I agree with that. I haven't found medications that work out for me either. As awful and debilitating as my natural state can be, medications made my situation so much worse. Most of the doctors I've seen (and I've seen several over a period of years) have been willing to work with me to try to find the right combos, make dose adjustments and so on. Still, I feel like nobody knows what will work and like I'm being experimented on. The process has been a nightmare. Meds have made me intensely suicidal (I sometimes get ideation during my natural episodes, but I don't think I'm a real in danger of doing it) and made me have psychotic symptoms - severe symptoms I've never experienced off the medications. Side effects also continued for me months after I stopped taking them and that gave me concerns about permanent damage. I don't refuse medications just because I'm being stubborn; they scare me and lower the quality of my life to a degree I can't tolerate.

I'm still willing to do therapy and make lifestyle changes, but I really don't feel like medications are right for me. I know medications do help a lot of people and I wouldn't necessarily recommend the path I've chosen to anyone else. Fortunately in my situation, I do go through long periods of being mostly stable where refusing medication doesn't affect me on a daily basis, but I have made huge sacrifices in my lifestyle for it (I have given up on having a regular 9-5 type of job, for example).