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There is no insulin for bipolar. It is a brain disorder, not a physical malfunction of any organ of gland. It is not an exact science. It's a complex mental illness that has huge implications for a person's identity and personality. It cant be reduced down to popping a pill and bingo, you're fixed. Diabetes has particular certainties. Bipolar doesn't. Everything's a gamble.
There are only cocktails of antipsychotics, mood stabilisers and anti depressants.
It can take years to find a balance, some people never find it.
There are the potential of some pretty nasty side effects too....major weight gain, hair loss etc which can lead to depressive episodes and impact on your physical health. So then they start whacking on the anti depressants to combat that, but anti depressants were never meant as a long term treatment. They were intended to help in the short term while cognitive or talk therapies would take over, or the patient would recover. There is no recovery in bipolar, only remission between episodes and some people don’t even get those.
Then there's the fact that lithium, valporate...those sorts of drugs are a poison. You need weekly, then monthly blood tests to check your levels, to know the 'cure' isn't poisoning you, destroying your liver etc.
Before you even choose to take something like lithium you have to have blood tests etc to check you're even healthy enough to take it, to try work out the risks.
Plus, lithium / valporate isn't a drug you can simply try and then stop taking. Those drugs cause (in most people) their condition to dramatically worsen if they stop taking the meds...so its not a decision to be made lightly. Once you're on lithium or whatever its long term, possibly lifelong.
If you do decide to stop taking meds, once you've started, you often encounter suspicion, accusations...people, family, doctors think you're 'not in the right mind', that you won’t cope without it. Often you get preasured into taking them, not for your own well being, but so the people around you feel safer.
Oh, and the meds also have been proven to cause birth defects and other stuff. If you get pregnant or decide to start a family you need close monitoring. If they have to take you off the meds then you have to quickly replace them to avoid spiralling into mania...while pregnant. Pregnancy itself has been proven to be dangerous for the mental health of people with bipolar itself, which further complicates matters.
Then there's the reality that these meds could change who you are, that being advised to take them is being told who you are isn't right somehow...may sound illogical, but a lot of people feel that way.
Insulin doesn’t chemically alter the brain...the part of you that makes you you.
All that aside...I miss the needle (yeah, that's going to sound mad to some people) and going to a clinic every week to watch someone, feel someone inserting a pin into my arm isn't something I want in my life. I realised that last time I had blood tests and then spent a week trying to convince my mates the bruise was caused by a nurse, and that I hadn’t relapsed. That isn’t something I need either. Plus, if I do have weekly blood tests I could get away with relapsing much easier because of the blood tests. I don’t want to think about that.
That's why I choose not to be medicated. And I accept the consequences. That's why I posted what I did...to deal with the negative in a positive way.
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