it's a new psych - he seems very nice, quite young. he said that he thinks only taking the meds sporadically especially at quite high dosage is not good as taking 1000mg lithium once a week i will really notice side effects etc and it's more likely to make me sick. he also said he agrees that he thinks this is partly psychological - the sickness - so he said he's going to remove valproate altogether (yay!) and cut the lithium right back from 1000mg to 200mg to start and then build it up slowly, to 400 for a while and see how i manage with that. he said he'd rather i get a regular dosage at a low level than a massive blast of it weekly. he says my current mood needs to be curbed a bit so he's putting me back on quetiapine - but again at a tiny dose. he says i'm clearly quite sensitive to it after last time so he's starting me on 12.5mg building up to 100mg over a week (i was on 300mg before) to see how it goes. he said that should be enough to keep me level but not to have a major bad reaction to. to be fair, it seems like he listened to me and reached a compromise. he does seem to take it seriously and i know that my life will be really hard without the meds. also he said the exams i'm doing are probably stressful and gave me revision tips

i'm feeling quite reassured. and i know that if it doesn't work, he'll listen to my concerns