I was also diagnosed with bipolar, I first started on anti depressents, also cililift, and I am sorry but I am totally against any anti depressent, I felt they made you so hollow inside, and sometimes I felt I was probably worse off on them, I had more thoughts of suicide on it, than off it, so i stopped it immedietly, which is obviously very bad, but I just couldn't handle it anymore, so I was willing to go through that withdrawl for the week, which is pretty awful by the way, not like throwing up etc. but more mentally, then I was also on lamictal, which I felt didn't do **** even though it took a few weeks till it kicked in, and then lastly I was on Zyprexa (mood stabiliser), this did help me I can't deny it, but it I felt it changed me, one of the biggest things was I lost my artistic side of things, and unfortunately that was my number 1 thing I needed for my job, so as my job was my life I decided to give up on all the medication and just learn to cope with it, i'd rather be depressed and still be able to be creative, than be happy and be useless at what I do for a living. So eventually I just learnt to cope with it, I ended up convincing myself it was just all inside of my head, this is probably the biggest obstacle to overcome, I always just saw it as a "mind of a matter", and once i got passed that I was able to push those suicide thoughts aside, and just kept telling myself "it's not what you really want", my suicide tendencies weren't because of the feeling I just couldn't cope anymore, it was more that the thought of death sounded "nice",and which is caused by me over thinking things, which I still do all the time, but the best is to keep yourself busy the whole time, no matter what you do, it's best to make sure you exhausted by the end of the day. Now I am not saying that this is all in your head or that meds are bad, meds were just bad for me, I think being stubborn and not wanting help doesn't help you at all, I think I was just lucky to be able to see my situation from a different perspective and able to control it, where as some people just don't have the ability to do that,and meds just helps them with this, but I am against anti-depressents not mood stabilisers, I dunno why doctor perscribe this to people with no hassle, to me it is very dangerous.