Hey team hope everyone’s doing well. I occasionally post to these forums and for those of you who don’t know me, this is my situation in a nutshell:

Diagnosed with BP 1 back in February and began taking mood stabilizers. Things were going well for a while but in May I had a manic episode that resulted in me being hospitalized. This whole experience really messed with me and I spent most of this summer trying to come back down to baseline (“Am I REALLY bipolar?” “Am I just a loser looking for excuses?” “Should I really be medicated?”). My family thinks that I’m doing better these days and they’re right to a large extent – I’m not freaking out on people and having police called on me. But I feel like the medication has been interfering with my personality. I feel numb and bland and worst of all I feel like I have no creativity or passion.

Traditionally I’ve used art therapy (music and writing, particularly) as a coping strategy but since I wound up in the hospital I’ve had NO creative drive. I haven’t picked up an instrument in months and can’t come up with any ideas for songs, poems, or short stories.

I find myself missing the “spark” that I had before I was medicated. So now I’m running low on my Risperdal prescription and have decided that I’m not going to get it refilled – In fact I’ve decided that I’m going to stop seeing my psychiatrist regularly.

I’m sick of being told that I need “X” drug to keep me stable. Especially when those drugs make me feel unlike my old self and have SUPER fun side effects like rapid weight gain and lack of sex drive.

I forgot where I was going with this – I guess what I’m trying to say is that I miss the highs when everything lately has seemed like a tepid, lukewarm, low.