I'm resigned to the need to take medications for the rest of my life. Looking back over the years, I can now see how the illness grew and grew until I could no longer ignore it; and as bad as it is WITH meds, I don't even want to think about what life would be like without them. {{{{shudder}}}}

As for therapy, well, I hope one day to be stable enough that I don't have to go to the psychiatrist or therapist as often as I do now. Someday it would be nice to be able to go in only once or twice a year, even 3-4 times a year, but it just doesn't seem to be in the cards at this point.......it's been over 15 months and I still don't have a firm diagnosis yet (although if there were a Bipolar 1.5, that would probably be it. LOL).

Sometimes I feel like I'm being a time vacuum; other times I catch crap because I don't call my pdoc until I'm in a full-blown crisis. But either way, bipolar disorder is a permanent part of my life and so are the treatments I need to keep it at bay. It took me a long time to accept that fact, but it is what it is. I'm also older and have been taking meds for diabetes and blood pressure for years; BP is merely another chronic condition that has to be managed.