Anyone else have trouble staying on meds?

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I am on a cocktail of crazy pills and sometimes I skip a day for varying reasons. Usually it's because I want to paint or do something creative. Just one year ago I could skip meds for a week or two before having any trouble. Now it's less than two days apparently. Every single time, I become suicidal. I don't want to do any bodily harm to anyone but myself.

It's not hard to take my meds, it's just very easy not to. They suppress the suicidal bit, but also they suppress most of what I like about myself. It's like give up my identity or give up my life and sometimes it's not an easy thing to do.

Stick with the meds - after a period you will find that you can be just as creative as in your manic periods, but with more focus. It will not be that instant creativity that we get with mania but your meds will not take your creativity away altogether - you will have to work at a different way of accessing it but it will still be there. Worth it because with the meds you will be more focussed and therefore able to finish projects.

Go here to one of my favourite bipolar blogs for a discussion of the issue:

http://natashatracy.com/treatment-issue ... e-thought/


Also, you mentioned you are on quite a cocktail, see if you can get it cut down with medical supervision over time.

I used to be really bad at staying on my medication. I just didn't care enough to maintain healthy habits.

But eventually with the right meds things settled down, and after the dose was lowered to the minimum possible, my creativity and emotions returned. Not exactly the same as they were before, but pretty damned good.

I've been stable for years and my life has finally started falling into place, but for some reason I'm struggling with the desire to ditch the meds again. I wonder if maybe I'm afraid this stability won't last and am sabotaging myself.

I really struggle with staying on medication. I think it's a self-harm thing. I am ashamed that I do it, because I always start medication with the best of intentions but then I start skipping a day, or not taking the meds as directed and eventually I quit. It frustrates me and my doctors.

Perhaps when I get the right medication the self-harm desire will go away and I'll take my medication properly?!

Sarah81, it's not that it impacts my creativity, it just completely destroys my ability to paint. I shake and things come out really differently than I intend. I don't have that problem off meds.

Sometimes I think part of why I do it is that I hate myself on meds. I don't want to die but I start feeling like I should if pills are the only reason I'm not dead yet.

I tried to take "usual" meds for a few weeks some time ago, but they weren't ok for me, because I'm pharmacoresistant. When my parents found this out, they started giving me homeopatic medicines, and they're a lot better. Maybe you should try with them.

Well I just got on meds and I am fine with taking them as directed.........except sometimes I might take other drugs while under the effects of those. Like I have klonopin and last night I did drink a little bit with it, honestly I was a little bit angry that the doctor only prescribed me 30 .5 mg pills which it takes two of to actually calm my anxiety. On the bottle it says to take it once or twice daily well even if I just take the .5 and get partial effectiveness twice a day I still don't have enough to last till the next appointment let alone if I take the two it takes to calm the anxiety twice a day. Luckily so far since I've been taking it I haven't needed it twice but I cannot trust that I won't have two or more panic attacks in a day or keep from getting all irritable and unpleasant to be around.

Or if something starts having really nasty side effects like prozac I'm likely to stop taking it, though even though it was ok just stopping the prozac at once, next time its probably better if I slowly decrease the dose.

Is there some medication you can take that won't cause the tremors?

I am currently only on an antidepressant, but there are days I simply forget to take it. Its not because I am choosing not to take it, I just forget sometimes.

I'm good about staying on my meds due to being OCDish about schedules but I have skipped doses when my schedule got changed or screwed-up. One med I'm on now(Buspar) has to be taken a couple times a day with food & my eating schedule changes sometimes because I eat out, I'm waiting for my mom to cook something or she cooks it earlier, I decide to eat latter because I'm still full ect. I can forget to take it or not be able to take it when I should. I usually bring it when I go anywhere incase we're out a while or eat out so I can take it somewhat on schedule.

I'm pretty good at remembering to take my meds, but sometimes I forget.

Hi Meems sorry it took so long to get back on this one. I had to think about it.

Correct me if I'm wrong because I'm making a big leap here. It seems like you're going through that (long and recurrent) phase where we question our authentic identity and feel that we can't really be ourselves, our true selves, if we are taking medications. Twice I have been there and twice I have abruptly stopped medications, only to end up in the middle of a serious manic-psychotic or depressive-psychotic episode. Now I'm on a relatively good combo of meds, and I've done some therapy which has helped me to identify my true self apart from my thoughts and feelings. That is, the medication helps me to control the thoughts and feelings but my true self is something other than my thoughts and feelings and is not affected by the medication. Not to say that my thoughts and feelings aren't a part of my true self but they are not the sole defining factor of me, if you take my meaning.

Putting it another way the medication will help to make you whole. It will take some time, and you'll be creatively frustrated during this time but we've got a lot of healing to do. We'll be healing our whole lives. But the meds will never work alone the driving force must come from within you and around you.

Also this shaking and so forth is a sign that you might need to change your meds under medical supervision and I can't stress enough that it needs to be under medical supervision because believe me I've tried it without and things can go badly wrong very quickly.

So anyway I may have read a whole bunch of stuff into your post that you didn't intend, but perhaps people will find this advice useful anyway.

No, lithium is the med that causes the tremors and it's the only one that results in suicidal behavior if I stop taking it. It also slows me down a little physically. There is no drug to replace the lithium.

Any advice is useful in one way or another.

I sort of feel like I can't express my creativity because I can't get it out on a wall or a canvas, it's shaky and looks ridiculously amateur compared to my previous ability. I could take on any style and mimic it, etc. When I want to draw a picture, I look up line drawings and get an idea and can mimic it exactly or I can change it to suit my tastes. Now I can hardly even draw.

I don't really have normal bipolar, I'm diagnosed Bipolar-NOS because I don't have much in the way of mania, it's brief and usually not noticeable to others. The creativity is still there, but the ability to express it is limited. It's as if all these things are trapped in my mind and I can't get them out.

I do feel like I've lost myself in a sense, as it effects my physical abilities. It feels like losing part of my identity but it's still trapped in my mind. It's been over a decade that I've been on meds and I never adjust. People say I should try this or that, but that's really not helpful. I'm on the medications that help with the least amount of side effects. I'm sure I'll feel better when I start filling/taking my Adderall again and the tremors aren't so bad.

I used to forget to take my meds all the time while I was on SSRIs. Now I am on venlafaxine and, compared to SSRIs, it has a short half life so if I forget to take a dose I know about it before the end of the day - I feel BAD when I forget to take them. Same with my painkillers (tramadol) - possibly because they are different from typical opioids and are chemically *very* similar to venlafaxine. Unlike normal opioids they also have a serotonergic effect and so when I forget to take those I not only get the normal symptoms of opioid withdrawal but also a very similar feeling to when I forget to take the venlafaxine. So now I don't often forget to take either because I know how crap I will feel if I don't. I still forget sometimes but the withdrawal symptoms remind me pretty quickly that I have forgotten.

I'm bad with remembering such things, so I use my iPod to remind me. I'll be in trouble if it breaks before I can afford a backup.