If I Am Diagnosed With Bipolar Will I Be On Medication For Life?

This was the main question I had yet never dared ask. I was afraid of the outcome.

I made it clear at the very first appointment I had with my community psychiatric nurse when we spoke about trust, as I struggle to trust people. While he gave me a lecture on attending appointments and being honest with him, he asked what I expected from him. I told him he needed to be honest with me. If he ever lied and I found out then our relationship would be over.

I need to be able to trust the people who support me. Too many have let me down in the past. I have left the mental health team at dangerous times, because they had they failed me time and time again and I felt I was better off on my own.

The fact is I hate and always have hated medication. I have been prescribed so many antidepressants and sleeping pills in the past due to being misdiagnosed that I have grown to not trust them, they never worked. Which in hindsight they were never going to work as I was bipolar and not depressed.

I managed to asked the question last week when I was prescribed new medication. The answer was bleak.

Having to accept you need medication to survive is difficult. I feel like I have no control over my life. I have to take magic pills to get through a day.

I want to be able to control my moods yet I cant. But rather than feel a failure its something I am going to have to learn to accept. I know I need this medication, I can not carry on the way I have been. Its dangerous and damaging not only to myself but others around me.

I can only leave the house if I am drugged up to the eyeballs enough to sedate me, this has always made me feel a burden as I always need someone to come with me. I know my close friends hate it when I don’t ask them and quite honesty some have got rather cross at me, I hate asking them to take time out to come with even to the shop. But I cant live my life stuck in the house can I?

My husband is diabetic and injects insulin everyday, he does that to live a stable and healthy life. I have to take psychotic drugs because I am not stable and cant lead a healthy life without them. I am trying to be positive.

I don’t like the medication but I remind myself daily that it will get better once my body starts to accept the drugs.

I am looking at days as just that, one day at a time and trying not to think about the future on medication.

One day at a time is something I can just to stay manage.