Unmedicated

I am currently unmedicated for the first time in more than five years. It's a scary thought, especially considering how well managed my symptoms have been on medication and how very scary life was before the meds.

In hindsight, I probably started experiencing symptoms of bipolar disorder when I was a senior in high school, but it wasn't so severe that I thought it was a problem or even considered getting any kind of treatment. I had a fleeting therapeutic relationship with one of the counselors in college, but she was convinced that I was only depressed because of the sudden upheaval of starting college. It's not uncommon for bipolar to be misdiagnosed, although it seems to be the 'fashionable' diagnosis these days.

The worst symptoms, the ones that eventually did drive me to seek help, started late in 2004. At the time my parents were dividing their time between our home in Connecticut and my father's work in Vermont. I stayed in Connecticut because of school. I probably should have noticed something was wrong when I read over my essays. Really, anyone who read them should have seen something more than a little off. Maybe they did and just didn't say anything. The thing about mania is that you just feel too good to imagine that anything could ever be wrong again.

Then the fear set in. The constant feeling of being watched. The sensation that someone or something was behind me. My neck was sore from continually looking over my shoulder. It got so bad that I could hardly drive. I was terrified that someone was in my back seat and I obsessed over the rearview mirror, always worried that it might show something other than my own darting eyes. Fog on the road could bring me to tears as it shifted and rolled in my headlights. I would run from my car to the house, locking the door behind me and checking it repeatedly. I loathed the dark.

Trying to sleep was a nightmare (ha ha). I heard whispers and noises that I knew weren't really there. I was too frightened of what lurked in the dark to even be able to turn off the light. Instead I read until my eyes shut of their own volition. I would wake up briefly in the middle of the night, sufficiently out of it to be able to finally turn off the light and go back to sleep.

The daytime wasn't much better. I felt restless and jumpy and irritable. Sometimes it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming. I would burst into angry tears at the drop of a hat and I felt like I was going to fly into pieces. On more than one occasion I found myself crumpled on the ground, crying and shaking and it seemed like my boyfriend's arms were the only thing keeping me from exploding.

After a few months, I crashed. One night I heard my cat yowling. My mother and I found her dragging herself down the hall, her back legs useless. We took her to the emergency vet, where we were told she had thrown a blood clot that had lodged in the vein leading to her rear legs, paralyzing her. The vet could remove the clot, but tests showed that she had more in her heart. She was 17 years old and we made the very painful decision to have her put down. Our family vet came the next morning to our house. I couldn't stop crying. Her death plunged me into the worst depression I'd ever experienced. It seemed endless. And that's when I knew. I went to my school's counseling services and got a referral to a psychiatrist. Within the week I had started on Wellbutrin. I've been medicated ever since.

Until now. About a week ago I finished the last of my lamotrigine (generic for Lamictal). And I feel good. My life isn't exactly stressful at the moment, since I'm not working, but still, I feel really good. I stopped the meds so that my husband and I could start a family, so maybe I'm running on excitement at the moment. It probably helps that the prenatal supplements I'm taking include high doses of B vitamins and fish oil, two supplements that are often recommended for mood enhancement. Still, it was a bit of a shock when I had a headache last week and I realized that I could take any kind of medication I wanted without having to worry about any drug interactions.

So here I am, for better or for worse, off the medications and very relieved.

~Lizzie