My Natural State - is it med time yet?

After being diagnosed with Bipolar I, I had a hard time believing it because I've been treated for major depression with psychotic features for a number of years and mania hasn't been anything I've ever noticed or considered could apply to me.  What, I asked myself, has prompted my MH professionals to come up with this, and how can I test their "assumption"?  I know, says I, I'll go off my meds, then we'll all find out that this is just not true and we'll go back to the way things were. 

HA!  Again I say, HA!

Secretly, I stopped taking my meds, time passed, and everything was just fine.  A little more time passed and I started feeling better and more alive, more creative, and life seemed better than it was while I was on my meds - so I'm never going to take my meds again.  Who has to know, and who will it hurt?  A little white lie.  Right?  I'll eventually come clean.  By then everyone will see that I'm completely cured and all will live happily ever after.

A little more time passed, and while things were still pretty good, I started to get a little agitated and restless.  Long story short, I went from a little agitated and restless, to profoundly irritable, to horribly paranoid, to almost psychotic before I was found out.  Why, you may ask, didn't I get found out before I almost became psychotic?  I stopped leaving my apartment and didn't answer the phone or the door.  You may think that going from a little agitated and restless to almost psychotic took 5-7 days.  Nope.  36 hours.  That's how quickly it can happen.  How do I know it was 36 hours?  Because when I decided to stop taking my meds, I also decided to put everything down in my online journal "in the interest of science"  How's that for grandiose?  A friend who has a key to my apartment came over to check on me and helped me to get the assistance I needed.

I learned a lot from my little experiment and don't plan to ever repeat it.  Meds are good, they work, and they are prescribed for a reason.  Diagnoses are just words that help MH professionals to help us - nothing more.  There is very likely a change in my medication/dosage coming up because theoretically I shouldn't have destabilized as quickly as I did, but I'm not going to fight it.  Believe me, when you reach the edge of sanity and look down, you'll never again doubt that there is a Hell.