bipolar disorder and no medication

i posted this in the bipolar section, but i thought i might get some answers here as well..

just curious if there are any people out there that are bipolar, and have managed their illness without the use of medication..

or if anyone has thoughts on whether it can be done, etc.

any thoughts would really be appreciated!

I've attempted to go without meds, but it didn't work for me. From what most people tell me, you have to have meds to live alright with bipolar, but I don't know... maybe there is some way to do it with out pharmaceutical?.

hi seventyeight. there are good days and bad days with no, or little, medication. today is a bad day and it's almost intolerable. I don't have enough drugs due to medicare, the gap, being disabled, no money. Drugs help to raise the lows and lower the highs. I don't understand how you can manage that daunting task without medical assistance. i am bipolar Ischizoaffective, ultra-rapid cycling. what are u? zeekers

I'm bipolar II, very rapid cycling. The dose of mood stabiliser i was on is WAY too low, but my pdoc has no answer for it. Not sure if the trazodone was doing anything useful, so yesterday I decided to stop the lot.
I don't see a point in putting rubbish into myself that isn't going to help me. I'm probably going to go off the rocks in the near future, but at least the new pdoc will have a clean slate.
I think most BPers need to be on meds.

Hi there,

I have attempted to go without medication and have ended up either manic or depressed. Personally, I believe that if someone is taking medication and managing their Bipolar Disorder well, they should continue taking the medication. There's too much of a risk with stopping all medications.

I think whether you need medication depends on your symptoms, how they impact on you and your coping skills in dealing with the mood swings. If you have issues with severe depression and/or psychosis while in the midst of a mood episode, then I probably wouldn't recommend coming off medication.

Conventional wisdom is that medication is necessary to stabilise bipolar disorder, and it's probably the easiest path.

Battling without the meds - they are necessary!

Do you mean your pdoc didn't agree you needed more mood stabilizer and so would not prescribe a higher dose? Do you know why he wouldn't prescribe more? Bad side effects? Believed something else was going on?

I can see that and have been there before myself (for other medical issues). Sometimes doctors wonder about medication "compliance" and seem to put that all on the back of the patient. Patients have to see some improvement in order to be motivated to continue on a medication. (That is why patients can show poor compliance in taking meds for conditions like hypertension, which have no overt symptoms.) If a patient is made worse by a medication the doctor prescribes, he/she needs to be able to respond in some way, if only a "good explanation", if the patient is to want to continue taking the med. Otherwise, the patient may completely stop taking the meds or quit going to the doctor (what he/she prescribed isn't helping me, why bother?). I see some of this as a communication issue between patient and doctor that could really be helped with more effort from the doctor.

sugahorse, you mentioned you had a new pdoc. Have you seen him/her yet? I hope the new pdoc will be helpful, and a good listener and communicator. Good luck with these challenges.

Can anybody manage bipolar disorder without meds? Not once they've been diagnosed & medicated: it becomes extremely problematic!

Couple of minor problems with the current diagnostic protocols...

If you were blind and some helpful person pointed you the way of an elephant, you might pat its trunk and say "Oooh, a snake," it's tusk and say "Wow, a rhinocerous," or its leg and go "My god, it seems to be a warm-blooded tree with hair, and it just moved!!" You'd of course be inaccurate in all cases - actually let's call the warm-blooded ambulary tree with hair option downright foolish, cause noone's ever seen or heard of that sort of flora-faunic chimera. (Furthermore your 'blindness' in this case is also accompanied by short term memory loss, you would presumably have been told that this was the same animal in all cases...)

It doesn't stop there: what if you had a whole panel of blind experts who experienced the (comorbid) short-term memory problems confirming it "Yup, that's certainly surprising, but we've suspected these walking trees existed for some time. Wonder how we get them to root? Their ecological impact is awful - just think of the poor snakes and rhinoceri getting shuffled around all the time. I know, we'll deal with 'em like this - we'll nail 'em down and see how that works!" So they do. The snakes writhe (they're happy!) the rhinocerous bucks its head (triumphantly!).

Enough of that, but the allegory ain't too far off to what psychiatry is presently doing - frantic button mashing. It is without a doubt the most ridiculous and tragic state of affairs since germ theory was first introduced. Brief true story: When a then little- known doc suggested that it might be a bad idea for surgeons to be running from room to room (autopsy in one, tonsilectomy in the next) without washing their hands, people (mostly medical professionals) went absolutely berserk - indignantly going 'Surely you don't mean to fault doctors for patient mortality post-op!' There was a lot of resistance to that idea largely because it was pretty damning to an entrenched establishment, and I suppose it was downright inconvenient. 'Why, this man has just experienced a surgical shock to his system & was obviously sick when he came in. Could be plenty of other reasons for his death.' (Obfuscation/shifting blame.) See they knew plenty about miasma at that point (airborne pathogens) but jack-squat about water/tissue born pathogens (this was round about 1870) not too far off chronologically from Pasteur's establishment of germ theory (theory!? law, guys.) The little-known doc in question pressed the matter, and surprise, surprise - he was right! Joseph Lister (yes 'Listerine' is a product of his name.)

