I realised yesterday that I have been on medication since March now and I have had a pretty rough ride of it for most of this year. I am seriously considering going meds free again. If I’ve had such a rough ride this year and been on meds, albeit a low dose, will being meds free be much different really? I’m normally in a good place or hypomanic for 8-9 months of the year and sometimes longer. This year I really haven’t been. I know the so called maintenance dose of Lamotrigine is 200mg per day and I’m only on 100mg because 200mg made me zombie like. It was agreed with the GP and the hospital to lower it. I’ve been 41 years of my life without them and I know 2012 was one nasty year, much like this one, but I was meds free back then and I didn’t have a full understanding of bipolar and not even a diagnosis let alone think I had it. So it’s made me think about a lot of things. The cpn and psychiatrist both said I have very good inbuilt mechanisms and I need to go back to using them now. I am back to see a GP, not my usual one, on Monday and I want to talk about therapies to help me rather than medications to mask over it all. I need to be able to see a habitual/normal for me mood pattern and be able to try to stop or change it. I’m pretty sure I used to be able to. I’ve been told to try CAT therapy by someone who worked in mental health until a couple of years ago. I owe it to myself and my family to implement real changes and to try to stop thought and behaviour patterns if possible. I also need to make some lifestyle changes too, which we are already working on. I have managed to meditate today and have real good clear thinking and have managed to slow my thoughts down with some mental control and meditation. I know I can’t sit around and meditate all day and I have realised I need to use CBT techniques to build in triggers to help me recognise these changes in thinking when they happen and I need to have a phrase to use which, I will strengthen by use etc, that will hopefully bring about some focus. The last 7-8 weeks have been hell and I fully realise it will be a continuos ‘battle’. My wife has now agreed that I should try meds free again. She is the reason I stayed on them so long even though I talked with her and said I wanted off a few months ago now. Anyway I will see how it goes and I know for now I can’t simply just stop them. I will however drop to just 50mg per day for now.
