About a year ago, I made the mistake of reducing the dose of my Lamictal - the one medication I can tolerate for bipolar disorder. I remember thinking, “This med isn’t helping my depression much. Maybe it’s not working at all!” I talked with my coauthor about this and let my therapist know what I was doing. Then I reduced it until I was taking half. I thought I was making the right decision. I originally started the medication to help with my constant depression- and though it helped reduce the depression by about 25%, I didn’t think it worked enough. The normal dose of Lamictal is 200 mg and I was on 500. I started to worry what it was doing to my body- was the high dose causing problems I couldn’t see? Did I really need that high of a dose? It doesn’t seem to be doing much anyway! I think I’ll reduce it and see how much I really need.  Looking back, this reasoning is not very sound. I went with my emotions instead of looking at the facts. Medications are always tricky- we know we need them, but we don’t really want to take them. This is when we start making excuses and often convince ourselves that they aren’t really working well enough or that we don’t really need them. That is what happened to me.  

Within one month of reducing my dose, I was so ill I could hardly function- all of my energy went into staying well- I used my treatment plan all day long just to get my work done. I thought my trouble was due to holiday stress or the result of a relationship problem I was having at the time. My depression wasn’t much worse, so I didn’t connect the problems to reducing my meds. I started to get very anxious, my OCD symptoms got out of control, my psychosis got worse and my rapid cycling just went into overdrive. And yet I still thought, “Lamictal is a drug for depression and my depression is about the same, so the drug wasn’t needed.”  I was so blind! Then one day my therapist said to me, “Julie, you seem a lot more ill than normal. You’re having a lot of psychotic thoughts and you seem really unhappy. You’re not as creative as you used to be and you don’t seem to be excited about any project.”  Then it hit me, the Lamictal may not have reduced my depression as much as I wanted it to, but it was an amazing drug for all of my other bipolar disorder symptoms- and it certainly helped enough with the depression to keep taking it. I couldn’t see the reality of things. It was working- just not the way I thought it should. I got my dose back to 500 mg – it took some time as I had to be really careful about side effects, but within a month I was functioning more normally. I am thankful for this drug. I still have to use my treatment plan everyday to manage this illness- but I know that I have the medication to help me in so many areas and it makes it a lot easier to use my plan! I’m 44. I’ve been managing my bipolar disorder for 13 years now- and I’m still learning every day. I learned a lesson I’ll never forget. It’s often when we think the meds aren’t working that they work the most.  

How are you doing with your meds? Are you playing with doses? Or are you unhappy with the results of your meds? This is serious stuff isn’t it? Talk with your doctor- find out what works. Don’t give up. Medications are the foundation of any treatment plan. When you find the right medication, it’s a miracle!  Also, if you love someone with the illness, is that person taking their meds as needed? Maybe they can read this and not make the mistakes I’ve made. I want to help in any way I can.  Julie

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