Why do people experience bipolarity as a symptom of an actual legitimate pathology? Let me see - has psychiatric intervention usually begun with folks experiencing depression and established on SSRI- therapy? Yes. Do those SSRI's often yield a neurological state that would produce impulsivity, irritability, and downright mania? - Does a duck quack? Buuut it's not a duck now, it's a goose. Boom, you're bipolar! (Thought I was depressed.) 'Nope, we've found that bipolar patients rarely seek help when they're feeling good.' [!?!?!] (Feeling good is mania?) 'Well, no feeling a little too good. That's called hypomania, and then there's mania mania which is frankly a little scary to us folks - y'all come in here saying you're a direct descendent of Alexander the Great or the Queen of Sheba, not gonna lie - it's a little frightening.' (So it's like when I do coke?) 'Aha, a dual diagnosis. Job well done, and it's lots of antipsychotics and mood stabilizers for you. Have problems with any one of them? S'aright, there are lots of options and combinations we can try...' [patting themselves]

An SSRI produces a certain relief in the short-term from depression. Not all that much different than active placebo (that is a caffeine pill is about as likely to alleviate your symptoms), but sure some relief. Problem is that it begins anatomically changing the seratonin loop in your brain after two weeks while your brain is trying to adapt to the toxin. Stay on this garbage for about a month, and there's trouble brewing.

Maybe that's not the aetiology / disease progress of your particular experience with psychiatry. Let's try a different route - you've experienced (prior to introduction of psychiatric chemicals) brief periods of high energy punctuated by a general state of low mood or the inverse mostly high (some low) and present with those symptoms. Let's see about the first case & things that might go wrong. Any chance you'd had a diagnosis of ADHD, and put on ritalin? Cause last time I checked, amphetamines and their derivatives have certain side effects associated with long-term use. How much/ often do you drink or smoke marijuana (that could certainly do some unpleasant things to neurochemistry) namely GABA and dopamine disregulation? As a matter of fact if you'd had or have any illegal drug habit, please for the love of pete quit that stuff and give your brain time to recover before you use some pharmaceutical garbage that treats your brain about as kindly as angel-dust. (Actually the effects are very similar.)

The whole ugly truth is actually a lot uglier than most of us could possibly comprehend. Dopaminic theory of schizophrenia along with the serotonic theory of depression went out the window in the 70s. Along comes Prozac in 1980 - they knew it didn't really work, but hell can't we doctor our studies just a little to make it look like it does? They did as a matter of fact, the news came out a looong time ago, but marketers hijacked this objection and called it a political issue inviting public debate. You know very well how public debate goes... 'Well, my little Johnny just couldn't sit still till we put him on ritalin. Now little Johnny is a model kid. His facial tics are just part of what makes him so special' 'Damn you, you're putting children on amphetamines for BEHAVIORAL problems!' 'My little Johnny doesn't have behavioral problems, you lout - don't tell me how to parent!' 'Well, I don't think people should use mind altering substances.' 'Well scientology says...' [yikes! Tom Cruise alert]

That antipsychotics knock out psychosis - undisputed. What caused psychosis in the first place? Unfortunately, the truth is that one of the most common presentations is that chronic antipsychotic use has produced anatomical changes in the brain which will look a helluva lot like 'relapse' or 'unmasking your underlying illness.' It'd be like being stabbed, (wow! I'm not really bleeding all that much) to removing the knife (whoa, lots of bleeding) and then having a doctor diagnose you with a clotting problem. Might you have been 'stabbed?' Sure! Hypoglycemia can do plenty to mood, as could diabetes, concussion, or hell - how about life's vicissitudes? 'Well shoot, what about schizophrenia? Surely that one's not iatrogenic [doc induced]!' (Uhm, ehrm. 'Scuse me for a moment.)

What's schizophrenia? A symptom - actually there are a couple 'varieties' of this symptom. Hebephrenic / 'paranoid' / (commoner ones, but the taxonomies certainly grow and change...) First well-discussed possibility toxoplasmosis: little kitty's got worms, little worms infect infant as brain parasites. Hmm... haldol seems to work (kinda. it also puts those nasty little worms into deep-freeze mode.) It's still just regular ol' toxoplasmosis. Folks had a cat when you were an infant? Worth asking before you go on antipsychotics for your "dopamine disregulation" isn't it?

Bottom line- there is absolutely nothing medical or scientific about these diagnosis. They're symptoms, and they're damned vague ones at that.

