My mother was just prescribed Xanax by her PCP to 'get her over the hump' (as she said he said) while she's trying to cope with a new cancer diagnosis and upcoming surgery. She also has advanced MS and is wheelchair bound, which, of course, makes everything worse.

I talked to her yesterday and she was a different person! Instead of irritable and quick to anger (she was already like this before becoming ill with MS and cancer), she was lovely: lively, empathetic, sweet, relatively optimistic.

I commented on her change in mood and she said, more than once, that it was 'fake,' that it wasn't real (because of the xanax).

Do you agree? Are we, on meds, only fascimiles of our true selves? On meds, do our current personalities simply overlay our 'real' personalities? Do they only cover up who we really are?

I know that pre-meds-that-work I was more irritable and a less empathetic person. I think I was so wrapped up in my intense moods that I couldn't get out of my head long enough to truly see and feel what others saw and felt. Now, levelheaded, I can, and I'm a better person for it. Or am I? Do these meds simply mask the real me? Does it matter?

When my Bipolar (I) was active (I consider myself in remission) was that 'me?' Now that I'm stable, am I now 'me?' Are both me...somehow?