seeing the good in the bad

In therapy you learn to see the good parts of shitty situations.  So here's my attempt at that- I have met my insurance deductible (for medications) for 2013, as of February 27th.  No, I don't have 100% coverage from here on out, or anything near it.  But the good is that I met it, right?

I'm in the midst of a complete medication overhaul.  After 3 years of relative stability and very minor med adjustments, I am far from stable and so far 4 new meds have been integrated into my daily routine, with 3 being removed.  The new daily doe of sanity (once everything is fully built up) looks like this now:

I know I should be grateful for how far the world of mental health, and specifically psychiatric medicine, has come, and I am.  And I also deal daily with the realities of living a highly medicated life.  I am in the minority of those with mental illnesses that actually continues to take my medicine without lapses of deciding to go off of them.  But I do regularly weigh the cost of being so medicated, and definitely understand why so many folks do stop taking their meds.  Here are just a few of the difficult things about taking psychiatric meds:

1. The biggest one for me, and for many, is that I take all of these meds to essentially not be myself.  (I know that many argue the opposite- that they help me to be myself- but seeing as how this is my blog, I'm writing my from my experience.)  I am a person that feels deeply, to the extent that I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  While I get that the extremes are not good, they are part of how I am wired.  The meds I take level me out.  If this were a long-term leveling I might feel a bit different, but the reality is that they tend to rob me of my ability to feel much at all on a daily basis.  This is torture for me.  I see things that I know would move me if I weren't medicated- the sorrow of suffering neighbors, the joy of a gorgeous sunset- and yet emotionally I am unable to experience these things as deeply as I want to.  It is hard for me to live with as much passion as I know resides in my soul, and I hate that.
2. These meds are expensive.  Like I said, I have already paid more than $500 dollars for medications ALONE in 2013.  Even after insurance kicks in, I'm still paying about $150 a month for meds, and that is with the help of my psychiatrist who gives me samples of the more expensive meds.  Then you factor in psychiatrist visits, which aren't too bad if I am in a stable season, but right now I am going to my psychiatrist every 2 weeks.  That adds up financially.
3. I have to rely on my meds to function, and if I forget to take them, my body gets thrown all out of whack.  I take meds to sleep, I take meds to give me energy throughout the day, I take meds to calm anxiety... and those are just the meds addressing the most basic daily needs.  My other meds are mood stabilizers, an anti-depressant and extremely high dose of vitamin D.
4. Side effects.  They suck.
5. Every day I am reminded by each of these pills that I have mental illnesses.  It is thrown in my face as I swallow each pill that I am fucked up.  I have to face the fact multiple times a day that I need these pills to survive, and it is humiliating.  And I will most likely need these pills to survive for the rest of my life, which is discouraging.

I love the movie "A Beautiful Mind" primarily because I think it portrays mental illness better than any other movie I have ever seen.  And one of the things it depicts really well is the struggle with taking/not taking meds.  It is just a really hard reality to live with.  But thus far in my life, the good has outweighed the bad as far as medication, so I continue to take them...