It’s been one week since I lowered my Abilify (its chemical structure is the mascot of this blog) to 15 mg from 20 mg at the urging of my psychiatrist.  He feels that 20 mg is too large a dose.  So I took him at his word, figured why not?  Lower it, and see what happens.  What happens is a collapse, a deflation of mood the likes of which I haven’t seen in about a half-year.  Were those 5 mg so important?  I had a terrible week: would the week have been less terrible had I been taking those 5 extra milligrams?  That’s something I can’t answer.  I’ll have to go another week at least, monitoring my moods (how boring!) until I can get an answer.  Time will tell, and other cliches.  Going down on meds isn’t half as fun as going up on them.  The hope, the glimmer, that this time the meds are really going to make everything better, when you’re upping the dose, is intoxicating.  The waiting for them to “kick in.”  The excitement as the side effects begin — “something must be working!”  No, going down isn’t much fun at all.  There’s no hopeful side of things.  I’m not trying to reduce some current side effects, just the long-terms ones that the psychiatrist suggested, darkly, may be lurking in my future.  Didn’t even want to ask what those were.  I should have asked, and will ask next time.  No, going down holds no promise.  Can you tell I’m a pharma addict?  My mother just started Abilify and I haven’t heard her voice over the phone sound so clear, so full of life, in years.  We share 50% of our genes, after all.  There’s something in that stuff that works magic on our lives.