Oh, honey, can I ever relate to your struggle with medications.......Even now, after being treated for 15 months I STILL wonder if it's all worth it. All the adjustments, tweaks, changes, discontinuations and restarts---it's a huge pain in the posterior, and my moods typically change as often as my meds do. I never know how I'm going to respond to anything. There are even times when I consider just stopping everything and letting the chips fall where they may.

BUT......then I get to thinking about where I was 15 months ago, as opposed to the insight I've gained and the understanding I have now, and I realize that I have those things because my illness is being treated. Frankly, I wonder if I'd have survived at all if I hadn't accepted help when I did. I'd been bumping along through life with this beast and hadn't even known what was wrong, but in December of 2011 a couple of traumatic experiences that occurred within days of each other sent my world literally spinning off its axis, never to return to that same place again.

I didn't know it then, but that was when I tipped over into full-blown illness. And I've had a lot of trouble accepting the fact that I will have this thing for the rest of my life and will always need medications to control it. Not everyone does; some people do fine with diet, supplements, herbal remedies and the like, and they never really need prescribed meds unless an emergency arises. And some take meds for awhile, wean off, then restart them as their mood swings and life circumstances dictate.

Of course, most MH professionals prefer to use a combination of medications and therapy to manage bipolar disorder because that's what they know how to do, and most of the science tends to bear out the drugs' effectiveness in certain situations.

But ultimately, the decision of whether or not to take meds is up to the individual, and that decision deserves to be respected even if it would be in one's best interests to allow oneself to be medicated.

Only you can make up your mind. Just be sure you are informed before you do so, and remember that there is no shame in needing medication to function in a relatively normal fashion. Lots of people do, even celebrities and political leaders, and if it makes you feel better to look at a Catherine Zeta-Jones or a Jane Pauley and know that they too need to take psychiatric meds, there's nothing wrong with that either.

Best of luck to you, no matter what you decide to do.