hey. i don't take any medication. that being said i've surely taken a lot of medication in my time. there was a time when i would have done ANYTHING at all if there was even the slightest chance that it would help. now... i need to think. it is important to me that i not be sedated or otherwise affected and i guess i've got to wondering how much medications help me except for sedating me somewhat through a crisis.

i've heard that stabilisation for two years without remission is a good rule of thumb before attempting to reduce / cease medication. that is for depression at any rate. i'm really not at all sure that anti-depressants are shown to be effective to PREVENT remission, though they are certainly prescribed as such.

it is really very hard to assess how much medication helps one particular individual. one can't do a randomised double blind control trial on oneself. if one is taking meds and one gets worse then maybe one needs to stick with it a bit longer or maybe one needs to increase the dosage or maybe one needs to change to a different med or maybe... one is better off (or at least not worse off) without medications altogether (maybe even better off given the side effects and who knows what the long term side effects are going to be).

it is reccomended that reduction from medication be gradual. most medications have withdrawal syndromes associated with their cesation. this can be gotten around by tapering the medication down very slowly indeed. it might be that one experiences 'rebound effects' (a withdrawal syndrome basically) which, surprise surprise, typically consists in the problematic symptoms becoming more problematic than they ever were before. a lot of people give up giving up about then, thinking that this shows them what life would be like for them without meds. like any drug it takes your body some time to adjust without them, however. sometimes the million dollar question can be: are you strong enough to cope with worse feelings than you have had before while your body is withdrawing?

of course some other people don't really experience much in the way of withdrawal.

i suppose... i was never convinced that i functioned better on medication as opposed to off medication. so... i don't take it. hard to say...