I have found that good self care goes along way to promoting stability. Using Dark Therapy mellows hypomania for me while reducing the length of an episode. Light Therapy can help with my seasonal depression, but can cause an initial episode of hypomania for the first few days. If I use Melatonin before bed when I begin to notice I may be going hypo the episode tends to be even shorter, my recovery from it with nearly no crash. My diet plays a large role in this as well. There is a lot of theory and hypothesis involved which supports this approach to managing symptoms. I find that L-Theanine helps with sleep especially in concert with time release melatonin. It doesn't knock me out, or really make me all that sleepy, but, most nights, slows my mind just enough that I can gradually calm down more and more.

There are many ways to cope without an anti-psychotic. I wish clinicians spent more time using them. I encourage you to consider implementing them on your own where you can and requesting treatments when necessary. Dark therapy is as simple as going to bed at around 7pm in complete darkness and staying there in complete darkness until morning. There might be existing tools available at the hospItal you are in, such as a no-blue nightlight (amber or red color light) for using the bathroom or blue-blocking glasses. You would have to request the melatonin, and they might not have the l-theanine on hand.

Overall I have become more and more stable with less medication. Sleep, diet, exercise, phototherapy, and over the counter supplements have been disturbingly effective at reducing my symptoms of bipolar.