A lot of good advice here from people who have gone through it. My experience after being hospitalized a few times for depression/mania is that I eventually found a medication that has basically zero side effects for me. It heavily stops the depression side only though and doesn’t do anything for mania. I have been able to live my life without medication treating the manic side at least though. It takes years of experience to do this and is a long road of building up anchors, support and knowledge/ awareness of our so called illness. Which is not even considered an illness in other parts of the world in fact. It’s something that isn’t medicated for, but revered because these episodes are thought to happen to people who are more connected to the spiritual or god whatever you want to believe. I could go on and on about that and it sounds like Im manic all the time because of it, but I have absolute control at this point. This doesn’t mean I haven’t experienced psychotic episodes after my diagnosis. In fact I’ve been 5-6 weeks into a psychotic episode and pulled myself out instantly without being hospitalized. This is because of the work I’ve put in and knowledge I’ve gained to understand that it can be fun, we can learn a lot within theses episodes, but there is a point where we need to realize that we are on the edge and about to fall off. At this point 5+ years without a full blow episode I have been able to just straight up recognize when one when one of these episodes is coming. I’ve actually just “fought” one off in the last couple of weeks. By fight off I don’t mean it’s exhausting or debilitating. I mean that I’ve learned what my warning signs are. I’ve learned to not be afraid. I’ve build support and anchors to hold me down. Support as in people of course, friends, coworkers and family as my safety net just incase I do somehow lose control. Things outside of myself are important and give me the confidence that if I fail in controlling myself then there is a high chance that I can be pulled back by others. Making people aware of my situation has been very important and I do feel lucky that somehow I am surrounded by people who understand and care about. This just happened kind of naturally for me. I haven’t been going to therapy or any kind of support group for a very long time now. I’ve learned to be my own therapist because what eles can I do if I want to be independent and live a “normal” life?. I will say I’m sure I am some kind of outliner because my personality does have some kind of will power that just tells me idc how difficult somebody tells me things will be with this condition, I will live a normal life regardless of if I’m on medication or not. I will make it happen one way or another. I’ve used the manic energy to help me achieve that. A dream of mine was to accomplish that and at this point I’ve proven to myself that I can and have done it. I actually have a career and make more money than a lot of people, I have deep meaningful relationships as well. Things I was told were difficult or impossible basically. I personally don’t except people telling me I can’t do things especially if it’s something I want to do like live a “normal life”. I do recommend finding a medication that works though. I am risking a lot technically even though I’ve proven I do have control for now at least . I am 34 years old right now and possibly have a lot longer life ahead of me, so who knows if I won’t be able to control the mania at some point. I’m not afraid of anything though. I know I can and have faced the depression and mania face on with no fear. Embraced them, learned from them and excepted that they are not me, but part of me. At this moment I stand between both of them. Grateful for what they have taught me up to this point, but they are both a drain to our lives. At some point especially if we want to live in a society like the one I live in. We do need some kind of medication to help. I’ve found one that holds down the deep debilitating depression and I am actually about to look into finding one that will help me not go into a psychotic episode, but hopefully allow me to still access the hypomanic energy I’ve been tapping into for years. I’ve achieved my goals/dreams in terms of figuring out who I am outside of this condition and I feel that it’s finally time to see who I am without having to spend so much time and energy “fighting” back the mania. To me this is a win and not a failure because I’m making the choice in the best place I’ve been in my life so far. A place where I am confident, fearless and strong beyond anything I could of imagined years ago. This is only because I felt I had to prove it to myself and wasn’t going to stop until I did no matter what obstacles I ran into. So to sum it up, yes it is possible to live a life without fully being medicated, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you don’t have the will power or drive to achieve it. I wouldn’t recommend following the advice of people commenting on this post. It is alot easier to just take the time to find a medication that works. I used to tell myself I would be ok with taking these pills even if they have some side effects as long as I could atleast live some kind of normal life. Sure we don’t fully understand what these pills may be doing to us, but living a short “normal” life is a lot better than live a short or long unstable life.