My advice? Ask / quiz your pdoc about the pharmacologic action of any of these drugs (not talking "Are there side effects?" - you'll get an evasive 'yes.' Ask your doc for instance what the occupancy rate of D2 high-state receptors is in aripiprazole at 5mg. you should get an unhesitating "90%" if this guy/gal knew anything, which they usually don't in my experience. do your homework first - there's plenty of neurophysiologists who've got a much clearer picture of the drugs' pharmacologic action and you can find this stuff on google scholar), and see if what they tell you sounds like a scientist or a salesrep talking.

Sunrise - I think my old pdoc just didn't believe in my symptoms, or didn't believe that a higher dose of mood stabiliser was necessary.
I mentioned my meds to my T, who double checked with a pdoc that she works with - he said I should have been on about 3x the dose for it to be therapeutic.

Well, I went to see the new pdco last week, and she seems nice.
I'd stopped my meds, so we are now starting from scratch. I believe in her methods thus far and am happy to cooperate with her.
But we need to work ourselves up on the meds, which is a long process. I go through days where I really battle as I am definitely not stable.

Without meds and without taking them consistantly, I usually end up hospitalized. Just me though. :/ Good luck and I wish you the best!

Without meds, this rollercoaster is a nightmare - one that can "easily" be avoided

I'm on no medication. My life does suck pretty bad. But I have no medical insurance anymore. I was hospitalized four times within 2 months and managed to graduate highschool. The fourth hospitalization was the day after my high school graduation. I had college paid for by financial aid and was ready to take my 3.8 gpa to San Francisco State University. But bipolar disorder ruined my life, kept me from going to SFSU because everyone told me it was a bad idea for me to go from So Cal to Nor Cal by myself at the time. So I took a year off. Now the government took away my MediCal insurance and I have no way to get help. I was denied disability the first time I applied and of course I got angry and gave up after the first try. Now I am here, without medication, without support and my brothers just admitted today that they lost hope in me. They said I was talented enough to make more of my life. So I'm feeling pretty bad. I don't need medication, I just need support. I did enough of the medication and I gained from 89 lbs to 125 lbs within a few months. I'm still alive though. And I'm grateful for the air I breathe. Sometimes I'm not. But my mom is there for me when I'm not. You don't need medication if you can't get it, but you can't do it without support. Unfortunately, everyone I thought I had support from is leaving me and giving up.

Sorry to hear your position Mademoiselle.
Come chat on the Bipolar forum - we are here to offer each other support - for some of us, PC is literally the only support we have; and we will ensure we all get through this.
Unfortunately I do not know the laws in your country, but I'm sure there has to be some form of government setup to assist with paying your consults and or meds.
I am battling at the moment with my meds being adjusted, but I'm holding onto the fact that things can only get better. I could not imagine not having anything to cling on to.

We are here for you - please don't think you are alone. I commend you for beign so strong.
(((HUGS)))

I not medicated. It is not oh-so-cool life of "puppies and rainbows", but I can cope. I am just afraid that any "chemistry" would mess me up even further.

There is not test for that "chemical imbalance" theory and there is no easy fix. That's why I don't like to compare bipolar to diabetes. You can measure blood sugar precisely, you cannot do so with chemical imbalance of bipolar... it could be more compared - pardon that horrible analogy - of a advanced user dealing with problem on their computer by deleting files they find suspicious... it might work... or your may screw up the system even further.

I went years without medication and invariably became unmanageable, to my self and others. I had psychotic symptoms long before I was medicated, and mood changes that made people assume I was using drugs (which I was not, at the time, had never even touched them). I didn't believe my diagnosis was correct until I learned a lot more about the disorder in an outpatient group after my last hospitalization and now understand the pattern of my symptoms, and even that alone gives me hope.

If I could do this without meds, I would. I told my pdoc at our last meeting that I wanted off all of the drugs, but I know what would happen if I did that and we both agreed that when I am more stable we can try reducing some of them and see what happens, as now is not a good time to be fooling with it. I get frustrated because I need them, angry at my self that I can't do this by my self as I tried for so long to do before admitting that I needed help.

The sparks that fly at the beginning of hypomania can be pleasing, and some drugs destroy that, which is one reason for non-compliance. People who have not experienced that can't understand it, I guess. Drugs didn't cause this, and I'm alive because of doctors and meds. People who have not experienced this can't understand it either.

I have been "off" meds for several months, since I was having bad side effects. I have gotten into cognitive-behavioral therapy, and it was helping. Ironically, though, I started developing facial pain and my doctor put me on Trileptal. Come to find out, it is used as a mood stabilizer for bipolar, too. Ha! So, I am back on drugs, even though I was trying to go without them. As the rest of the folks have said, it seems that most all mental health professionals believe that bipolars need to be on something to help cut down on re-occurences.

don know but gudluck....

I've been off meds about 3 months. What I seem to think / believe is coping seems to by hypermania and that might explain that why once on medication for a year or so I always stop taking it. Mmmmn