So I've been diagnosed with Bipolar 2 since my teens. Yesterday at 27 years old I found out (thanks to some comments on another post on this sub) that I certainly have BPD on top of my bipolar. Talked to my therapist about this and he agrees I indeed seem to have that awesome /s  combo of disorders. I know this seems kinda silly but when I realized the BPD thing it explained a lot of drama and suffering in my life but it also made me feel "more insane" than I already felt with the bipolar diagnosis. I don't know if it's that I always heard from my clinical teachers (I'm a psychology student) that borderline patients are the hardest to treat and they usually struggle and fail to keep their lives on track. I just spent yesterday feeling miserable and hopeless, like somehow this added diagnosis on top of bipolar is sentencing me to live a short and unfulfilled life. 

I have taken meds a few times throughout my life since I have been diagnosed with Bipolar. But I never managed to stay on them consistently, mainly because the psychiatrists I saw were complete assholes, always dismissing the collateral effects the meds/dosages were causing (and they made my life even more miserable than my mood swings/depression). I don't like meds, I don't wanna be on meds. I fear their collateral effects and the pain of trying to find a good psychiatrist that might pay attention to what I'm telling him without wanting to bury me in pills that only make me feel worse. I mean, at some point I was taking pills (don't remember what) to stabilise my mood, but that gave me bad insomnia. So the doc just gave me ambien to be able to sleep, but that made me feel like a zombie all day. So he wanted to give me something else to keep me alert during the day but then I couldn't eat anymore because my stomach was upset all the time. I accepted that having mood swings was less bad than this shit show and just quit the meds. 

 I always try to sleep well, eat well, exercise, do stuff I like. I think I can manage ok without meds but I've been getting the feeling that I'm getting old fast and haven't really been able to grow as person like I'd like to. Like I'm always running in circles and never moving forward with my aspirations. And now with this BPD thing I'm wondering if I'll ever stand a chance at having a fulfilling life being on a constant rollercoaster of emotions and moods (by now I tell myself I've gotten used to the instability but I must be fooling myself, right?). 

So, after all this venting my question is: how/when did you decide to take meds and stay on them? How is this journey going? I think stubborn old me  needs to be convinced that meds actually help, clinicians and articles telling me I stand a better chance medicated aren't really cutting it, I want to hear from people who actually are living through it.