Unmedicated?

Who is unmedicated or uses natural treatment for their bipolar? What have been your experiences/methods? I'm curious.

Well...I'm not unmedicated now, although I only take Cymbalta. I'm not on a bunch of different stuff. However, from time-to-time, I have gone for long stretches unmedicated. It has typically gone along fine for a long time. Then, all of a sudden, I fall into self-harming behavior or a suicide attempt. I don't know why this happens. It just does. So, at this point, I just stay on the Cymbalta. It doesn't seem to help allot with my depression. But I think it keeps me from falling so low that I start self-harming, or worse.

I've been unmedicated since June. It's been no picnic. But I was having a rough time on the meds too before that.

I take vitamin D and that helps some with the depression ... maybe even makes me slightly hypomanic. If there's a natural mood stabilizer out there, though, I've yet to find it.

I'm probably going to go back on meds at some point, but I'm terrified of them.

I understand being afraid. I hate meds. I can't get over how fuzzed out I feel on lithium. I want to find a safe way to be unmedicated. I'm not sure there is an effective method

yeah, I'm not sure there's a safe, effective method either. But if you find one, please let me know!

I am currently on just Lamictal and will start lowering my dose to taper off after the hoildays. My Pdoc and I agreed to give it a whirl since I have so many side effects and I generally have very little faith in Big Pharma.

Being med free isn't just about tossing your meds out , you need to have a huge toolbox of coping skills and know how and when you need to use them , and self awareness to realize an episode is heading your way and taking steps to handle problems as they come, A good support system is needed.

It's also really about lifestyle changes that need to made that is also helpful.

Meditation, yoga, exercise , diet, sleep hygiene, healthy diet and the list goes on and on.. and sometimes you just need to white knuckle the episodes and hang on for dear life, and ride the wave out.

We have a large group of medfree people here. I'm sure they will come along and tell there stories.

Taking medications is a personal choice and many factors need to be considered... There is no right or wrong answer.

That's so helpful, Christina. I really need to overhaul my life in order to even consider quitting my meds, but its definitely the end goal for me

This is my problem. I want to be better but working on coping skills is not something I want to do. I do work out, yoga, have people in my life, but when I start to withdraw into myself I do not want to do the things that I know will make me feel better. I know the coping skills- I just don't use them.

I am medicated but I have been looking at my meds as a cure-all, and when they aren't I feel let down and hopeless. I need to come to terms with the fact that there is no medication on earth that will "cure" me.

That said, I do have a better quality of life with the right combo of meds.

My new pdoc wants me to learn coping skills so that he can reduce medicine. His end goal is for me to have a large support system and ad med free as possible. His end goal is half a baby dose of zyprexa. My T and husband art fond of this idea.

I am currently med free and VERY stable .like so stable i cant even believe it.
However, in my worst episodes i end up on meds short term.
It can be done. And the more i research the more i am finding that even doctors are not buying into that whole be on meds for life thing.
I also just read a story about a gentleman who has severe bipolar 1 that he would get so manic he would board planes and perform magic tricks and end up arrested or legitimately think he was running for mayor. He stayed on meds for 8 yrs but has currently been off 3 years episode free
Even my own doctor has said this is not only possible but the preferred outcome

The way I got it figured, I'd be dead sooner than later if it weren't for meds. My life has been a train wreck. I have been a train wreck. Now I got a chance of a slightly less than insane way of living. I'm ruint. Being on meds has made my days now tolerable. Not perfect, but doable.

I hope yall find your way

There's no right way, like Christina said it takes being armed from many different angles and being equipped with a large degree of insight.


I didn't plan to be med free, it was a highly impulsive decision after being completely stupified by lithium. I didn't enjoy being dumb as a rock and my pdoc wouldn't help me, so out the window my meds went.


Luckily for me at that point I already had a stellar support system and had been actively using my coping skills and living a mostly bipolar friendly life for over a year...


