I’ve been fighting medication side effects for as long as I can remember. I wish I could get by on just lithium. It feels like an achievement, but even that leaves me with tremors, diarrhea, a wrecked thyroid, and damaged kidneys. And if that’s the “mild” one, imagine what others like Quetiapine do.

Every pill is a trade-off between avoiding mental chaos and paying the physical price. There’s no option without a cost. Either the illness destroys me, or the treatments do. And yet, going without medication is not an option.