Thank you for your concern, Jeff. I’m glad your meds are working for you, and as I said in the article, I absolutely do not think people should quit their meds irresponsibly. One of the hardest aspects of Bipolar is that people often do go quite suddenly off their medications, with disastrous results.

But the medication process is equally chaotic on the front end, when the scripts are written. Prescribing these drugs should be a very careful and well-planned decision on the part of the doctors, and it often is not, as was the case with me. Patients are far too often used as guinea pigs, with med after med thrown at them to see what works, sometimes without even a clear diagnosis. At least this way, I can carefully wean off the drugs while keeping tabs on my mental and physical condition, and if anything starts to go wrong, I have my psychiatrist, my family doctor, and my loved ones for support.