Firstly, I would not recommend cold turkey, it was one of my worst experiences. Ever


Secondly, I would not go into it blindly or lightly. Nor is living as if you don't have a care in the world a wise way to go about it. Planet denial is a lonely place. Being med free requires just as much, if not more responsibility for taking care of yourself. There is no chemical safety net, no FDA approved cushioning to soften your fall... Ignoring or dismissing your symptoms would be akin to trying to walk around on a broken leg. You'll be going nowhere slowly. And Extremely Painfully.


Each of us are individuals, each of us have our individual brand of bipolar, which means we all have individual methods that work.

It's a very personal path, one that cannot be walked for you, not by a pdoc nor a peer.


Meds have helped alot of people, for some they're literal life savers, but for others like myself, they're not worth the trouble they cause annnd they're also an express ticket to suicideville.

I'm much safer without the temptation of death by meds within my reach. Nothing else in my house can achieve what I would want when severely depro, I want to be a pretty corpse after all, and pills can give me that.

my hubs is unmedicated and he's been doing great for about 6 months, but he disappeared so clearly it isn't working that awesomely. We will be talking about medications as soon as he shows back up.

I have been unmedicated since April and VERY stable, BUT I have a huge arsenal of coping skills and have radically improved my lifestyle and involvement in life in the last year. It took literally YEARS of intensive therapy to work through the PTSD issues that complicated my bipolar issues (personally I think the PTSD issues were causing me much more severe problems than my bipolar ever did). This has only worked because of having worked through my history and learned healthy coping skills. I am much more self-aware and pro-active the absolute minute I feel myself becoming anxious or depressed or energized in any kind of hypomanic way. It has taken very conscious and conscientious work to get to this point and stay there.

If at some point those skills fail me, I have no problem with contacting my pdoc again and using meds to stabilize (I do think meds will probably only need to be temporary fixes/adjustments for me now. My Pdoc agrees.) He has always been aware of what I have been doing and how I am doing, and he is supportive. I think he was obviously concerned at first that I would relapse, but it has been 9 months now of solid stability, so he certainly can't argue with the results he is seeing.

I think you DO have to be willing and able to do the hard work in therapy and make aggressive and deliberate changes in how you live and approach life in order for this to have a chance to work. You can't continue to do what you've always done (if that has always had poor results) and expect better results miraculously. It just doesn't happen that way.

I'm thinking about seeing how it will go soon, but maybe I won't. I've had bad experiences in the past with medication, but I might just stay on Lamictal for a while and see how that goes.

If you are looking for something i had some luck with St. Johns Wart for depression, and 10 mg doses of lithiam oratate for hypomania, taken as needed sometimes i used more than 10 mg.
large doses of vitamin c, or nician have also been found to help deprression. All of these can be bought at a local vitamin shop. Maybe they'll help you. I use them from time to time, but i have since gotten on medicine because my symptoms started to get out of hand

Lamictal has been the best with little to know side effects for me. I'd yang for a bit

I don't know if this is helpful, but I have a friend who is essentially unmedicated. She takes a drug store lithium supplement and says that is helpful. However I do know she has been hospitalized recently, so I guess it is living on the edge a little. She doesn't go to a pdoc or t though, so she isn't doing everything you can do if unmedicated. But she gets by. She's actually in nursing school now, and doing well.

I myself am a little afraid of going unmedicated, because I feel a little out of control when I'm not on anything.

"Drug store lithium supplement"?

Yeah, she told me what the dosage was, I just don't remember since that particular conversation was over a year ago. I'm being vague because she was vague. It was something under 100mg.

One should be careful about all suppliments , as most all are not FDA approved and gawd knows what the lithium is going to be mixed with what inactive junk.

Totally agreed! I've never looked into lithium supplements since I'm on prescription lithium, but I do know the horrors of finding an appropriate fish oil supplement - you know, avoiding heavy metals and other contaminants. It would be nice if they labeled and screened supplements at least as carefully as they do food...