to personally manage my symptoms. So simple, yet for some reason so hard to realize, I came up with a very easy life equation to follow: More sleep + less whiskey= a more balanced, symptom free me.

Good luck to all those struggling out there.

NOTE: I do not in any way recommend that anyone stops taking their medication without the approval and strict supervision of a trusted psychiatric professional. Doing so can be dangerous and detrimental to your overall health and well being.