I stopped the zoloft and went off all meds for years. My mood was mostly depressed or stable during that time, with a few minor elevations but nothing dramatic. It seemed like I was going to be OK, and there were no lasting effects. Then I stopped the birth control pill and had another severe hypomania. That's when I got my diagnosis. But I refused meds again, and things stabilized on their own for a couple years, then I started cycling really severely, depressions, mixed, and hypomania or maybe mania, so I started meds then. It took a long time for my mood to stabilze after that. But I don't think the zoloft caused any lasting damage, I think it just unmasked something that was slowly developing anyway. And when I look back at it, I was cycling before that, just not that dramatically, so I only recognized the depressions as a problem.