I remember asking my pdoc if I had schizophrenia pretty much right away because I was having psychosis he said he would not know unless he took me off meds which would be unethical. A couple years later I still had zero symptoms on meds so we followed some cutting edge no medication thing because people who went off meds supposedly had a better outcome. Now it was rare to be able to be off meds for more than a year something like 80% relapse for first episode psychosis. Still we thought I was doing so well perhaps I was one of the lucky 20%. Needless to say I was not. I pretty much have a bipolar diagnosis now from my initial episode and the the wisps of psychosis that started after 9 months off meds. Sometimes they don’t know until removing meds if you actually need them or not. In your case it seems to be the opposite of mine, where your symptoms were not being impacted by meds though.
I try to remember the reality of psychiatry....first none of the conditions are homogeneous...that is to say they are simply classified by symptoms and not a single gene of origin. So whether you have bipolar or not your bipolar will not be exactly like mine. They also have very few medicines to try...mood stabilizer, antipsychotic and antidepressants. Sure there are different ones in case you don’t like your current side effects but generally they are quite similar within the three classes with a few minor variations. Psychiatry is still in early days, it’s barely a medical science compared to other fields so I cut them some slack because they are still learning. They don’t even have reliable diagnostics....there is no test for bipolar. There is no one size fits all treatment so we are in essence a science experiment in the works.