I definitely struggle with this. I probably spend as much time off my lithium as I do on it. Vicious cycle for me. Seems as though I no sooner get stabilized and I start skipping doses and before you know it I'm off my meds again. Of course eventually things begin to spin out of control and I'm desperate to get back on my lithium again.

I'm not entirely sure why I repeatedly go off my lithium. I'm a very intelligent person and logically I know the cycle and eventual need for lithium is the same every time. Yet, for whatever reason, I stop taking my meds every time.

I think my logic around stopping follows something like this: yes, it's helping but things still aren't great...if I'm still going to struggle with my moods why bother taking the meds at all (the answer is because without the lithium things are even worse); or these side effects stink...who wants to deal with stomach discomfort and recurrent diarrhea forever, I'll just stop because I don't think the lithium is really making that big of a difference (yes it is, just easy to forget how bad things are without it); or maybe I think I don't really need the meds, it's like taking the easy way out...if I'd just try harder I could get by without the lithium (that has yet to work out for me). Maybe it's some combination of these, or none of them, or something completely different. I don't really understand why I repeatedly stop taking my lithium but I do know that it never, not one single time, has ended well. I always have to restart and I do worry that one of these days it will stop working for me altogether because of all the stopping and starting. If that happens I have no idea what I'll do.

I'm just lucky that my poor psychiatrist is so patient with me.